NYT’s David Brooks Dragged Over ‘Room of Love’ Column About Sexual Predators

“Honestly shocked the sun didn’t explode the moment David Brooks typed “Girl I want your body,” one Twitter use says

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New York Times columnist David Brooks was the subject of protracted ridicule on Twitter Friday after writing, among other things, lines like “Girl I want your body” and “sex is a gold nugget” in a Nov. 2 column about sexual predators.

In the piece inspired by numerous accusations of sexual harassment against powerful Hollywood men such as Harvey Weinstein, Brooks expressed a very interesting take on what makes a man a “predator”:

“I don’t think good men wake up one morning and suddenly start thrusting their tongue down the throats of women they barely know. You’ve got to walk through a certain number of doors before you’re capable of that kind of behavior.”

Brooks says these “doors” lead to “the room of love,” “the room of the prospector,” and “the predator’s room.” “Sex is special” in the room of love, Brooks says. As for the rest? Here’s what he says about “the room of the “prospector”:

In this room sex is a gold nugget, a pleasure, like any other pleasure, except maybe it’s better and the desire for it is stronger. If you’re straight, women are the people who can give you this pleasure. When you go to a college party or a club, you’re on the prowl for women who want to share this pleasure with you. Most pop songs are about this kind of conquest. Girl I want your body.

In this room, sex is almost like a market transaction. You can measure yourself by how successful you are, which depends on how hot you are or how smooth you are. You can rack up victories.

Brooks says the difference between the “predator’s room” and the “prospector’s room” is that in the former, people “see each other in a degraded way,” but in the latter, “the harasser doesn’t see his victim at all.”

So how did Twitter react to phrases like “room of love,” “sex is a gold nugget,” and “girl I want your body?” You get three guesses and the first two don’t count:

https://twitter.com/knguyen/status/926504384179163136

https://twitter.com/UFTLindaOcasio/status/926528826288558080

https://twitter.com/BenHowardOPT/status/926515394625536000

For context, Brooks divorced his wife of 28 years in 2013. Brooks later devoted most of the acknowledgements in his book “The Road to Character” to his former research assistant Anne Snyder. Calling her his “close partner” during all “three years of its writing,” he also credited her heavily for the book’s contents. After the book’s April, 2015 release, Brooks’ publicist told Politico that “he is not in a relationship with Anne Snyder.” Brooks married Snyder in 2017.

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