If The Booty Fits...

Nicky and I enjoy reading the weekend opinion pieces on a Saturday morning. They generally give us a laugh.

Like this piece by the Herald Sun's Janine di Giovanni.

Apparently she's the author of Madness Visible: A Memoir of War - serious and depressing subject matter to be sure, which appears to have skewed Janine's thinking into unintentional comedy in her other writing.

THE SMS arrived close to 5am. I know because I was sleeping next to my husband's phone when it bleeped. He went on snoring. I, of course, read it.

If she was sleeping next to her husband as well, couldn't she have nudged him to say, 'you've got a message'? But okay, perhaps the di Giovanni household is like the Charles' where the one nearest to the phone opens the message.

To say it was hopefully romantic would be putting it mildly. This was a blatant message from someone who wanted sex with my husband, and from the sound of it, at that moment.

If this happened in the Charles' household the reaction would be a modern variation to this exchange from The Thin Man:

Nora Charles: Pretty girl.
Nick Charles: Yes. She's a very nice type.
Nora Charles: You got types?
Nick Charles: Only you, darling. Lanky brunettes with wicked jaws.

So how does Janine react?

When he woke up, I said he had five minutes to explain himself. My husband has many flaws, but lying is not one of them. He was as baffled as I was. He phoned the woman, a colleague, while I stood there fuming.

Gee, there ain't a lot of trust or respect going on in Janine's marriage is there?

She was sheepishly apologetic. She was drunk, she said, and she had a little crush on him.

She had a little crush? What woman doesn't mind having other women think 'her man' is a good sort? Janine apparently.

Didn't she know he was married with a small child, he asked in a perturbed voice (and that my wife checks my SMSs, I thought)?

See the subtext here: 'I'm pussywhipped'. I'd have thought more of Mr di Giovanni if he gave said woman a confident, firm and polite rebuff (rather than being sheepishly 'perturbed').

The woman apologised, profusely. She even asked to speak to me and breathlessly begged forgiveness, saying no harm was ever done. She was just trying to see if she could get lucky.

This woman is to be pitied, not pilloried. Obviously she lacks grace, wit, not to mention the emotional maturity to sustain a real relationship. The only way she can enjoy sex is to phone someone at random and say, in essence: 'let's fuck'. It's not the stuff a life long romance is made of, is it? Janine picks up on this but doesn't know where to run with it.

My spouse and I laughed about it, but it made me think. Now that I am old enough to say 'in my day', I will say it. In my day, it was the men who made the booty calls.

And my criticism of Ms Horny's maturity above applies equally here, but oddly enough Ms di Giovanni doesn't mind that in a man. A booty call is hardly elegant wooing is it?

But these days, it is women who are making the first moves. There's a lot of dirty SMS going out there.

The 600-page Study on Sexuality found that French women have twice as many partners as they did in the 1970s.

The study basically revealed that the old role of the male being the hunter of flesh and the female waiting patiently by the cave is long over. Now women are doing it for themselves.

As a feminist, you'd think she'd be delighted, you know, sisters are are doin' it for themselves:

Now, this is a song to celebrate
the conscious liberation of the female state.
Mothers, daughters,
and their daughters too, woh yeah,
woman to woman,
we're singing with you, ooh, ooh.
The "inferior sex" has got a new exterior.

But she's not:

I asked around, and my friends seemed to be having the same experience. One friend, the mother of two young girls, said her husband's assistant relentlessly pursued him.

He said no several times, then he caved in, she said sadly. I just don't think that would have happened a few years ago.

Oh dear.

The feminist principles a few decades ago, when I came of age, would have excluded women from going after other women's property, even if there was sexual liberation.

Eh? What's this? A man being another woman's 'property'?

Hang on, I thought the entire feminist movement was about reclaiming a woman's identity, that she wasn't her husband's property, that no person could 'own' another?

It seems I was mistaken - 'women's liberation' was all about getting their own back on the 'patriarchy'.

And, despite the image of an independent, liberated woman, there has always been a taboo about a sexually voracious woman.

By other women mainly.

"Its just unattractive to see a woman on the make," says Laurence, a male friend. "But if I have my coffee in the morning in a bar, I get lots of looks from the mothers who just dropped their kids off at school."

Another friend's husband ran off with one of those hungry mothers and says the woman made the first move.

Yay! Sisters are doin' it for themselves.

I blame it all on new French First Lady Carla Bruni.

That's a big call.

She said monogamy was boring and talked glowingly of conquests.

If monogamy is boring, it's because you're not doing it right.

The report says young women have sex earlier, and have more partners - an average of five in their lifetime. In the 1970s, it was under two. (Men still have had the same number for the past 40 years - an average of 13.)

Where will this lead us? To a society of Carla-like, Amazonian women who take the lead not only in industry but in sex?

But, but, 'girls can do anything' - that's what two generations of young women have been indoctrinated to believe. The problem is, as Janine here has just discovered, women have taken that to mean 'girls can do anything they want without consequence'.

I am too old-fashioned for this. Go back to the male booty call, I say. And girls, let the men make the first move.

Ah Janine, the first blow from the clue-bat always hits hardest.

-- Nora