The ‘Untrue’ Woman

A week after devouring Untrue, Wednesday Martin’s eminently readable treatise on the lies society has been fed about female sexuality, agency, and infidelity, I saw an ad for Brooklinen sheets on the New York City subway. Three sets of socked feet were sticking out from beneath these sheets—two male, one female. “For throuples,” it began. I squealed. I was immediately reminded of the eighth chapter of Martin’s book, “Loving the Woman Who’s Untrue,” in which she interviews Carrie Jenkins, a professor of philosophy at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and the author of a book on the empirical basis for arithmetical knowledge. Lately, as Martin explains, Jenkins “is as likely to be called a whore, a slut, ‘a walking sexually transmitted infection,’ ‘everything that is wrong with women,’ ‘a selfish cunt’ ... as she is to be addressed with the honorific ‘professor.’ ”

Why? Because she dared to —matter-of-factly, philosophically—about