Pynchme

“I have never had the experience of trying to tie some bloke down to anything.” You are lying. I don’t claim to know you personally, but can still be certain that you have exerted some sort of pressure on some bloke to stay with some woman. This can be anything from criticising some bloke for sleeping around to telling some bloke how much you love him. This may not have been deliberate, but that was the effect.

I’m starting to think that you are possibly the oldster and a little behind the times. I have never heard anyone say "he's just sowing his wild oats" except for you. There is and always was pressure on blokes not to sleep around. How else can anyone explain the amount of ridicule directed at Tiger Woods and Shane Warne? If you must know my age, it is 35, so when I was developing an interest in girls, the only way that I was “socialized (pressured) to behave” was to be a snag. We were told to be caring, sharing and into long term relationships

Suze

While I agree that a certain amount of self-confidence is necessary in life, experience tells me that over-confidence is much more prevalent than under-confidence, particularly amongst the young. While there is no shortage of cocky young blokes, we can be sure that they have plenty of people around them giving them honest advice. My concern is that many people seem too preoccupied with protecting the self esteem of young women to give them realistic advice. The furore surrounding a letter to a newspaper is particularly disturbing. He only said the obvious. I am not about to sell young women short, just to take the easy way out

Yep, your memory is definitely slipping.

You were the one who posted the term "sewing {sic} his wild oats" (23 January 2010 10:36:20 PM) before I did. In any case, anyone under about 100 who hasn't heard that term has led an oddly reclusive life.

I see you haven't come up with any equivalent sayings for females that would constitute anyone encouraging them to "tart around."

Btw I am not lying about anything. Is it that you think that all women pursue blokes to get hitched and somehow you're not being pursued so... women are too ratbaggy to meet your high standards ? I don't quite grasp where your concern lies. I know that there are many decent young men and women; and some ratbags of both sexes. I think the behaviour is more generally excused in males than in females (and I don't agree with excusing it at all).

Btw - you made a crack about posting while intoxicated or something. That was a bit nasty; uncalled for and non-factual.

I don't think I have to say anything more on this subject Benk,
because Pynchme has it about covered!
You go girl!

Nice compliment Suze, so easy to tell people how wonderful they are.

However Pynchme, you haven’t proved much. I have heard the expression before; I even copied it (bad spelling and all) from one of Suze’s posts and inserted it into my response. That is why it was in quotation marks.

On the other hand, I am still far from convinced that this expression is in common use. How many times have you heard it used in relation to a particular bloke in the last year? Maybe ten years? Didn’t think so.

I am also similarly unconvinced that the attitude that it conveys is widespread. Witness the recent outpouring of hate at Tiger Woods. Or the way that Shane Warne’s sex life turned a gifted athlete into a laughing stock. Or the outpouring of hate directed towards any bloke who leaves his girlfriend. Or the way that sleazy blokes always pretend to be looking for a long term relationship, no matter how obviously untrue this is. Or the way that most women tend to think more highly of a bloke while he is in a long-term relationship. Society doesn’t use one liners to describe these blokes, just four letter words.

Whatever the socialisation of men, it still does women a disservice to tell them that flirting or sleeping around are wise choices. Why sacrifice the chance to have a meaningful relationship with the best bloke you could possibly get for something so short term?

You ladies both posted shortly after midnight on a Friday night. My guess that you had both been drinking might have been untrue, but it wasn’t that harsh. I would like to see a world where people were a little less thin-skinned. Sometimes we all need to hear messages that make us a little uncomfortable.

This topic was raised in another forum site that I inhabit, that is frequented mainly by men who are either in the armed forces, have been in the armed forces or can relate, at least in part, with those men.

Many forum participants are 'those of Sam', others from Canada, Australia, eastern and western Europe, parts of Asia and many other countries.

To a man (and the couple of women who also contribute) they thought that this was either a beat up, or the result of some puritanical and repressed guy who still thinks that just because a woman dresses in a certain way that she is acting like a whore.

These guys have sisters, daughters, wives and female collegues that they respect. They don't respect the person who wrote the letter to the Darwin newspaper.

It is he who has the problem, not the women of Darwin, or anywhere else.