Who is author Gabrielle Blair, and what does this Mormon mom want men to do before having sex?
Gabrielle Blair has a message for men. And the women who love them. It's all right there in the title of her new book, "Ejaculate Responsibly: A Whole New Way to Think About Abortion" (Workman Publishing), out October 18.
To cut to the chase: They're called condoms, they're easy to buy and not expensive. Men, Blair is saying, it's time to man up.
If you are guessing Blair is a leading feminist thinker who perhaps is a professor at a small liberal arts college, you'd be impossibly wrong. She is a mom of six and member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who has a flair for interior decor and lives in a small town in western France.
So why are we talking about her? For the long answer, you can read our interview with Blair from May of this year. We caught up with her as she was finishing a book that grew out of a long (OK, very long) Twitter thread that went viral in 2018 and found new purchase after leaked documents that suggested – correctly – the Supreme Court would overturn abortion rights enshrined by Roe v. Wade.
But for the quicker skinny:
Before taking on sex and responsibility, Gabrielle Blair talked decor
Blair, 47, grew up in St. George, Utah, and had a keen eye for design that she shared in a blog that gradually grew in popularity. Her specialty: practical yet fun decor that was compatible with a rambunctious household of six kids.
In 2015, Blair's blog success led into a book that became a bestseller, "Design Mom: How to Live with Kids: A Room-by-Room Guide."
An impromptu 2018 Twitter post launched Blair into the mainstream
In the summer of 2018, Blair was growing frustrated by online discussions – most of them led by men – about women and their bodies that seemed to place the responsibility and blame for unwanted pregnancies on the female partner. She started to vent in a Twitter thread that grew to 63 posts but sat on it for a few months.
The essence of her controlled fury comes down to her belief that unwanted pregnancies are utterly controllable when men take advantage of a precaution that is not under legal threat in any state of the union.
Finally, during the contentious hearings to confirm Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, hearings that included allegations of sexual assault, Blair decided she had had enough and hit "Send."
Blair's comments were blunt and direct and urged men to be more responsible
Typical of Blair's tweets was this no-nonsense introduction: "I’m a mother of six, and a Mormon. I have a good understanding of arguments surrounding abortion, religious and otherwise. I've been listening to men grandstand about women's reproductive rights, and I'm convinced men actually have zero interest in stopping abortion."
Another tweet laid bare her stance that men, thanks to easily available and inexpensive condoms, need to step up play a much larger role in ensuring that abortion is not the de facto option for a woman.
“A woman can be the sluttiest slut in the entire world who loves having orgasms all day long and all night long and she will never find herself with an unwanted pregnancy unless a man shows up and ejaculates irresponsibly," she wrote.
Interview: Mormon mom of six writes viral Twitter thread focusing on male responsibility in pregnancy
The internet heard Blair's roar, big-time, with polarized responses
Blair thought her passionate rant on behalf of women would not be heard. After all, her expertise was in design. But both the content and delivery resonated; as of last spring the thread had garnered 37 million impressions on Twitter, and that’s not counting those who find the treatise on Facebook, Instagram, Medium, or her Design Mom blog. The thread also has been translated into many languages, including Japanese.
As anticipated, responses continue to run the gamut from supportive (@annavrmac wrote: "Women have taken all the risk and burden for long enough. Time for men to take responsibility") to critical ("You are talking about irresponsible men & have disregard for the other part of the bargain," wrote @TJNugent520).
That twitter thread and the response it generated led to her new book, which her publisher describes as a series of 28 brief arguments that "make the case for moving the abortion debate away from controlling and legislating female bodies and on to men’s lack of accountability in preventing unwanted pregnancies."
Her most controversial tack involves vasectomies – for boys
Borrowing from legendary 18th-century writer Jonathan Swift, who once wrote that a solution for famine could be selling children for food, Blair is eager to push buttons with her suggestion that perhaps giving reversible vasectomies to boys could be a way for men to appreciate the responsibility inherent in the act of sexual intercourse.
“That’s obviously not a real thing, but it’s more my way of pointing out how unwilling we all are to ask sacrifices of men when we’ll do so readily of women,” Blair told USA TODAY, adding that with advancements in vasectomy techniques, “it one day might be possible for a man to have one that is easily and effectively reversed.”
Blair has a deep passion for the U.S., but work and concern keep her in France
Blair and her children live in a small town in the Normandy region of France, in large part because that move was made possible because of the tech-related job of her husband, Ben, 49. The couple have also lived in New York, Colorado and, most recently, the San Francisco Bay Area.
Though Blair expected to return one day, she is worried about the political leanings on display in America, particularly when it comes to women's rights. Even before it was confirmed that the Supreme Court would overturn Roe v. Wade, the opinion that made abortion legal nationwide in 1973 – a move that has led some conservative politicians to push for a federal ban on abortion in all 50 states – Blair expressed concern.
“America feels very unstable right now,” she says, her voice softening. “I don’t want America, the country that I love, to be unstable.”
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Mormon mom and blogger Gabrielle Blair on men's role in pregnancy
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