As constructive as always, Killarney, I hope you do keep posting because I'll make sense of your arguments eventually – though I suspect humour will not be one of them.

Regards, "…they face a torrent of defensive derailment from the embedded OLO boys club."

Not really, given the title and that a major section of the article was about testicular language and that your own railing is not insignificant. Besides, the main point of the article seems to have evaded you since you used the epithet 'OLO boys club', let alone "… five people - probably all women - were smart enough to confine their opinion to clicking on 'Like'."

Contrast that with the same phrase if I add one word – "… five people - probably all women - were just smart enough to confine their opinion to clicking on 'Like'."

Why would mine be an insult and yours not?

Still on the positive side, the commonality is that we both have gonads – just not in the same location – and that nothing to do with them will ever meet.

Actually, on the evidence here, it would seem 'Killarney' has a point. There is only one response that even comes close to healthy debate about the subject at hand, while the rest appear to be following an agenda all their own. Giving further weight to Killarney's assertion that women might feel intimidated was the private contact I received from those who wanted to discuss the issue. Such a shame they felt silenced in the forum. I also note that objections to Killarney appeared rapidly, while the revolting misogyny of Hasbeen's comment remains unchecked. As the author, I am disappointed that respectful debate/discussion appears to have been stifled.

Alright Ilsa, by way of serious debate….

What is wrong with a bit of ‘colour’ working its way into our vernacular?

Nothing at all!

It really is drawing a very long bow to extend this sort of thing into the realm of significant sexual inequality.

Crikey, there are just so many words of sexual derivation in our language.

Of course there are. Sex is such a huge part of our lives. What would you expect?

And being a bit cheeky is a pretty fundamental human trait. So when that bright character who first said; “you’ve got balls”, with a meaning other than bearing testicles, lots of people found it humorous and so the saying and derivatives thereof were promulgated.

And so it goes.

All pretty innocent stuff really!

Lisa has written a very good article about this. I mentioned this once before myself in a debate we Were having on OLO opinion on another gender subject.

The fact that men feel obliged to denigrate being female in order to make themselves manly is unnecessary and they should find another way of defining maleness . What about saying, “come on show some guts and stop acting like wimps”, there is no reason what so ever to denigrate women and glorify men’s appendages when trying to make people act with more courage.

Actually a Vagina is much stronger than a man’s balls. A vagina has the strength to push a huge baby out into the world.

Hasbeen
you may be shocked to know that I agree with you about women on Navy ships with men and in the forces with men too. I don’t see why they can’t have the Women’s Army like they did in the old days. There are bound to be sexual problems the way it is now.

This article certainly proves one thing. Women are indeed the
champions, when it comes to knitpicking about trivia!

>>Certainly a much better use of one's time than coming on here.<<

Then why do you do it? The website is called On Line Opinion: opionated people come here to share their opinions. Most people anyway. From what I've seen you come here to tell us how many 'likes' feminist articles have received even though this information is already available to us: absolutely pointless. The closest you come to an expressing an opinion is uncritically agreeing with every word of the articles you comment on - but you never attempt any analysis or critique and just parroting the author's opinions doesn't advance the discussion because we already know what those opinions are.

Let's face it: coming on here to offer your opinions is stupid as well as a waste of time:

http://www.afunnystuff.com/forumpics/arguing.jpg

But I have to say that coming on to an opinion to site to not offer an opinion is an even stupider and bigger waste of time. Don't you have better things do with your time? If you feel strongly about gender issues but are scared of WmTrevor's gentle wit or Ludwig's plainly-spoken wisdom then why don't you do something useful about it and petition your local MP(s) to introduce a private member's (no pun intended) bill restricting the use of the word 'balls' to refer to spheroids used to play games and decreeing that the male dangly bits previously known as balls be known only as 'testicles' which has far too many syllables to be popular in the vernacular.

TBC