Stormbay, I see nothing wrong with assertiveness - it beats the hell out of submissiveness in my view, but I do take your point about people being unwilling to subsume any part of their own wishes, prerogatives, desires in order to satisfy those of other people in their lives. That's not a city or country problem, it's an artifact of the separated lives we lead. In the country, people have always lived in isolation - even married couples may not see each other much from day to day, but in the city it is a relatively new phenomenon, since historically most people have lived in single-income families with one partner at least having lots of time for socialising and remaining connected with friends, family, neighbours and other groups.

Together with that has gone 40 years of advertising and concentrated media telling women that their wishes and hopes are the most important thing there is ("Girls can do anything") while men have been told for the same period that we're "mere Males", "molestors", "violent" and so on. It's hardly surprising that some people, men and women, will have taken away the message that men are simply not as important as women and that whatever a woman does to "assert herself" is A-OK.

We even have a Federal Sex Discrimination Commissioner who is unable to hear claims of discrimination againt men except if they have been sacked for asking to work part-time; every State has a Office of Women or similar and usually each department has a section devoted to ensuring women are not discriminated against, while men must look after themselves.

All in all, the last 40 years has been about turning women into the sort of spoilt children that would have drawn a swift clip acros the ear when I was a child. Who could be surprised that they've become just that?

"All in all, the last 40 years has been about turning women into the sort of spoilt children that would have drawn a swift clip acros the ear when I was a child.
Posted by Antiseptic, Wednesday, 27 May 2009 6:27:26 AM"

With THIS kind of child a baseball bat would have been kind.