then yes that is exactly the point: the sexual availability of women generally is of value (and women damn well know it whatever they say) and the availability of men generally is not (unless they are gay and even then male availablity is usually worth less because there is more competition; gay men are, in general, much more productive suppliers of it than straight women are).

This is the gigantic elephant in the living room that so many feminists-that so many women even who are not feminists- want to ignore (it's interesting that gay liberation has resulted in the puncturing of this illusion which is so essential to aspirations of feminist supremacy). The truth is that biologically men are HORNIER and MORE WILLING TO HAVE SEX UNDER MORE DIFFERENT CIRCUMSTANCES than women. Women's point of view is no less hormonally based and no MORE "true", "right","evolved", etc. than men's. Until women are willing to understand this there can never be real equality or even good faith efforts to work towards it (whatever it is).

since very few men are "winners" and therefore very few men have any basis for real confidence they have to try and fake it and faking it convincingly takes time, and a lot of trial and error, to learn.

maybe you can talk to her. I would talk to her but after I was forced to say that she needs to lose the weight in order to avoid years of invalidism and that fighting the good fight against male shallowness just isn't worth it I doubt she would listen to anything I said.

"hedgie".

why does it have to be more complicated than that. Figuring out how to make everyone happy is indeed a challenge but the underlying "morality" is fairly simple.

but your overflowing vitality, misdirected as it is, is kind of turning me on.

EXACTLY mirrors real life (or it does so rarely) but that doesn't mean it is meaningless. For the record lifelike, your analysis of my motives is totally inaccurate.

Actually I DO get it. That is the REASON (along with the fact that they are the ones who get pregnant) why women have such biologically based different attitudes towards sex than men do. Figuring out what to do about it is the problem.

no matter which direction you are approaching it from

most men have?

but then I figured out that it was better to just be myself.

So all of the talk about sexual harassment, porn banning, and objectification was not feminism?

getting as near as possible to 60 is a real issue.

or he will be blamed for everything bad that happens there, and everywhere else in the middle east, from then on. If the Iraqis can be prevailed upon to insist on an earlier withdrawal, great. Otherwise lets not guarantee a Republican return to power at the earliest opportunity. Ok?

although I think they may have sincerely thought that Bush wouldn't invade without SOME sort of at least sem-plausible international legal justification for doing so.

There seem to be quite a few women who beg to differ on that.

oh right, if women weren't persecuted/harrassed/objectified, or brainwashed by food advertisments, or poisoned by corn sweetener they would all be a healthy weight.

but usually they avoid saying so directly.

Quite possibly, depending on what you mean by it and what you intend to do about it.

but not men buying it from women. Nobody automatically assumes that a 20 something gay man selling it is being trafficked or abused. Apparently men can make these decisions as adults but women can't.

how as both a matter of logic and as a matter of emotional reality can women ever be regarded as equal to men if men are capable of making these decisions for themselves and women are not.

but that men and women do not have all the same problems either, that men are not, in general, any more to blame for the problems they do have than women are to blame for the problems they have, that women have real power and that society is not organized as a conspiracy to benefit men generally or the interests of men over women. As far as what to do about it I don't have any answers beyond what everyone agrees are basic human rights. I agree with feminists on almost all policy issues. People should control their own bodies, have sex with (or not) with who they like, support their kids, be free from violence (except under legally specified circumstances), be paid the same for the same work, etc. The fact is though, that due to technological changes that have rendered physical strength obsolete, due to the fact that women are much pickier about sex and more willing to live without it, and more capable and inclined towards asexual but emotionally meaningful social bonds than men are means that in a society organized according to these principles most women will be far more comfortable and far more in control than most men. Since this is the case I wish they would stop complaining so much about, and trying to use the law to prevent, every single instance where men don't do EXACTLY what they want, EXACTLY when they want it and EXACTLY the way they want it.

I don't know if either of them really would want the job but I think she would likely be more comfortable in the role than he would.