...on his homepage. John Derbyshire's salad days are waaaaayyyy over and he should be grateful to gaze upon Jennifer Anniston in his dreams.

I've seen that GQ, and Jen looks good. Not that one sees the actual, um, article(s), but still.

Regarding Derbyshire's observation (?) that we look best between the ages of 15 and 20 -- well, duh. And I'm sure he keeps his eyes primly averted when 27 year olds walk by.

I have yet to see a snarky column or article written by a woman about the declining quality of a man's erection as he ages. Yet, the Internet and media are filled with examples of this sort of misogyny.

Still, there are those who constantly ask why it is necessary for a column like Broadsheet to exist. While others read every letter searching for any hint of feminist thought or leanings - basically branding any criticism of a male, no matter how horrible his words are, as an example of why feminism doesn't work.

While I'm not a big fan of the color pink and I frequently have to take a break from reading Broadsheet, I'm still glad this column exists and if it makes some people uncomfortable, well, that's too bad.

The writer seems to be saying he enjoys looking at the breasts of 15, 16, and 17 year old girls. Photos of such would be, in this country, highly illegal. I hope his local police are taking note.

This guy obviously should seek medical advice for paedophilic impulses. Instead he writes a column in an influential magazine. He just makes me want to puke. I didn�t read in a long time something so offensive. By the way he looks, he should be happy if he beds a 70-year-old woman. I have news of you: ugly, misogynistic, stupid men don�t have an expiration date. Because they never had a valid date either. 30 plus gorgeous women have no interest in them even in their salad years.

You know what bothers me most about Derbyshire's puerile blathering -- even more than the sexism? It's the assumption that his opinion is a fact, that everyone really secretly agrees with him, but some are just anable to accept reality. What a jerk.

Happy to tell you women, this guy does NOT represent MOST MEN.

Many, many guys are delighted with women who are well into their forties and even fifties and sixties as long as the women keep themselves up, have some brains, are not psycho, have a good heart and a positive attitude (most important), and do not have too much baggage.

Sure, a twenty year old may have a perfect body, but the most horrible woman I have ever met was 24ish, looked better than Julia Roberts but had a horrid, horrid personality- I came to calling her Cruella De Ville. Maybe there is some schmo wanting to put up with that, but I can bet it is but a very few men who are so desperate or shallow.

True, guys ARE visual, more so than women, so physical appeal is a strong consideration. But this clown who wrote the article is way off base.

I like Broadsheet, it brings together the most toxic strains of extreme man hating feminism in one easy to read section.

and I disagree with another poster, I do not see this guy's attitudes throughout the media, as she asserts. If so, I wish she would point out where in the media this is prominent.

I like the phrase, "A guy is as old as the woman he feels." LOL

Derbyshire is quite a funny old coot. He would pretty much be your weird old uncle (he has a strange bee in his bonnet about homosexuals as well, but is admirably curmudeonly about intelligent design.) Essentially, his friends at the National Review really really shouldn't let him near the internet, but I think he sneaks on early in the morning when everyone else is asleep and posts his sort of semi-trolly stuff.

Bristol Man -

You ask where in the media this man's opinions can be seen? I can think of a few:

- countless films in which very young actresses are paired with much older leading men (see the recent Shop Girl for one of more odious examples of this.)

- news programs that have male and female anchors: the males are usually in their 30s, usually older, the women appear to be in their mid-twenties at most. (They may get to look 30ish on national news programs if they're pretty and unwrinkled.)

- television commercials in which unattractive men are, inexplicably, shown being lavished with attention by very young, beautiful women.

Now it's true that, no doubt due to federal laws, the females mentioned above are all above 18, but do you really think that if the people who produce this media could use teenaged girls they wouldn't? No, I think the media is rife with the message that men are acceptable to watch at any age and with any kind of looks (from ugly to the "ideal" of masculine beauty - which we actually see very little of.) Women are acceptable to look at as long as they are young and close to traditional western norms of beauty. If you're a woman and you happen to be older or average looking (or even trollish as are many of the men you seen in films or on television) you're just out of luck. And yes, I do see it being the younger the woman the better.

I don't understand how you can say Broadsheet is an example of man-hating feminism. The column simply points out places where this warped sense of the value of women exists. Why is it that any man can say anything he wants about women and get away with it, but when a woman protests, she's branded as a "femi-nazi" or worse?

he's absolutley right. the day i turned 21, men who would have previously leered at me not only averted their eyes, but actually started wretching and dry heaving with just a single glance at me.

now, at 27, i pretty much just hide in a dank basement to spare the world the displeasure of seeing me. even my size 1 figure is enough to counteract the ravages of time. i have thrown away all my mirrors to spare myself the pain of having to look at my weather beaten face.