(11 of 11)
Perhaps American men and women should face the fact that they are hopelessly at odds. Or anyway that they are a little sick of one another for the moment. Time to give gender a rest. Time to stop staring at life through the single monomaniacal lens of gender politics. Put on the other lenses.
Or if that is not possible, let us split off into two separate republics: one for men, one for women. Their relations with each other would be formal and guarded, their contacts limited and chaperoned. Reproduction and child rearing would be conducted in a safe zone established on neutral territory. Only there would marriage be permitted: the privilege of mating and forming a family would have to be earned on both sides. Homosexuals would have their own separate republic. Bisexuals could apply for tourist visas from time to time.
These rules would, of course, reinstate a form of Edith Wharton's Age of Innocence, an elaborate gender diplomacy and de facto sexual apartheid.
But this is utopian dreaming. If we were to leave off argument and think kindly for a moment, on the premise that men and women will go on mixing with one another in the current mindless and anarchic way, we might spin the thought that good can come of each sex thinking the best of the other, and might see the converse truth: that only bad can come of each one thinking the worst. Tolerance and decency are creative, civilizing traits. A rising standard of expectation -- a mutual hope, a sympathetic mingling of desires -- will lift all boats. Quite a long time ago -- remember? -- we used to fall in love.
Rising uproar from outside the hall, women's voices shouting "Take back the night!" "Viva Lorena!" and "We know you're in there, rapists!"
That's it for now, boys. I was about to get sentimental. Time to break it up.
Remember Zeno's Paradox.
Go, and sin no more.