Actually if you look at the large numbers of intersex children born each year, and the effort directed at eradicating any bodily signs of difference, of variation from 'male' and 'female', including through painful surgery on children, it does lead you start questioning the bedrock assumption that we are all male or female.

This isn't to take away from the earlier points, just to complicate things even further...

Yes, it is the constructs of femininity and masculinity that feminists have been fighting...calling for the unpacking of these to the benifit of all, and yet these calls consistently get cast as being *man hating* and contemptuous of/limiting to women. Those constructs however aren't limited solely to 'behavioural' or 'psychological' ramifications - they 'call' particular types of bodies into existence, they rely on the production and maintenance of physical difference, they require those bodies to materialise and to perform and when they do not they are punished radically, whether it be surgery on young children to "make" them male or female for *our* benifit rather than their own, which might lay in allowing them to experience their bodies as they are, to cases like that in Boys Don't Cry, and violence directed at transgender individuals and bodies, where "passing" as a particular gender, then being *discovered* to have a body which *complicates* this is enough to get you killed viciously and without mercy.

One last thing..I wasn't there, I don't know how the crowd was behaving...it is difficult to imagine an entire crowd leaping up and raping the woman on stage etc...but not unfathomable that this is the sense you are left with, that you suddenly are siezed with a dread that some in the crowd might in fact attack this woman if it weren't for certain social restrictions - of being in a public space, of *attending* a performance, being unable to judge the reactions of those around you, of being in a space monitored by security - I'm just trying to work out the point at which his concern over this goes from an empirically backed up concern over the fact that many men do rape women (and that these are *just men*, the fathers/brothers/uncles/friends and acquaintances of the woman, *not* some psycho in the bushes, which seems therefore to back up the idea that it is masculinity across the board, and therefore the behaviours of men that are the source of violence against women, rendering his concerns fairly legitimate) to the unsubstantiated and offensive claim you seem to feel it becomes.

Men do rape women and the attempts to distinguish those *monsters* that do from other men just serves to hide the issues with masculinity and punishment. Women are seen as servicers of the penis, and are cast as opportunities to rape within the judgments of the legal system that is there to protect us, and horrific group attacks on women have occured, and not infrequently.

I just wanted to point out that you use the phrase 'unprovokedly' attacked. The use of this word in that context makes me uncomfortable...ie, that men might rape as a group if they were *provoked*, but not when they aren't, which then leads me to wonder *who* provokes the attack and how.

Again, I don't want to make presumptions about what you are saying, merely to point out my concerns with certain parts of the article, or to ask for clarification.

[Handling things in reverse order: I got caught up in my own evidently unconscious rhetoric wherein mobs of all kinds are said to do *everything* "without provocation." It was in singularly bad taste to use it in this particular context and so I apologize! Yikes! As for the problem of distinguishing rapist men from non-rapist men, that's something that's troubled me since I first heard about it back in the late 1970s or early 1980s. In fact it's one of the things that led me to my no-sex class idea: it's hard to tell the difference because *if* we're indoctrinated to believe as we are then seduction, or courtship, or intoxication, or intimidation, or violence, are all just ways to get something we think we always want and women never want to "give up." Which is why, in my opinion, the paradigm is so insideous. Contrary to Jensen I think we're not *just* ready to be rapists because we're trained to believe that's just one of *many* methods that from the outside all look equally gross, bogus, and ill-founded. Which is why I think subverting it is critical. And finally, since at least the late 1990s I've been following the plight of intersexed children who have fairly arbitrary gender assignment surgery way too young. Most evidently do grow up and develop a strong sense of gender even though, increasingly, when given a choice many don't bother having surgery to "clear up" what feels perfectly clear to them. Thanks for the feedback, FP. I worry constantly that I'm going out on thin ice, and sometimes, whether I mean to, or want to, or like that I do, I obviously do! So I'm particularly appreciate the time you take for engagement. Thanks again. --fl]

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