Little girls' clothes can be tacky, trashy, in poor taste, but not sexy. I just reject the idea that any of us have to worry about our six year old daughters looking sexy, because that's the wrong way to think about little girls' clothes. There is a muslim family in my town that dresses their pre-school daughters in veils- this is the extreme of the attitude that girls can be "sexualized" by clothing alone. False! They be be frou-froued, if I may coin a term, but only a sicko would call it sexy, or blame pedophilia on little girl fashion.

I also find something faintly misogynist about the notion that little girls are somehow contaminated by womanhood if they are allowed to imitate much older women when they play dress up.

Here's the serious, feminist angle: why do all religions, crackpot and otherwise, have stupid, arbitrary rules that make life very, very hard for women? Such as giving birth in silence. Just wondering.

...ooze gravitas. And not the bullshit, fatherly old-school network anchor gravitas, either.

...and some of you armchair evo-psychologist haven't realized it yet. The myth of the shotgun wedding hides the reality of unwed fathers of yore: they used to just be able to walk away- or else magnanimously do the right thing. Now we have the DNA test- the nemesis of rapists and single fathers everywhere.

I also want to share a story from my college days: my boyfriend's frat had a date rapist, but he raped men. One frat member bravely came forward senior year and pressed charges, and five more followed. His MO was to sodomize his barely conscious "brothers". Surely hetero rapists are more common, but just as surely predators like that man are more common than we know. I have long thought that people should worry less about womanhood and more about manhood- everyone's looking at these problems backwards!

So I will teach my daughter. There is definitely something very creepy about a man who begrudges women their struggle for equality.

Robert: Maybe when Broadsheet finishes posting on things like children's text books that unfavorably compare wives to donkeys, there will be time left over to bemoan the portrayal of men as stupid in commercials. Although, even when men are portrayed as stupid on TV, I daresay it usually works in their favor- it's usually all about giving men a pass to behave poorly, as seen on all of those sitcopms with homely men married to beautiful wives.

I've always liked Glamour, with it's frankly feminist overtones and beauty advice tempered by good sense. I'm not surprised at all that there is good journalism there. Glamour is for feminists who care about grooming themselves and aren't ashamed to admit it. I view it as a future resource for my young daughter- she'll get good information about sexuality and health from it.

I had no idea that feminists hijacked enviromentalism.

"how it is that women (at least in most cases), can feel invaded, abused, etc, by flashing in situations where rape is not a practical possibility. I understand intellectually how such a response evolved, but there is no corresponding emotional response in men."

To paraphrase Ayn Rand, your premise is bullshit. If you don't have the imagination to conceive how creepy and scary a flashing can be for women without it not being some genetic overreaction, then it's not surprising that you don't have the imagination to conceive of the same thing happening to a man.

Maybe this will help you understand: do you know what bullying is? Flashing is bullying. It's an offense that the victim can do nothing about, except feel frightened, or foolish, or insulted. Would a man feel bullied by being flashed by a woman? Perhaps not- there has to be a sort of imbalance of strength or power for there to be bullying. But a man alone, perhaps a very young or old man or a boy, being flashed by another man or men? Feeling angry and insulted and frustrated because there's nothing he can safely do? Besides use his camera phone, of course. If he's in a public enough place where he won't get a pounding.

...when we see ABC interviewing concerned college men who are concerned because their 3 friends have had sex with 9 hot women between them.

IS feminist. DUH! It's about how parents stifle their daughters for their own saftey! Comeon, I got that at 15!

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that if any young women are flirting with you, they're being kindly. And as long as I am making wild generalizations, I'll say that eldery men are very non-threatening to young women, in the same way gay men are, and what you perceive as some sort of homage to your sexy status as a septugenarian is probably just a harmless way to indulge an old person's ego and make him happy. I wouldn't read anything into it. I work with a lot of 60ish men and the idea that any of them may think my joking and attentiveness is anything more than affectionate respect of a grandfatherly person makes me laugh.

Anyway, why does status have to be at play here? 18-22 year old male athletes are usually quite attractive. I mean, no one ever got rich playing lacrosse. I secretly envy a woman that young who knows a good sexual opportunity when she sees it. By the time most of us realize that we missed out on being "slutty" in college, it's too late and we're already old married ladies.