Thanks squeers for the potential apology.

You're not bourgeois? How do you know enough about me to be so sure I am?

This is just a game of predictions, and you have no more basis for your pesimistic view of human nature, than my optimistic view of human goodness and laziness, and indifference. Sure you use bigger words, and I'm short on pop-culture references lately, but your prognosis is way too assertive. You see a bunch of wild lions, I see a few lions and a whole bunch of sheep.

' I don't resile from the second clause, that no morality means anything goes'

I do. People form bonds and morality only forms part of the code of behaviour. There is such a thing as commonality of purpose, desired company, asthetics, mood, and I maintain empathy is independant of morality. If the natural state was every man for himself we wouldn't have gotten this far in the first place.

By the legal definition of rape, many men have been raped. If a woman has sex with an intoxicated man, she has raped him, as he is incapable of consent.

' tired of being the villain'

You can say that again. I often ponder what it would be like being part of the virtuous gender. You know, born without original sin, unclouded by the weight of gender guilt and without responsibility for Donald Trump, and without having your innocent desire considered predatory. It must be a peaceful feeling when you are always the victim, nothing is your fault, and 'The Patriarchy' is to blame for everything. Having a better work life balance than men, more reproductive rights than men, yet claiming you're fighting for equality on those very issues. And in relationships, as expressed here, your needs inside the relationship are the definition of 'healthy' and any needs your partner has are an expression of illegitimate entitlement and misogyny. Well so the feminist story goes; In short, men should be more like women, the virtuous gender, yet contrarily we resent being god's police.

Houellebecq,

I understand your pining for feminine 'virtue'. Who wouldn't. But at what cost? I often think of the Orsen Welles quote from The Third Man where he compares Italy and Switzerland,

"under the Borgias, Italy had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but also Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. The Swiss, on the other hand, had brotherly love, 500 years of democracy and peace, and all they had produced was the cuckoo clock."

You can see where I am heading: Switzerland embodies the feminine virtues of co-operation and peace, while Italy embodies the masculine. So, of course, women may be virtuous but it's not hard being virtuous when you don't actually do anything.

One commenter at The Atlantic put it thus when responding to an article disparaging males and testosterone:

Testosterone is why we don’t live in caves. Next time you’re driving a machine that runs on explosions across a thousand tons of concrete arching gracefully through the sky, and you miraculously don’t die–that’s testosterone.

Women have been outperforming men at university in the US since 1981. in that time the technology revolution has transformed the world. Yet how many women, with all the odds in their favour, have managed to start a successful IT company? When we get the inevitable 'celebration' of the handful of female entrepreneurs, it's always in either: women's clothing, bras, underwear, cosmetics or baby goods.

All women like poirot and the nutty psyochoanalyst have left is venom. Venom and left wing patsies who want to ingratiate themselves with other like minded morons.

So I think the bit about 'tired of being the villain' is correct.

Houellebecq,

back to your witty best I see. But you still haven't substantiated any of your misreadings of moi.
I don't know you from Adam, I only said the word bourgeois was "the very definition", i.e. of "civilised/ethical"--though we're all petit bourgeois here! Actually I was amused and making fun of your need to profess it--so stereotypical!
As for my "pesimistic view of human nature"; as I've been saying, human nature is little more than incoherent desire, the rest is cultivated, ideology. If I'm right, then why should I expect the human animal to be any more diffident than a wild animal? I certainly make the concession that some animals are capable of altruism and empathy, but they're also capable of cruelty and indifference. You're the romantic. Percy Shelley believed human beings could live sublimely in a state of anarchy, and that it was only institutionalised life that twisted human nature. But then he believed we partook of the very being of God. Human history is replete with evidence of male viciousness. What did Gibbon say about Man's inhumanity to Man?
Your human virtues are nearly all ideological, but none the less worthy for that. We're ideological/idealistic beings.

I agree wholeheartedly with your riff on the virtuous gender--what do the ladies think?--and I can empathise with your resenting being the villain. I resent being labelled leftist by witless chauvinists and misogynists when I've tried to shine a light in the darkness. But what're you gonna do eh!

Pericles,
I wouldn't mind trying therapy. I'm told being psychoanalysed is the ultimate indulgence--do you think it's covered by medicare?

Great Dane,
I think you owe Poirot an apology, she tries to be fare-minded and often takes the man's side in these sorts of debates.

What happened to the right to free expression?

"I don't agree with you, but I will fight for your right to say it"?

Now it is "I don't agree with you and I refuse to let you speak".

God Save us from the Blue rinse brigade.

I assume Petra is okay with gay male porn, no women there ?

That aside, I am going to have a hard time stopping my girlfriend watching porn, she loves it (as do I) and I think we're the better for it.

Valley guy,
Oh yeah, if the author wants to be really outraged over pornography Gay porn is the way to go, you want degrading treatment, people hurting each other,depictions of abusive power relationships and violence it's got it all...and that's the tamer "mainstream" stuff.
Years ago my wife and I house sat for a Gay friend and his also Gay flatmate and in the course of the stay went through their pornographic video collection, "just for a look", pretty nasty stuff on the whole and unlike the hetero stuff we've watched together on occassion it didn't look much like acting to me, it all looked pretty real.