Ferrett Steinmetz, Father, Writes Open Letter To Daughter: 'I Hope You Have Awesome Sex'

An open letter in which a father told his daughter that he “hopes she has f---ing awesome sex” has gone viral.

In the letter, writer and blogger Ferrett Steinmetz rejected society’s aversion to sexual experimentation and urged his daughter to “go out and play.” The post was originally published by The Good Men Project, and has since been republished by the Huffington Post.

Steinmetz decided to write the open letter after reading a FetLife article titled “10 Rules For Dating My Daughter,” a post containing a list of threats aimed at the author’s daughter's potential suitors. In his response, entitled “Dear Daughter: I Hope You Have Some F---ing Awesome Sex,” Steinmetz dismissed the “10 Rules” as “twaddle,” and told his daughter to form her own conclusions regarding sexuality.

“Look, I love sex. It’s fun. And because I love my daughter, I want her to have all of the same delights in life that I do, and hopefully more,” Steinmetz wrote. “I don’t want to hear about the fine details because, heck, I don’t want those visuals any more than my daughter wants mine. But in the abstract, darling, go out and play.”

“Because consensual sex isn’t something that men take from you; it’s something you give. It doesn’t lessen you to give someone else pleasure. It doesn’t degrade you to have some of your own. And anyone who implies otherwise is a man who probably thinks very poorly of women underneath the surface.”

Steinmetz acknowledged in the letter that sexual experimentation may leave his daughter open to heartbreak. However, he wrote that it would “tear [him] in two even more” if he imposed rules that kept her “in a glass cage.”

“You’re not me. Nor are you an extension of my will. And so you need to make your own damn mistakes, to learn how to pick yourself up when you fall,” Steinmetz wrote. “Now, you’re going to get bruised by life and sometimes bruised consensually. But I won’t tell you sex is bad, or that you’re bad for wanting it.”

A writer and blogger, Steinmetz frequently publishes his work to The Ferrett, his personal website. In addition, he maintains an active presence on Twitter, and had more than 3,000 followers at press time. Steinmetz’s open letter to his daughter can be read in its entirety at The Ferrett.