@Gwool:

"When it comes to hooking up, I can honestly say I am happy my multiple partner days were in the pre-aids environment. I may miss the variation, but I do not long for the added risk that comes with it today."

I think you are probably lying to yourself about the level of danger you were in. You probably had a lot of the same risks as modern-day sex, you just weren't aware of them because the medical establishment wasn't on the ball at the time.

@John Anderson:

"there's a point here but it reads like a brag"

Not from where I'm sitting. I think you are making an assumption that women who do it a lot are trying to send some message. In reality, what Ms. Clark-Flory is saying is that she did not particularly feel like waiting for Mr. Right. In reality, this is a personal issue that she is making public. You obviously can make whatever you like out of her statements, but you are missing the point entirely.

@Potomacker:

". . .MacKinnon/Dworkin school of thought which would rather keep women afraid of sex and men buyers of it better suits their cultural agenda."

I am a huge fan of Dworkin and I'm not afraid of sex. I think you are misreading the text.

@PaulBC:

"Well, at least the boyfriend doesn't have a freezer full of dismembered ducks, but I really feel I'm learning far more than I wanted to know about certain Salon writers."

There is a simple solution to this problem. Don't read the article. It was clear very early on--In the title, no less--that the writer would talk about sex and that "in defense of casual sex" just might include empirical evidence. Nobody is forcing you to read. Just like I have never wandered over to the pages of Maxim to give my opinion.

______

To the resentful older men: You don't get it and you never will. Your entire lives have been about the binary: Male/Female, Virgin/Whore, Freedom/Repression, etc. I'm slightly older than Ms. Clark, so I think I have a memory of those old attitudes. Maybe it's impossible to really shed the hardwiring that you grew up with, but I am telling you that these young women are not putting on an act. It's not an illusion. Sex for the younger generation is actually about choice and not about playing against or up to an image of naughtiness. It's not about you or your old school social values. They're not thinking about you at all. They're just trying to build a life and you should let them.

All of this leads me to meditate on the many tv shows that obsess over the benevolent prowess of our police state: CIA, FBI, Homicide Unit, beat cops, secret agent men, mathematicians, statisticians and, of course, the forensics unit. All of these shows telegraph a singular message. We are in charge and we will find and prosecute the guilty party, even if we have to discover the truth from a single, solitary strand of hair left on a candy wrapper in an abandoned parking lot. We are just that good! But not to worry. We don't beat suspects unless they are actually guilty. And we don't force false confessions unless they have it coming.

Americans have a hard-on for "benevolent" authority. You read stories like that of Bruce Ivins and you realize just how far from reality these tv shows are. Meanwhile a crime lab in Houston, Texas, is found to be so overwhelmingly corrupt that it has to be shut down, all the evidence has to be tossed and court cases going back over a decade have to be reassessed. So much for benevolence.

We should ask ourselves just what it is that we are doing in this country. Our penal system is a full-blown industry! From the law enforcement officers, to the defense attorneys and attending bureaucracy, to the massive prison industrial complex. All this time we could have been funding education and instead we're getting tough on crime in a way that has done nothing to stop it. The drug war has ruined lives and destroyed families.

The reason why nobody blinks an eye at the case of Ivins is because they have been taught through ritualistic story telling that the FBI and their law enforcement brethren always do things for a good reason. The FBI wouldn't have pursued him if they didn't have actual evidence of guilt. All you have to do is imagine some street-hardened, wise cracking FBI agent with a strong gut feeling to calm your doubts.