Posted by Joe on April 16, 2000 at 13:59:09:

In Reply to: Re: this site is brutal (venting my frustrations) posted by Eric on November 02, 1999 at 11:43:42:

Not to beat this to death, but ...

There's a big difference between seeking to have the chance to enjoy a pleasure in this life, and the desire to extract it out of someone else. According to Eric, he would like to enjoy the pleasures of intimacy with a physically attractive woman. However, if, as he says, he is physically attractive himself, he seeks nothing that he is not prepared to offer in return.

This, "crushed" disingenuously compared to the practice of dating for money, in which the woman, desiring pleasures than money can bring, instead of working to earn that money, makes use of a man's desires in order to extract the money from him. If someone can't see the difference between an honest exchange of considerations and an exploitation of another's emotions, that really is a problem.

Eric, why were you apologizing here? You had a normal, healthy desire, and until you started paying lip service to the PC party line, you had, presumably, approached the subject in perfect honesty - something that "crushed" can not claim. Why should you feel guilt - or should I say, pretend to feel guilt - over the desire to experience sexual pleasure to the fullest extent you may reasonably expect to, all things considered ? Life is to be enjoyed as fully as we can. The only ones who need therapy are the ones who feel otherwise.

Again, how very 90s, this all was.

Here's an idea for the millenial decade, or the "aughties", if you prefer. Just because someone is angry, that doesn't mean you owe her an apology. Just because someone is sad, that doesn't mean that she's been wronged.

It's a question of how reasonable the expectations of hers were, that weren't being met. If someone is challenging your right to your preferences or your choices, they just gave you the right to assess, for yourself, just how reasonable they were, unilaterally.

Women, in bar settings and some others, have, for years, gone out with the idea that they would find men who, as my cousin would put it, "had the looks of Tom Cruise, the body of Arnold Scharzenegger, the mind of Stephen Hawking, and the spending power of Donald Trump (pre-divorce)." Well, guess what, ladies - you can't have it all, because there's only so much to go around, and the men have every bit as much right to seek to get their share of the good things in life as you, anyway. So, when some sorority girl starts screeching about sexism, because she finds that in life, she has to compromise on her expectations a little, too, the sensitive response is to say "grow up, and shut up". Because you owe yourself a little sensitivity too, and nobody should make himself sit through that childish crap.

When, in the past, reality has begun to hit that there indeed aren't enough body building male supermodels with 7 figure salaries to go around, and that the smarter women have a better chance of finding the smarter husbands, that prettier women are first in line for the better looking men, and that - what do you know - the richer men weren't down on Division street seeking the White Trash girl of their dreams, but over at a benefit at Concert Hall, with the rich women ... the cry would go up "It's just not fair!".

Really? Who is it not fair to?

"Well", the attitude seems to run, "the better mates should be shared equally".

Now, who is treating whom as the commodity? Why should we be any less selective than the opposite sex, and why should we be tolerant of any attempt to make us feel guilty for having standards ? We aren't trading cards to be passed around equally, we're people with desires and pleasures of our own to pursue, that count every bit as much as theirs. It's about time that women grew up and started respecting that fact.

And it's time that men start acting like men and find the nerve to demand that level of respect. If any woman has a problem with that - well, you know what they said back in the 90s. "Talk to the hand, sister, talk to the hand".

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