It's interesting how the limits around male sexuality have tightened up a bit in the last few hundred years.

Fifteen year old brides were once normal in our western tradition; today we call a fifteen year old a child. And one of the battle lines between feminists and MRAs is the age line separating female child from adult.

Then we have marital rape, which is another piece of the same picture. Wikipedia says it was "widely condoned or ignored by law" until the 60s.

Which brings me to this thought experiment. Let's take Randall, a good politically correct feminist type. He's just horrified at the idea that martial rape was once accepted as normal.

OK, Randall, here's a big red button. It's the Time Machine Contraceptive Button. Just press it once, and if there's any marital rape in your bloodline, the button will undo it.

If your kid brother was the fruit of marital rape, he'll vanish from existence. If your great-great-grandfather was, then all his living descendants disappear in a poof of smoke. Including you, Randall. I don't know if the vanishing process is painful. I reckon it is.

Well go ahead, Randall. Are you gonna press it?

(It has to be painful. Otherwise a limp, feminist SWPL like Randall would have no problem pushing it. That type is really seeking extinction, but not pain.)

Randall doesn't push it. He can do the math. Figure 170 generations back to Adam and Eve, if they existed. Figure a ridiculously low 1% chance of marital rape in each generation. That leaves only a 1 in 5 chance that Randall is rapeless.

OK, Randall, weren't you bitching about the 112 year old Somali man who married a teenager? Tell me, what is the absolute minimum age you want to enforce for a woman to have sex? Tell the button. Press the button.

Randall would like to say 18, but he knows the button wouldn't have to shinny too far up his family tree before he's a wisp of greasy smoke. Randall's got his arms folded now. He's not touching that button.

Randall's brain is working hard.

Time for rationalization. What was OK for Randall's great-great-great-grandfather is not OK for Randall. Back then folks were Ignorant, and now we are Enlightened. We've come so far. We've progressed.

So what if Randall is the fruit of a poisoned tree? If his balls contain the genetic material of a hundred brutal ancestors who dragged their women around by the hair, Randall will make up for it all with his caring and considerate style.

But I hope Randall will lie awake remembering that he didn't have the nerve to press that button.