Karen @294 – “…my initial exasperation of: leave it to a man to think everything’s about power.”

I hear you loud and clear on that one! In the “Crock of Gold”, James Stephens wrote

“Power is man’s secret, Sex is woman’s secret, and Man is God’s secret”

Feminists got that formula all mixed up, wouldn’t you say? Likewise whiskey may have a knack for interpreting social data but what he doesn’t know about women is a lot. What irks me about these posts is the ax-grinding to no purpose. All it does it rankle and divide to no useful end that I can see. And as you pointed out, where are the men in all this? If I understand him correctly they’ve all been sitting around helplessly like horny baboons for the past thirty years getting nowhere fast and increasingly humorless. And the best answer he has for NahnCee is Nothing? Speaking as a mother and a nurse, I know a tantrum when I see one.

I agree with Eggplant’s assessment that self-reliance is a driving concern. Child-support horror stories aside, this has not been a particularly easy road for women. One thing I’ve observed in young working mothers, the married ones no less than the single, is a simple lack of faith in the idea that men can be trusted to take care of them. They don’t seem happy about it, just resigned.

(Off track somewhat but have you ever read “The Sheltering Sky” by Paul Bowles? It’s about a wealthy American couple, sexually and emotionally estranged, who try to save their marriage by slumming around post-WWII North Africa – frankly the characters aren’t very likable but the author had a remarkable insight into the darker impulses at war within the female mind)