well, gosh. I find you, sir, to be a moron, following a judgemental, shallow, short-sighted, narrow-minded and, if your original post is anything to go by, woefully uneducated thought pattern (both in the areas of spelling and grammar and also what exactly it is that these two 'evil men' actually DID). Do you know what I gather from this? Perhaps you expect to see me up on a soapbox next to you tomorrow afternoon? Perchance you will look to see my thread exposing to all my belief that all men are judgemental, shallow, short-sighted, narrow-minded, woefully uneducated pigs who deserve to be sealed away in cryogenics facilities and farmed for sperm before we can pollute the world any further?
Good luck to you, because from reading this post, my conclusion is that YOU, A male, ONE individual, representing nobody and nothing other than YOURSELF, by which I mean to say YOU ALONE are judgemental, shallow, short-sighted, narrow-minded and woefully uneducated.
Now, there have been enough people already saying this, so I must necessarily go further to explain my position. I find you more than just wrong, sir, I find you personally insulting for suggesting that I could be lumped together with people such as the two men in your story (assuming for the sake of argument that they actually did something wrong, as opposed to engaging in consensual sex which their lady-partners later regretted), or indeed, you yourself. I am a man. I love my girlfriend, I would never try to use her, pressure her to something she didn't want to do, cheat on her, abuse her, take her for granted, and I would feel nothing less than personally insulted if not utterly outraged that ANYBODY could suggest I would be liable to do such things simply because I'm a man.
Next, on to your use of the phrase "if we can even be called men". And what, sir, do you define as being a "man"? Do you take the common, high-school interpretation that being a man involves being emotionally dead, interested only in physical activity and sex? Do you take the post-modernist view that being a man involves being manly enough to be sensitive and caring? A generous lover? An avid sports fan? Someone who will spend all his spare time reconstructing classic cars? Because screw you and everybody else who thinks they can judge me purely by my 'plumbing'. For me there is only one requirement for so-called 'manhood' that matters, just as there should be for womanhood, or whatever you wish to call it. I don't care what you think about me; I am who I am, and anyone who wants to challenge it can take a long walk off a short pier for all I care.
I am also aware of the hypocrisy of claiming that in the middle of a huge rant about this particular thread, so let me clarify. If you were to come up to me in the street and say I'm not a real man because of my above-mentioned attitudes to my girlfriend I could care less. It's when you try to generalise me that I take exception.
Also, as has been mentioned once or twice, the majority of feminists are not man-haters, there are enough who work for equal rights for everybody, regardless of gender, being aware that there is just as much unfair, unjustified pressure on males to follow traditional roles simply for being males as there are for women.
Finally @indeterminacy, from your use of "they" and "them", I'm assuming you yourself are not a male, so I'll thank you to keep your primitive competition-based theories out of my gender. I fit into the first category of sex; enjoying giving my partner pleasure. This does not make me competitive. I don't brag to my male friends about how good I am, in fact I don't talk about it with them at all; I could care less what they think about how good I am in bed. It has no relevance to them, they're never going to find out, I don't see why they should care, and I have no time whatsoever for pointless bravado and worthless "macho"-ism. I'm not competitive. I find enjoyment in what I do, regardless of what other people think about it. As above, my greatest problem is with people lumping me into categories, no matter who they are or what university 'psychology of sex' papers they've taken.
Thank you all for those of you who bothered to read the whole thing, and for those of you who didn't rock on, if I saw a post this long I problem wouldn't either.
Rant over
