Enigma #1
Women in the USA have complained, rightly, about the predatory nature of the male of the species. I have known personally men who live by the "four Fs", Find them, Feel them, F**k them, and Forget them.
My experiance with females indicates that they have learned the lesson and
now practice their own brand of exploitation. I have been dumped by a wife
whose reproductive urge I did not fulfill(opps, I was wrong! Another woman
didn't believe that, so I asked my ex; it turned out she dumped me because I had
agoraphobia...... "in sickness and in health" the legend goes), a
fiancee whose financial needs were taken care of in other ways, and twice by
women with kids who wanted someone better to be a stepfather. They profess to
love you until you no longer get them what they want, then you become
superfluous, and they look elsewhere to get what they want.
Love? I agree with Ayn Rand, who said that to love is to value. We are reaching a point where women do not value men per se, but value what men can provide them with, mainly in a materialistic sense.
Esther Vilar, in her 1972 book The Manipulated Man, discusses the second paragraph at length.
Enigma #2
As women get older, they are more and more likely to have repeatedly encountered the predatory males mentioned above, with the resulting attitudes, "all men are alike" and/or "men only care about one thing". One consequence of this is that older single males find it increasingly difficult to find women their age who still like men, or who still like sex(see #3 below): thus the occurance of "older man, young woman" relationships.
Enigma #3
When women pass through menopause, the changes in their reproductive system cause a great many of them to give up sex entirely. Taking estrogen can restore their sex drive, but doctors will not prescribe it to women with cancer risks. This is a disaster for men who still like sex and prefer the company of women their own age, myself for example!
Men eventually find out to their dismay that they like sex a whole lot more than the average female does. Women tend to view sex as a means toward procreation; when menopause ends procreation, they do not see the end of their sex life as particularly disappointing, although the man or men in their life will have a very different reaction.
Disclaimer: Yes, this is overly generalized. Of course there are exceptions: women who like sex for its own sake (even after menopause), men who don't like sex, people of both sexes whose religion has led them to take a vow of celibacy; I will add other exceptions as they come to my attention.
A Critic writes to me: "regarding your "enigma" page. although you do acknowledge at the end that you overly generalize, i can't help but wonder what you hope to accomplish by doing so? could not we say that you fall victim to the male version of enigma #2: "...resulting attitudes that 'all (wo)men are alike'"?"
Probably! I promise to rewrite this and eliminate generalizations.
OK,
here is an explicit statement:
ANY statement that: Because two people share
an attribute X, therefore they must also share an attribute Y, is a fallacy.
Every individual must be evaluated independently in all areas that have no
direct relation to X
Orig pub. 6-25-98, revised 1-8-05