Yeap, you got it. Beating the crap out of each other, and having a drink later as we hold ice packs to our heads is called male bonding.

Women should try it sometimes (they do the fight part, but very rarely the drinks and ice packs later). I always wondered what "Fight Club" would have been like if the gender roles had been reversed. The first 2 rules would still be the same, but the third rule would be "no high heals (and the last rule would be, be careful while you are PMSing)."

I can remember all the many times that I stood on the pier in foreign ports, throwing punches at each other with my male coworkers, while we waited for the liberty boat. Our female coworkers looked at us with complete shock, they just didn't get it. If we remained lumps of clay and block woods that no one ever touched, we would never amount to anything. AKA Smith, thanks for getting it.

PS I don't think leftychris is all that (politically) right (but he hasn't really established what his position is).

This all reminds me very much of the foray I often see on feminist blogs (yeah I'm looking at you Feministing), in which women amazingly attack each other with reckless abandon.

Actually it's quite common to see oppress masses fight among each other, instead of rallying together to over throw their oppressors. Women in a lot of cases compound their own problems, and, unlike men, they see each other as competition in very destructive ways. Men also compete against each other, but usually the competition is meant to build each other up. But women on the other hand want to destroy each other completely, which wouldn't be so bad if they worked for different companies, but they will also destroy their fellow coworkers.

Things aren't going to change much until women decide that they are going to lead together. The sunset of male rule is rapidly approaching, as society becomes more sophisticated and feminine charms become more economically and socially viable, so I have faith that women will eventually form a strong sense of unity. But it would be better if they found that unity now, rather than later. If you have children, work with your sisters that don't have children, and if you don't have children recognize that women are not your oppressors, men are (including me, but at least I admit it).

Leftychris, correct me if I'm wrong but the meat of your argument is that straight men form sexual feelings for women, and gay men form sexual feelings for men?

I believe I said the same thing you said, but with far fewer words.

Then you went a little bit further to justify viewing breastfeeding mothers as sexual objects.

I'm straight, I love sex with women, but I don't see breastfeeding women as sexual objects. But I do recognize that a lot of men do, but do you realize that these men are, in addition to sexualizing breastfeeding mothers, forming a fetish of them? A fetish (the first part of my name) isn't a bad thing, as long as you realize that a woman is still a woman, and that a breast is still an organ designed (by either god(dess) or nature) to feed offspring (and not necessarily your own, as the custom is in a lot of nations outside of the United States). If you have a breastfeeding mother fetish, that's OK, but be mindful of the fact that you can be polite and respectful towards something that turns you on. A woman's hands turn me on, but I am not going to insist that all women go around all the time wearing gloves, because that would be impractical (and personally I would rather they not wear gloves).

"How, specifically, are YOU oppressing women?"

This is one of the few questions you have asked that I wanted to answer (actually I was hoping a woman would ask it)

I oppress women in subtle ways; like when I sub-consciously give disapproving looks to women that have not put on enough skin damaging makeup at work. Or when I discover that I am sub-consciously lowering my opinion of a woman, because I know who she is sleeping with and all the lascivious details of her love life, because her lover didn't keep his mouth shut. Or when I demand that my wife get some sort of unpleasant BC method, because I no longer want to use condoms anymore, after I lied about how I didn't want to get a vasectomy because I might want to have children again in the future (the real reason is that I am not letting anyone with a sharp object near that part of my body. SHIT, she heard that).

All subtle, but all oppressive.