Uhmmm, I seek to please; thanks.

But “strong, brave, compassionate men”, have been getting in the way of true equality … we’ll be just fine without them – trust me. We need the compassionate meek to step forward and reassert themselves, before they consider one of your pro bono lectures as their last means of salvation.

What a mess!

If I may make a second shot at contributing - does anybody think that what we are getting today is essentially a "free market" anything-goes, sell-what-you-can model of ethical, moral and sexual behaviour?

Would things be different at all if we didn't have a 'trust the market' view in other aspects of life? Or is this more a problem of 'you want it, you deserve it, you can have it' advertising?

Complacency certainly is the order of the day.

Its the backbone of political correctness.

It makes a great substitute for doing... all this doomy, gloomy talking.

With its incessant infusion of vitriole, insults and angst ridden malaise. Thats the entertaining part. At least there's some levity amongst that end of it.

Thank you internet, for facilitating this yelling into the void.

Anyway, in the spirit of modernist complacency...

... why bother.

Above all, lets keep up this nice little facade that humans arent part of the animal world, we're 'above' that, we are civilised, that we can forget the limitations of our physical selves and can somehow live in some idealised image of our imaginations.

Keep them feet firmly planted in the mud.

It has been shown that girls are socially more advanced than boys of a similar age. Not only are girls more socially advanced than boys but they also enter puberty at an earlier age than boys.

"In the 1860s the age of consent was twelve years old. Some people such as Josephine Butler and Barbara Bodichon were concerned that young girls were being sold to brothels. They became involved in the campaign against the white slave trade and in 1875 the House of Commons agreed to raise the age of consent to thirteen."

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/REage.htm

"The age-of-consent campaign relied upon a narrative of seduction in which an older, middle- or upper-class man seduced a young, working-class girl for its appeal to women activists, who viewed low legal ages of consent as evidence of male privilege and female victimization. According to historian Mary Odem, this narrative was not based on reality. Rather, although working-class girls were beginning to form intimate and sometimes sexual relationships with men, their boyfriends were usually young, unmarried, working-class youth, not older men or their employers.[8]"

http://womhist.binghamton.edu/aoc/doc4.htm

I think it was St Augustine who started the "book of sins" and top of the list was to do with sexual behaviour and then we had the famous 'Elizabethen era' of sexual repression.

I am not sure whether societies struggle with human sexuality could be descibed as Bi-polar or Schiziod?

Romany.... if ever there was a perfect description of 'humanity alienated from its Creator' your posts are it. (the events you describe)

The 'pious' woman at the supermarket who's daughter you referred to, is clearly living out of touch, but I would hesitate before using that example to tar all 'Christians' with the same brush.

Your posts tend to strip away all the 'niceness' which we want to believe we are a part of, and you provide a pedal to the metal expose` of a reality that many have not and will never see.

It reminds me of the Vietnam Vet situation. You return to Australia, and people just don't have a clue about what you went through, but it can be just hours away by plane, or minutes away by bus.

Humanity without God, apart from Christ.. is as Paul described.

[As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world...
3All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath.]

Sounds like those people you met on your long journey to freedom.
Paul includes himself in that passage "we".. then he proposes a solution.

[But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions]

You described the Ways of this world to a T... everyone for himself, using others, taking advantage.. Frank would have us believe that he is not like this, but his view fails to recognize that "situations don't change people, they just show them as they really are" and placed in the same unenviable dire straits, Frank might meet another version of himself which he did neither expected nor likes.

The violence against women will not be fixed by legislation, protest, yelling, screaming, marches, tantrums or education. It will be fixed by changed hearts and renewed minds...in Christ.

Wow, Mercy, cheer up a bit! I can assure you there are plenty of men out there who don't hate women, or other races, religions or any category of person. It sounds like you have had a hard time... If so I'm truly sorry about that.

But it is also true that there are a lot of macho men and boys out there, who really do see sex as conquest, the world as a competition and women as somehow inferior. I for one am dismayed so much of this sterile and ultimately dysfunctional way of thinking survives and has been transmitted to Gen Y. Boys' computer games seem to be bastions of it, but are they result or cause?

The original article bemoans the loss of hope since the sixties 'revolution'. So do I but not only regarding gender issues. It's right across the board, with a 'War on everything' not even questioned in the mass media. I live in hope that the pendulum is swinging.

Re young girls having sex -- It's bad if this is happening in a macho context but most of them still seem to grow up and fall in love. Drugs and alcohol would be part and parcel of this trend which is why I support controlled availability as a means of restricting access to drugs by young teenagers who are the most at-risk group.

And Romany -- you rock!