I have to admit, I like your questions and brand of skepticism the best. Keep me on my toes, hon. I am totally integrated.

I am SO happy I live in a time when I can sit around with a bunch of strangers and talk about this stuff. Really! I wasn't even on the internet five years ago and at some point it occurred to me that I wouldn't have even been able to imagine this open conversation without being very very self-conscious. Aren't we lucky! And it also occurred to me that, although it's not something I think about very often, I do occasionally wonder if I'm going to be too dirty, or too clean, for a particular situation, and have wondered what other people's standards are. It's hard to ask your date, and of course it is very individual. But anyway...I'm just feeling happy about it.

Good luck with your date, man. It looks like at last you have picked a winner. They say that once you go black, you don't go back, and I am sure there is a similar saying for Latinas, though I cannot think of it. Just be nice to her and tell her she is pretty, and I am sure it will go just swimmingly.

A couple of things. First, Brightstar: I fear you are indeed going to have to go the "foreign bride" route if you are unable to let go of your OWN bitterness. I hope she gets her greencard fast and doesn't dump you soon after.

Second, my own experience with Eharmony was absolutely ridiculous. I hated that site and found equally bizarre things all over the place. It was really the very worst of all the dating sites. All those questions took forever and did absolutely NOTHING to match me up with people I really might like. I'm into gardening, and cooking, and art, and the outdoors, and I really dislike men who work in Corporate America, but since I checked that I MUST HAVE men who are passionate about their life's work, they matched me up with stockbrokers left and right. I hate organized sports, but since I checked that I "dislike men who aren't team players" I got all these Bronco fans sending me sweet intro notes asking me to go to games. I'm nto sure these are real examples (this was a long while ago), but it was along these lines. Sweet Jesus, it was terrible.

That said, you know, I'm totally a dirty girl -- I live in the country, I've got animals and mud everywhere, and as for my men, I like 'em stinky , too. I LIKE the smell of a real body. TO heck with the other 60 percent of them.

I almost spit out my tea! "and when you took your dress off it turned out that your panties were full of leaves and twigs?" That is one of the most hilarious images ever!

Most racists are ignorant, and ignorance can be corrected. My folks were racist. As a white person I thought of their racism as benign and innocent - they 'thought' they knew certain things about black people. They 'thought' they knew these things from watching the news and reading the paper. Their stereotypes were based on fact...it never occurred to them that someone was slanting the facts in favor of whites and disfavor of blacks. Now, were I black, I doubtless would not think of their racism as benign and innocent, I'd think of it as ignorant and bigoted.

But guess what. A black family moved next door. The guy mows his lawn - my dad's primary marker of character, bless him. My mom got a job at city hall and ended up training someone for the job she used to have - a young black woman. Mom became quite fond of her, got all into her personal life, was admiring of her being a single mom holding down a job and going to school..and guess what. Mom's boss suggested the trainee did everything kinda slow and lazy..you know, like 'they do' (her words, not mine). Mom became enraged and was quite stressed out about what she could 'do' about this racism.

So my parents weren't racist, they were ignorant and THOUGHT they were racist. Now they're not.

Thinking of this, I'm inclined to believe that persistent personal slovenliness can can be as much a fundemntal marker of character as racism. Certainly I'd rather hang around my folks then people with poor bathing habits, even pre-lawn mowing man and trainee gal. Because I'd presume that my otherwise reasonable, nice, loving folks could be talked out of their racism...but people who live like pigs? I don't see them being talked out of it at all.

So I'd pick 'not clean' as a can't stand before I"d pick racism too - but that doesn't mean I'm more tolerant of racists than slatterns. It has more to do with what I want to spend my time attempting to convince people of - it's pretty easy to show someone how fucked up racism is. It's hard to show a slattern that taking care of their house and self is a better path. If they believed that, they wouldn't be living under filthy conditions.

Subtext of the letter:

I am a woman so I know how things should be and I expect the things be the way I want (especially, when it comes to men). So I "have a visceral reaction" when guys want things I don't want and they shouldn't want because I don't think so.

This is a very spread subtext nowadays because decades of feminism indoctrination have brainwashed many American women into thinking that they are superior moral beings, that men are inferior and should be, feel and do exactly what women want them to be, feel and do.

Examples of this subtext:

• The letter. "I love smell. So I have a visceral reaction when someone says that want women who are clean" (So what? You can't stand someone who has a different opinion than yours?). By the way, I don't love anyone (male or female) who stinks either.
• Feminism. Men must be more femenine (see, this is a very strange statement. It is like saying that dogs must be more like cats). But when it comes to dates, men must pay the check and have outdated chivalry. And, when married, they can't stay in the house raising kids, while the wife is the breadwinner.
• Love. Men shouldn't love casual sex. Men should love commitment (that is, marry a woman who can divorce them leaving them without half of their assets and without their children). Men should love old career women instead of hot young secretaries.

I could go on and on and on. This is so common. Not a day pass without a woman telling me how I should be, feel or do (not that I have asked any advice). I think it is the same for most men.

If you can't stand someone who loves clean women, please don't try to date him. Try to date someone who don't love clean women. And learn that other people can't have different opinions than yours. This is called "tolerance". It is that easy.