Sexodus- Males In Crisis

[Raz]

Re: Sexodus- Males In Crisis

Okay, I admit to never before having encountered the term "homosexualism." A quick Google search came up with stuff that on first blush seems kinda kooky. Stuff like "Sexual Bolshevism," whatever the hell that is. Reminds me of the Unabomber manifesto.

I could term a lot of ideas "kooky" if I relied on random hits at Google. I use the term because it refers to behavior - not rigid determinism as the gay lobby would have (demand!) everyone concede.

I've made no attempt to hide my theistic world view, and that of the subset Eastern Orthodox. The Church teaches that EVERYONE without exception is corrupted by the cosmic nature of the Fall, and that applies to every impediment and passion of human nature: alcoholism, gluttony, same sex attraction, the hyper ithyphalic libido of William Jefferson Clinton, etc.
Be that as it may, we all have a choice of how we behave. And I'm weary of the pseudo-science used to silence anyone who disagrees that some people simply have no choice for their behavior.

I'm with you on the identity politics thing and I've made my opposition to abortion clear in previous posts. I don't care to get into the abortion talk at all, ...

I recall that you were uncomfortable with procured abortion. A flat-out condemnation of it I don't remember, but my memory isn't as good as it once was. And I don't care to discuss it any further, but you were the one who brought up the subject of "reproductive rights" - and in the context of the benign and favorable results of the Feminist movement.

... but do have some thoughts on identity politics. Accepting as a given the genuine grievances of marginalized groups, I view identity politics as the politics of redirection and distraction.

It's a sop the powers that be give to distract and redirect people who in previous eras might be labor organizers or civil rights workers or some other conscious and mobilized element of a functional, activist Left. So instead of people organizing around principles of economic equality and class conflict -- principles that could actually threaten the interests of the plutocrats -- their energy is redirected toward intensely contentions, highly personal and effectively irreconcilable conflicts.

Well I do agree that the FIRE overlords who presently own the federal government love the cover provided by such distractions, it is the Left who champions the Gay Rights and "Choice" lobby so I fail to see just how the "right wing", whatever that is, makes exclusive use of these "wedge" issues to redirect the righteous claims of the proletariat.

These conflicts, varied as they are in terms of focus and constituency, do share the common virtue of being utterly inconsequential to fundamental questions of politics, power, wealth and income - who rules and who gets gets what, when and how. So long as the poors are arguing about whose johnson should go in whose hole, dead babies and school prayer, the riches can go about their business unmolested.

I do not agree that they are "inconsequential", but the poor have in mass been won over to the sexual mores of the American Left so you shouldn't worry about that particular distraction. As you said to vt: your side is winning.

[jk]

Re: Sexodus- Males In Crisis

i hesitate to stick my head into this discussion, but i want to point out that a lot of family structure and social/sexual mores around reproduction are class issues, not "identity" issues. college educated people tend to marry before having children. they have assortative mating- the highly educated tend to marry the highly educated. they have a lower divorce rate, and that adds to their ability to accumulate wealth. the less educated have higher rates of unwed pregnancies, women having children by multiple fathers, and higher divorce rates among those who do marry. thus they have more children in one-parent households, less food security let alone financial security, and a lower probability of attaining high school, let alone college, degrees. and so the the class structure reproduces itself.

i think the swing in american public opinion around sexual orientation over the past decade has been breathtaking. i can't recall another instance of such social change happening so rapidly. among my children's generation [they are late 20's to mid 30's] these matters are just not issues at all. but that is a reflection of their education and socio-economic class as much as their age.

what is even more mind boggling is the rapid progression of sexual/gender issues from homosexuality to trans-gender, "queer," and i-don't-know-what other "identities" being bandied about.

i think of these matters of an interaction of "vulnerability" in the case of illness, or more broadly genetic predisposition, and stress - in the case of illness - or experience in the case of psychological development. a quick trip to pubmed, the nih website that indexes scientific publications, and a search for "neuroscience sexual orientation" turns up 1415 hits with titles like "Sexual orientation related differences in cortical thickness in male individuals"and Genome-wide scan demonstrates significant linkage for male sexual orientation. so people are working on it.

i think it's more interesting, but less exciting, to look at these matters from a scientific perspective instead of a political one.

[don]

Re: Sexodus- Males In Crisis

It's a sop the powers that be give to distract and redirect people who in previous eras might be labor organizers or civil rights workers or some other conscious and mobilized element of a functional, activist Left. So instead of people organizing around principles of economic equality and class conflict -- principles that could actually threaten the interests of the plutocrats -- their energy is redirected toward intensely contentious, highly personal and effectively irreconcilable conflicts.

These conflicts, varied as they are in terms of focus and constituency, do share the common virtue of being utterly inconsequential to fundamental questions of politics, power, wealth and income - who rules and who gets gets what, when and how. So long as the poor are arguing about whose johnson should go in whose hole, dead babies and school prayer, the rich can go about their business unmolested.

+1 Woody (though I believe consumerism, fed into the sheeple non-stop, still holds first place in de-politicizing the gen-pop.)

[vinoveri]

Re: Sexodus- Males In Crisis

i hesitate to stick my head into this discussion, but i want to point out that a lot of family structure and social/sexual mores around reproduction are class issues, not "identity" issues. college educated people tend to marry before having children. they have assortative mating- the highly educated tend to marry the highly educated. they have a lower divorce rate, and that adds to their ability to accumulate wealth. the less educated have higher rates of unwed pregnancies, women having children by multiple fathers, and higher divorce rates among those who do marry. thus they have more children in one-parent households, less food security let alone financial security, and a lower probability of attaining high school, let alone college, degrees. and so the the class structure reproduces itself.

I too am reluctant to join in this topic ....
While I would not disagree that your conclusion of "class reproduction" has some invalidity, it would be interesting to understand the correlation with social mores and public policy, each heavily informed by the academic sphere - I suspect you'll find a greater effect has occurred over the past 50 years in this country due to the various "liberation movements" (not including black civil rights in this generalization), which have in many cases liberated the few while reducing opportunity for many more.

i think of these matters of an interaction of "vulnerability" in the case of illness, or more broadly genetic predisposition, and stress - in the case of illness - or experience in the case of psychological development. a quick trip to pubmed, the nih website that indexes scientific publications, and a search for "neuroscience sexual orientation" turns up 1415 hits with titles like "Sexual orientation related differences in cortical thickness in male individuals"and Genome-wide scan demonstrates significant linkage for male sexual orientation. so people are working on it.

The study you reference concludes with:
Results, especially in the context of past studies, support the existence of genes on pericentromeric chromosome 8 and chromosome Xq28 influencing development of male sexual orientation.

There can be quite a bit of gap between a genetic determinant (skin color) and genetic 'influence of development".
Psychologists have known for decades if not longer that life experiences in childhood and other environmental influences (whether choice or chance) can have an impact oh psycho-sexual development (think brief same sex attraction of pre-adolescent males, the so-called "confusion" that occurs at that age for many who ultimately become heterosexual adults).

I have a couple gay adult friends, and I have no doubt that they did not choose to be gay and their current orientation is fixed as is mine. I suspect we will see an increase in the gay/lesbian/bisexaul population over the coming decades due to the widespread cultural indoctrination and in some cases actual encouragement by teachers, peers, and sociologists.

i think it's more interesting, but less exciting, to look at these matters from a scientific perspective instead of a political one.

Agreed, as long as we stick to rigorous science, not pseudo science and scientistic interpretations.

[don]

Re: Sexodus- Males In Crisis

Personal anecdote:

My brother-in-law is/was gay. I know, how can that be.

His aunt has said it was obvious to more than her (never his parents - never) that he was leaning that way from the time he was 8. Yes, I know that effeminate behavior is not conclusive. Nevertheless . . .

When he was around 20 he left home (NYC) and went to San Francisco, where he came out. Lived in the Castro for 20+ years, was usually at the head of the Gay Freedom Day parade, prominent in the annual Tutu Ball (his picture was in the Chronicle one year), etc. The guy was gay and livin' the life. We had him up for Thanksgiving every year - he was my kid's funny uncle. Then one day . . .

He announced he was no longer gay. He planned on finding a nice Jewish girl, settling down, and having a family. That never happened.

I asked several gay friends if they had ever seen this happen before, a reversal of a common coming-out-of-the-closet made when the kids are grown and Daddy can now be himself. They hadn't, thought it unusual, and concluded that human sexually is infinitely variable.

I'll buy that.

(a few years later he was spotted downtown at a festival in full drag - make that of what you will)

[RebbePete]

Re: Sexodus- Males In Crisis

I certainly don't want to get into the fray on the social issues, but this raises a great many economic issues.

Is the past model of young men and women getting married in their 20's, buying "stuff" together (like a house, automobiles, etc.), having kids, buying more "stuff" together (bigger house or house in better neighborhood, mini-vans, toys, etc.), and so on, now broken? If so, what would that mean to the economy? What would that mean to the economy in general?

[jk]

Re: Sexodus- Males In Crisis

I too am reluctant to join in this topic ....
While I would not disagree that your conclusion of "class reproduction" has some invalidity, it would be interesting to understand the correlation with social mores and public policy, each heavily informed by the academic sphere - I suspect you'll find a greater effect has occurred over the past 50 years in this country due to the various "liberation movements" (not including black civil rights in this generalization), which have in many cases liberated the few while reducing opportunity for many more..

daniel patrick moynihan predicted a lot of this in the late 1960's when he was working in the nixon administration. in part it has been the result of mis-incentives in the welfare system. his report was about "the negro family," but it turns out that now the same patterns are showing up in working class whites. meanwhile middle and upper-class "negro families" follow the patterns of their class, not their "race."

[Raz]

Re: Sexodus- Males In Crisis

daniel patrick moynihan predicted a lot of this in the late 1960's when he was working in the nixon administration. in part it has been the result of mis-incentives in the welfare system. his report was about "the negro family," but it turns out that now the same patterns are showing up in working class whites. meanwhile middle and upper-class "negro families" follow the patterns of their class, not their "race."

Much the same as this economist who is portrayed as an "oreo" by the CBC and Sharpton.


Blacks Must Confront Reality

Walter E. Williams | Aug 27, 2014








Though racial discrimination exists, it is nowhere near the barrier it once was. The relevant question is: How much of what we see today can be explained by racial discrimination? This is an important question because if we conclude that racial discrimination is the major cause of black problems when it isn't, then effective solutions will be elusive forever. To begin to get a handle on the answer, let's pull up a few historical facts about black Americans.

In 1950, female-headed households were 18 percent of the black population. Today it's close to 70 percent. One study of 19th-century slave families found that in up to three-fourths of the families, all the children lived with the biological mother and father. In 1925 New York City, 85 percent of black households were two-parent households. Herbert Gutman, author of "The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, 1750-1925" reports, "Five in six children under the age of six lived with both parents." Also, both during slavery and as late as 1920, a teenage girl raising a child without a man present was rare among blacks.


A study of 1880 family structure in Philadelphia found that three-quarters of black families were nuclear families (composed of two parents and children). What is significant, given today's arguments that slavery and discrimination decimated the black family structure, is the fact that years ago, there were only slight differences in family structure among racial groups.
Coupled with the dramatic breakdown in the black family structure has been an astonishing growth in the rate of illegitimacy. The black illegitimacy rate in 1940 was about 14 percent; black illegitimacy today is over 70 percent, and in some cities, it is over 80 percent.


The point of bringing up these historical facts is to ask this question, with a bit of sarcasm: Is the reason the black family was far healthier in the late 1800s and 1900s that back then there was far less racial discrimination and there were greater opportunities? Or did what experts call the "legacy of slavery" wait several generations to victimize today's blacks?


The Census Bureau pegs the poverty rate among blacks at 28.1 percent. A statistic that one never hears about is that the poverty rate among intact married black families has been in the single digits for more than two decades, currently at 8.4 percent. Weak family structures not only spell poverty and dependency but also contribute to the social pathology seen in many black communities -- for example, violence and predatory sex.
Each year, roughly 7,000 blacks are murdered. Ninety-four percent of the time, the murderer is another black person. Though blacks are 13 percent of the nation's population, they account for more than 50 percent of homicide victims. Nationally, the black homicide victimization rate is six times that of whites, and in some cities, it's 22 times that of whites. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, between 1976 and 2011, there were 279,384 black murder victims. Coupled with being most of the nation's homicide victims, blacks are also major victims of violent personal crimes, such as assault, rape and robbery.


To put this violence in perspective, black fatalities during the Korean War (3,075), Vietnam War (7,243) and all wars since 1980 (about 8,200) come to about 18,500, a number that pales in comparison with black loss of life at home. Young black males had a greater chance of reaching maturity on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan than on the streets of Philadelphia, Chicago, Detroit, Oakland, Newark and other cities.


The black academic achievement gap is a disaster. Often, black 12th-graders can read, write and deal with scientific and math problems at only the level of white sixth-graders. This doesn't bode well for success in college or passing civil service exams.


If it is assumed that problems that have a devastating impact on black well-being are a result of racial discrimination and a "legacy of slavery" when they are not, resources spent pursuing a civil rights strategy will yield disappointing results.

[wayiwalk]

Re: Sexodus- Males In Crisis

Wow, talk about a thread that is all over the place.

My 19 y.o. son is heterosexual, just thought I'd get that out of the way. He's at a state college and enjoying the college experience AND learning. Over Thanksgiving, we had a conversation about his generation, and the lack of desire amongst both men and women his age to have a boyfriend/girlfriend.....casual hookups are more common.

He also spoke of a vague fear or dread he has of having a sexual relationship with a woman, and the risk if the social part of the relationship goes bad. He mentions the climate, and other things, such as how men at college (maybe all students) need to listen to many seminars about rape prevention. There is a sense of presumption of guilt.

He spoke of a friend who was "dating" someone for a number of weeks and also having sex with her. The relationship went sour at some point, and the friend no longer wanted to be with the woman. The woman went to the campus rape center, or whatever they have for this, and brought accusations against the young man. The police do not get involved. The university does. The school suspended the man from the school for a year.

He said, she said.

Kind of poisons the water.

I wish I had more details to share on story but that is all I have on it.....

I went to a college reunion a few weeks back (big football rivarly and they played at Yankee stadium this year). Lots of fraternity brothers at gatherings in the city over the weekend, guys I hadn't seen in years, and a lot of them with their wives, who they met at college, started dating, at college. Folks married more than two decades, so these must be good relationships. What a shame to put a damper on what is a great place to meet a spouse....ha ha....AND learn. I met my wife at college and we're going on 26 years of marriage....just another way our society is headed in a direction that it seems the outcome is uncertain and negative.

[Raz]

Re: Sexodus- Males In Crisis

...

My 19 y.o. son is heterosexual, just thought I'd get that out of the way. He's at a state college and enjoying the college experience AND learning. Over Thanksgiving, we had a conversation about his generation, and the lack of desire amongst both men and women his age to have a boyfriend/girlfriend.....casual hookups are more common.

He also spoke of a vague fear or dread he has of having a sexual relationship with a woman, and the risk if the social part of the relationship goes bad. He mentions the climate, and other things, such as how men at college (maybe all students) need to listen to many seminars about rape prevention. There is a sense of presumption of guilt.

He spoke of a friend who was "dating" someone for a number of weeks and also having sex with her. The relationship went sour at some point, and the friend no longer wanted to be with the woman. The woman went to the campus rape center, or whatever they have for this, and brought accusations against the young man. The police do not get involved. The university does. The school suspended the man from the school for a year.

He said, she said.

Kind of poisons the water.

... I met my wife at college and we're going on 26 years of marriage....just another way our society is headed in a direction that it seems the outcome is uncertain and negative.

It poisons more than the water. It could well mean that many a young woman won't find the hoped for "marrying quality man" she might have found at college. A friend of mine once described feminism as an empty skull with a foolish grin.
I didn't agree but with the passage of time he just might be proven correct. This is the "blessed fruit of political correctness".

I don't particularly like Heather MacDonald, mostly because she an overbearing Neocon.
But this is an excellent article and I agree with her view that the payback from all this couldn't happen to a more deserving bunch.


The Campus Rape Myth


The reality: bogus statistics, feminist victimology, and university-approved sex toys


Winter 2008


Illustration by Arnold Roth



It’s a lonely job, working the phones at a college rape crisis center. Day after day, you wait for the casualties to show up from the alleged campus rape epidemic—but no one calls. Could this mean that the crisis is overblown? No: it means, according to the campus sexual-assault industry, that the abuse of coeds is worse than anyone had ever imagined.
It means that consultants and counselors need more funding to persuade student rape victims to break the silence of their suffering.


The campus rape movement highlights the current condition of radical feminism, from its self-indulgent bathos to its embrace of ever more vulnerable female victimhood. But the movement is an even more important barometer of academia itself. In a delicious historical irony, the baby boomers who dismantled the university’s intellectual architecture in favor of unbridled sex and protest have now bureaucratized both. While women’s studies professors bang pots and blow whistles at anti-rape rallies, in the dorm next door, freshman counselors and deans pass out tips for better orgasms and the use of sex toys. The academic bureaucracy is roomy enough to sponsor both the dour anti-male feminism of the college rape movement and the promiscuous hookup culture of student life. The only thing that doesn’t fit into the university’s new commitments is serious scholarly purpose.


The campus rape industry’s central tenet is that one-quarter of all college girls will be raped or be the targets of attempted rape by the end of their college years (completed rapes outnumbering attempted rapes by a ratio of about three to two). The girls’ assailants are not terrifying strangers grabbing them in dark alleys but the guys sitting next to them in class or at the cafeteria.


This claim, first published in Ms. magazine in 1987, took the universities by storm. By the early 1990s, campus rape centers and 24-hour hotlines were opening across the country, aided by tens of millions of dollars of federal funding.
Victimhood rituals sprang up: first the Take Back the Night rallies, in which alleged rape victims reveal their stories to gathered crowds of candle-holding supporters; then the Clothesline Project, in which T-shirts made by self-proclaimed rape survivors are strung on campus, while recorded sounds of gongs and drums mark minute-by-minute casualties of the “rape culture.” A special rhetoric emerged: victims’ family and friends were “co-survivors”; “survivors” existed in a larger “community of survivors.”


An army of salesmen took to the road, selling advice to administrators on how to structure sexual-assault procedures, and lecturing freshmen on the “undetected rapists” in their midst. Rape bureaucrats exchanged notes at such gatherings as the Inter Ivy Sexual Assault Conferences and the New England College Sexual Assault Network. Organizations like One in Four and Men Can Stop Rape tried to persuade college boys to redefine their masculinity away from the “rape culture.”

The college rape infrastructure shows no signs of a slowdown. In 2006, for example, Yale created a new Sexual Harassment and Assault Resources and Education Center, despite numerous resources for rape victims already on campus.

If the one-in-four statistic is correct—it is sometimes modified to “one-in-five to one-in-four”—campus rape represents a crime wave of unprecedented proportions. No crime, much less one as serious as rape, has a victimization rate remotely approaching 20 or 25 percent, even over many years.

The 2006 violent crime rate in Detroit, one of the most violent cities in America, was 2,400 murders, rapes, robberies, and aggravated assaults per 100,000 inhabitants—a rate of 2.4 percent. The one-in-four statistic would mean that every year, millions of young women graduate who have suffered the most terrifying assault, short of murder, that a woman can experience. Such a crime wave would require nothing less than a state of emergency—Take Back the Night rallies and 24-hour hotlines would hardly be adequate to counter this tsunami of sexual violence. Admissions policies letting in tens of thousands of vicious criminals would require a complete revision, perhaps banning boys entirely. The nation’s nearly 10 million female undergrads would need to take the most stringent safety precautions. Certainly, they would have to alter their sexual behavior radically to avoid falling prey to the rape epidemic. ...


http://www.city-journal.org/2008/18_1_campus_rape.html

[Woodsman]

Re: Sexodus- Males In Crisis

..But this is an excellent article and I agree with her view that the payback from all this couldn't happen to a more deserving bunch.

The article about rape being a myth is quite a satisfying read. It's certainly more satisfying than the language of the original National Institute of Justice/Bureau of Justice Statistics study that developed the data. Anyone who is interested can read it and come to their own conclusions about the reality of sexual assaults on campus.

They persist in prevalence and frequency since the National College Women Sexual Victimization (NCWSV) study was published in 2000. Universities continue to botch the handling of sexual assault cases and continue in their failure to comply with governing laws. And still the culture warriors insist it's all a myth. Some things never change in the United States of Amnesia.

I appreciate especially the opportunity to read the survey screening questions. I like the fact that the researchers followed up the "yes" responses with detailed incident reports on the nature of the event as this allowed them to classify the type of victimization. Categories ranged from "unwanted completed penetration by force or the threat of force [completed rape]" to "threat of unwanted sexual contact with the threat of non-force physical punishment or reward [contact without force]".

Based on their study, they conclude about 1 in 36 college women (2.8 percent) experience a completed rape or attempted rape in an academic year (defined as 6.91 months). The 1 in 5 statistic is extrapolated from the data over the course of a 5 year college career. It is a statistical projection and not a statement of fact. As excellent as the myth article might be, I don't know that it provides this degree of nuance as I read only the posted excerpt.

Is there a raging epidemic of rape on university campuses? No, I don't think so. The data points to a victimization rate of 35.3 per 1,000 college women a year. Everyone has to come to their own view if that is enough of a threshold for taking action. Personally, I think one victim is too many. We tell our kids life offers no one a guarantee of safety but do they listen? I also think the presumption of innocence of those accused is as important as the rights and needs of the victims and it seems in addressing one we have diminished the other.

Were I a college administrator, you can be sure I would be concerned by the results of this study and its implications for my campus. So yes, I think I might ask my students to spend 90 minutes semester listening and talking about these things as part of a cultural, service or health event. I think that's a reasonable thing to do. Seeing the mess at UVA (last year it was Swarthmore and Occidental), as an administrator, faculty or trustee, I'd want to do everything I could to avoid having to deal with that mess.

But why the schadenfreude? Everybody loses here. There are no winners. This has been stewing in my mind ever since the the Rolling Stone piece landed. Awful story and then I learn it's the work of yet another fabulist. You think you can't be disappointed any more and then something like this happens. It's a disaster for everyone involved. Nobody comes out of it clean, not UVA or the Greek organizations, and most certainly not the young women and men who attend college and university.

The disaster for journalism is incalculable. The profession seems to me like a hopeless alcoholic and drug addict, constantly relapsing and making amends in a downward spiral of self-destruction. And then there are the young ladies who are victims of sexual violence and the young men wrongly accused. If the wings of a butterfly can trigger a hurricane, then surely there will be more of victims because of the Rolling Stone piece.

Yet what do the hard and bitter culture warriors focus on? Winning. Forget trying to connect with the suffering of young girls or the terror of young men. If it means they get to kick a few more liburuls in the sack, what's the worry?

[Raz]

Re: Sexodus- Males In Crisis

The article about rape being a myth is quite a satisfying read. It's certainly more satisfying than the language of the original National Institute of Justice/Bureau of Justice Statistics study that developed the data. Anyone who is interested can read it and come to their own conclusions about the reality of sexual assaults on campus.

They persist in prevalence and frequency since the National College Women Sexual Victimization (NCWSV) study was published in 2000. Universities continue to botch the handling of sexual assault cases and continue in their failure to comply with governing laws. And still the culture warriors insist it's all a myth. Some things never change in the United States of Amnesia.

In terms of the LAW and what constitutes forcible rape, or coercible rape ("submit or I'll kill your dog, cat, mother, etc.")
it most certainly is a myth, if taken as the epidemic proclaimed by the radical feminists and college administrators.

Based on their study, they conclude about 1 in 36 college women (2.8 percent) experience a completed rape or attempted rape in an academic year (defined as 6.91 months). The 1 in 5 statistic is extrapolated from the data over the course of a 5 year college career. It is a statistical projection and not a statement of fact. As excellent as the myth article might be, I don't know that it provides this degree of nuance as I read only the posted excerpt.

It in fact did provide this degree of nuance - right in front of you in paragraph three of the posted excerpt. ("...by the end of their college years.")

Is there a raging epidemic of rape on university campuses? No, I don't think so.

We certainly agree on this point.

[vt]

Re: Sexodus- Males In Crisis

I have a close family member who was raped. Male predators who rape have to be dealt with and stopped, because the damage this can do to a woman may last years or even decades. Boys need to be taught from an early age to respect women.

There is likely also some women who falsely make rape accusations.

If I were a college male I would consider audio recording any encounter that is sexual. Women may want to also consider this. Watch the movie Disclosure with Michael Douglas and Demi Moore where Douglas is accused of sexual harassment. His phone records the encounter, and proves his innocence.

[don]

Re: Sexodus- Males In Crisis

Michael Douglas is nearly always innocent - Wall Street is an exception - in his movies . . . .

[dcarrigg]

Re: Sexodus- Males In Crisis

If I were a college male I would consider audio recording any encounter that is sexual. Women may want to also consider this. Watch the movie Disclosure with Michael Douglas and Demi Moore where Douglas is accused of sexual harassment. His phone records the encounter, and proves his innocence.

I don't know, man. I don't even think a paranoid bastard like Dick Nixon ever recorded his private sessions with Pat. And he recorded everything.

So much of this stuff seems like bullhorn-sensationalized hype to me.

I don't see it in my life. That's for sure. Every day I wake up, say hi to the better half, do some work, run errands, take care of the house, and I manage not to run into a single self-proclaimed radical third-wave feminist or men's right activist or anyone like that.

I go out of my way to trust people I deal with and only deal with people I trust where possible. And the battle of the sexes usually only manifests in terms of an occasional dreaded chore or spat over what to have for dinner. Even then, it's mild and jovial.

And I probably should just count my blessings and shut up.

But I just feel like when people on both sides talk about this stuff they each make it out to be far more prevalent than the day-to-day reality for the vast majority of people. I mean, secret tape recorders for sex!? Really!?

I guess my life was just never that exciting, or MI6, or Jersey Shore, or Hollywood, or whatever adjective is appropriate there.

Give me plain oatmeal and cold showers over this kind of drama any day.