It is so very disappointing that neither Arndt nor the author of the Adelaide article stop to wonder why women may not want sex with their men. It is very disappointing that women’s supposed fickleness, hunger for power and ‘feeble’ (!) libido is being blamed for hordes of sexually frustrated and angry men.

It sounds so poignant when it is implied that a man just wants to be intimate with his mate and only wants a woman who feels ‘positively’ about him and here he is being rejected. If only it where so. Because that is exactly what a woman wants from her mate too.

Where did the notion arise that penetration of a penis in a vagina with subsequent male ejaculation equates in intimacy and therefore a happy man who think that his woman thinks ‘positively’ about him?

The whole argument is so irrational.

If men reflect honestly on their courting days, if things have changed after marriage, they must admit that they showed interest (were positive about their woman) and that they expressed intimacy in other ways than just with penetrative sex. After marriage it is somehow no longer deemed necessary. ‘What’s for dinner’ is the level of interest and a grope in bed is the hint for ‘let’s get intimate for the next 2 minutes before I roll over and go to sleep’.

Don’t any of these ‘rejected’ men ever have adult conversations with their women? Or do they all just have over developed child psyches that makes them stomp around having temper tantrums because they’re not getting their way because they have to consider somebody else?

They’re not men, they’re little boys in men’s bodies.

“What men want will differ from man to man. Generically, though, there is one thing upon which I think ALL men would agree – we want women to stop dribbling on about the toilet seat. It’s been left up again? Then put the effing thing down – are you crippled? Has a man ever said: ‘You’ve left the loo seat down again, dear’? No. Get over it.”

You don’t want to fuck him? Why on earth not?

Text of the article can be found here at AdelaideNow: “What men want (is more complex than you think)”

Money quote:

Arndt wanted to get to the bottom of what she sees as a big problem: why women go off sex. In her book, The Sex Diaries, she has unashamedly gone in to bat for men trapped in sex-less, or mostly sex-less, partnerships where physical intimacy is doled out like Meaty Bites to a dog; relationships where men lose a sense of their masculine selves.

http://www.sa.org.au/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1948&Itemid=125

See- I once thought so too – that it was deliberate, at least definately in the case of M.D., but I don’t know about S.B. I just cannot decide if she’s deliberately imitating a ‘cosmo/cleo’ type approach to gender issues, or if she gets paid to write the most outrageously divisive bile, OR if she just basically grew up on a diet of these types of magazines and any sort of informed (deconstruction) analysis is beyond her. Its a pity because theres a real opportunity to inform the public and promote intelligent debate that would reach a a large audience (like the Gaurdians CiF blogs do – they have great writers, and generally much better informed debate than does the SMH).

Anyhoo, I shall be more mindful of the insults I use on this blog in the future.

I know that social and class mobility does occur, although not as much as we’re led to believe, and it depends a lot on the the class division a person was in in their country of origin too, immigrant, no english does not always equal poor (neither does living in Minto for that matter).
But class mobility or no, I still think it is inherently classist (and intellectually snobbish) to accuse a person of being uneducated, so we’ll just have to agree to disagree on that one.
As for mindless, well again, language being fluid, to me sounds the same as “he’s out of his mind” or “have you lost your mind?” which is defo ableist. The dictionary meaning doesn’t really help much because the way the word or the expression is understood or used in pop culture is what counts.
Ableist language that refers to mental illness is just so common in our culture, we don’t even notice it most of the time.

I think refering to people like the sams and the devines as stoopid or uneducated or mentally ill, kind of lets them off the hook a bit too. I think they know exactly what they’re doing when they write such hideous bile. They’re deliberately upholding the views of the dominant class.

Uneducated=classist
Mindless=ableist
Twat=gendered

I dispute that ‘uneducated’ is classist in Australia. I had a friend who lived in Minto, was an immigrant, parents didn’t speak much english when they arrived. He’s now got his masters and earning 6 figures…doing way better than I am despite being poles apart “socioeconomically”. Actually I have several friends like this, all with masters or PhDs, all came from the lowest socioeconomic rung of society. So I don’t agree with you on this point.

According to my dictionary, ‘mindless’ means acting without concern for the consequences, and doesn’t imply not having a mind, but not using the one you have! – or are we not going by standard dictionary definitions?

But you got me on twat – I only used it in terms of the meaning of ‘a person who is stupid or obnoxious’ and I was unware of its meaning as a vulgar slang for a womans genitals. So, as i don’t approve of the word cunt (which I saw used on a feminist bloggers website the other day), I won’t use it from now on.

And in Australia, I believe its ‘arsehole’ (?). As for Samantha Brett and Miranda, I will just refer to them as intellectually lazy, which is an apt yet pallid description, which is what I originally meant.