Why I'm sorry I'm monogamous (today anyway)

I hope it's clear from most of my posts that I'm reasonably comfortable with monogamy. Some days, though, someone comes along and says something so barkingly stupid you just want to...

Here's the scoop: Conservative darling John Derbyshire of National Review Online (don't follow that link, though, as it might only encourage him and will certainly bring in ad revenue for his enterprise) scorns real adult sex.

Did I buy, or browse, a copy of the November 17 GQ, in order to get a look at Jennifer Aniston's bristols?** No, I didn't. While I have no doubt that Ms. Aniston is a paragon of charm, wit, and intelligence, she is also 36 years old. Even with the strenuous body-hardening exercise routines now compulsory for movie stars, at age 36 the forces of nature have won out over the view-worthiness of the unsupported female bust.

It is, in fact, a sad truth about human life that beyond our salad days, very few of us are interesting to look at in the buff. Added to that sadness is the very unfair truth that a woman's salad days are shorter than a man's — really, in this precise context, only from about 15 to 20. The Nautilus and the treadmill can add a half decade or so, but by 36 the bloom is definitely off the rose. Very few of us, however, can face up to this fact honestly, and I am sure this diary item will generate more angry e-mails of protest than everything else I have written this month.

This evidently isn't the only time he's put forth this argument. Elsewhere he's gone even further and said

Conservatives, as I recall, are the ones who believe that "human nature has no history." It follows that we are at ease with the fact that the human female is visually attractive to the human male at, or shortly after, puberty, and for only a few brief years thereafter.

With tongue in cheek Avedon of The Sideshow upbraids Garance Franke-Ruta of for suggesting that Derbyshire is a pedophile when technically he's more of an ephebophile but no matter how one slices it his upper limit -- age 20 -- reaches only barely beyond childhood.

Other people can, and have, responded factually and rationally to Derbyshire's provocation. Factual and rational responses don't work on guys like that. Instead I'll just step briefly out of character and point out how he allows his ideological belief triumph in stunning fashion over all factual evidence and almost any measure of experience or reality even in bed! Crikies! If anyone ever deserved a leading role at NRO's The Corner, a comfy chair on FOX news, or an invitation to dinner at the White House this guy's our man.

Stepping *back* into character, though, I just want to say that it's days like these that I regret monogamy. It may be the case that if men find women over age 20 attractive then the terrorists will have won (we are talking the National Review here) but I don't care. The most achingly beautiful, erotic, attractive women I've ever known have all had one thing in common: adulthood. Were I not monogamous I would cheerfully wine, dine, and sixty-nine friends, colleagues, and readers from ages 21 up to, well, at least 69.

I wouldn't do it to make a point, by the way. I'd just do it. I might be (hypothetically) promiscuous as a goat but it's kind of immoral to have sex even with willing partners just to prove a rhetorical point.