Ok, now that's out of the way I'd like to point y'all in a couple different directions. First, go visit Dalrock to see what the trouble is all about. Then I suggest you go poke around Sheila Gregoire's blog.
So as you can see the main trouble is that Dalrock and Sheila have two very different ways of writing about marriage, and according to Dalrock Sheila's way is wrong and detrimental to the state of marriage as a whole. Many of the commenters vehemently agree. I did comment with my two cents, but in an effort to stay on topic I thought I'd toss this little post up here.
To open with an academic cliche, I think that Dalrock and Sheila both have their points. On one hand, I love how Sheila has encouraged me to love my husband and put thought into our marriage. On the other hand, people like Dalrock are like a deluge of cold water in the barren wastelands of today's modern marriage - rather shocking but extremely necessary if we're to restore beauty and fertility to today's marriage culture. To that end I would love to see more collaboration from men like Dalrock when they encounter other public figures like Sheila (to anyone from the manosphere who may read this - collaboration doesn't necessarily mean whatever dreadful hell corporate America has turned it into as I'll explain shortly) instead of the wholesale denouncement of her person, marriage, and ministry that is so common. When I say collaboration I mean that men/marriage bloggers should indeed challenge her when they believe it's necessary, but they should do so in a manner that acknowledges they're challenging a woman writing in a different context from theirs to what is possibly is a different audience and with the expressed goals of helping Christians have more fulfilling sex lives. On other words, Sheila and Dalrock might be fighting on different fronts, but they're still on the same side.
So how do I think that would look? First let's consider what they are saying. Take Sheila's post on what it means to deprive a spouse of sex. Part of her context is that there are men who think they hold all the cards and can dictate universally the quantity and kind of sex they have, and there are women who go along with this and build up a reservoir of hurt and frustration. So she gave men and women what I felt like was a pretty decent take on what it means to sexually deprive someone and how women can take a little ownership of the sexual relationship. Naturally, this is problematic for manosphere bloggers because their context is almost universally inverted. In their experience women are the ones taking all the sexual prerogative and who assume the right to dictate the frequency and nature of all sexual contact, and these men's approach is largely aimed at helping men regain sexual initiative and fulfillment. So we have men talking about getting more sex and women talking about having less sex, and everyone gets highly freaked out and points fingers saying "There - that's the problem. See! S/he said that men/women need to start pushing for more/less sex!"
I think the most helpful approach someone like Dalrock could take in writing about someone like Sheila would be to re-contextualize her position in light of what most modern marriages face and point out where she could strengthen and/or further her argument. Here's a quick example of how that might go:
Sheila's argument about "do not deprive" can be valuable under certain circumstances. My concern is that those circumstances aren't widely reflected in the circumstances facing many married men. In fact, for these men the opposite is frequently and sometimes aggressively true, and the advice given here will likely only add more fuel to the fire of selfish entitlement that threatens to sweep away society's most basic foundations. That given, there are instances where this advice applies. However, I would frame the argument with the clear understanding that sex is a fundamental tenet of marriage and that no woman worth the title "wife" would ever consider her sexual preferences as more worth meeting than those of her husband.
This could be followed with an outline of the specific circumstances which might merit a wife pushing back sexually (illness, particular practices, etc) and continue into a discussion of responsive desire and describe how women who aren't "in the mood" can change their minds when they experience a display of desire from their husbands. I think this is important because what did bug me most about that article was the man who commented saying that he had essentially trained or convinced himself to wait for his wife to initiate. I really just wanted to shake him by the shirt collar because I know his wife, however unfair this may be, is probably insanely frustrated that "he never wants her." This is why being high drive can be hard on a woman. We were, by and large, made to respect and respond to a man's leadership. This mean that "leading" in the bedroom can be as frustrating as leading in other areas of marriage. This is also where blogs like MMSL (explicit warning) and Dalrock can be so crucial because, whereas your average Christian marriage blog emphasizes "service" (ie flowers and chores and the like), MMSL and Dalrock emphasize building leadership/husband skills that result in things like men having more sexually responsive wives. While I don't buy everything I read other there (hence in large part my desire to write more about marriage) I do believe they are a invaluable resource for understanding and dismantling the reigning gynocentric culture. Part of my work here is looking towards what will replace it.
Back to the main point however. Naturally much of this particular discussion is frivolous if you believe that "do not deprive" means "never say no." Short answer, Allen and I don't. It's just too tricky in practice. For instance, how sick is too sick? As a woman I could technically be nearly comatose and still "participate." This is where people would likely say to "use some common sense." My response would be that, in which case, I'll use my common sense to say that either party can, in the context of a generous and healthy marriage, small "r" refuse the other person with the understanding that the other person's tacit consent is solicited and that feeling the need for a hard, capital "R" refusal signals a deep rift in the marriage. Either way, I feel the discussion could be carried out in a more constructive manner than it currently is.
