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The headline of the print Daily Telegraph today trumpeted 'Mini-brothels get go-ahead to operate on your doorstep'. I immediately took a peek at my doorstep but alas nothing to report yet.

To recycle a well known quote: prostitution combines free enterprise with sex. Which one are you against?

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As someone who follows such things I had expected the latest Home Office consultation exercise to go according to the standard pattern, thus:

1. Home Office makes suggestions for changes in public policy...
2. ...'evidence' is taken from interested parties including police in search of promotion, contractors in search of contracts, and researchers seeking posts on the new quango to be created...
3. Home Office considers, announces its plans have 'general support', ticks box marked 'public consulted' and carries on with making legislation for parliament to approve.

So I was gearing myself up to write a piece on the repulsive sight of a department torn between the desire to regulate everything and to maintain PC social norms. Citing the ignominious failure of the Victorian Contagious Diseases Acts, I was going to pour scorn on the futility of a regulatory regime that licensed brothels while denying the most basic economic rights to prostitutes, and created 'zones of toleration' in an effort to buck the market while punishing the streetwalkers it purported to protect.

The Goverment has shot my fox. And it turns out the fox was packed with explosives. Someone has overturned the (paradoxical) regulatory liberalisers and has decided puritan prohibitions are what we need. The move is instead to be to "Zero Tolerance" of 'kerb crawlers' - and quite without comment, the continuation of zero civil-law rights and next to zero criminal-law protections for prostitutes themselves.

The Home Office minister Fiona McTaggart was quoted yesterday on the BBC as saying that prostitution "is child abuse" because many prostitutes begin selling sex below the age of consent. That is an insane argument driven by the demands of moralism. By the same token unpaid sexual contact must also be child abuse, because most people's sex lives begin before that arbitary, if increasingly rigidly totemic, mark. Someone, somewhere, is making David Blunkett, who was responsible for the original pseudo-tolerant proposals, look like a liberal.

Does the devil's name begin with B? The emphasis on cleaning up public untidiness by bullying is of a piece with the respec' agenda. And there have been suggestions that the inate liberalism of the Home Office - not something spotted by many commentators before now - is interfering with the operation of the Anti-Social Behaviour Unit.

Just another brick in the wall, perhaps. But turning the public agenda on a sixpence, and producing plainly mad arguments for doing so, are ominous. The Head Boy is ever more a dictator, and ever more the apostle of social conformity.

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The Italian government, desperate for any additional source of revenue as it beggars the surrounding economy with its imposts, has slapped a fresh tax on the country's porn industry. It will be intruiging to know just how much this tax raises or whether, as may probably happen in Italy, the tax drives the industry under the bed, so to speak.

Personally, I have more regard for people who earn an honest living making racy videos than tax collectors.

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Paul Coulam sees that a contempt for private property leads people to do some very strange and self-defeating things. Free association? Not any more.

Amazing as it may seem the government has today banned 'gay clubs' as a result of campaigning from the gay lobby.

According to the Times:

Hoteliers, bed-and-breakfast owners and pub landlords will no longer be able to bar gay people from their premises under new laws to be announced today [...] The Government will accept today an amendment to its Equality Bill that will outlaw discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation in providing goods and services or organising public functions. The amendment [...] will also mark the end of gay or lesbian-only clubs because bars and nightclubs will no longer be able to turn away straight people.

How stupid can these people be? Many gay businesses survive as such only because they can so explicitly discriminate, especially in their advertising. This ridiculous new law will be a very serious threat to the continuation of a 'gay scene' in many towns across the country. It is tricky to foresee all of the unintended consequences of this one. Gay clubs operate varying degrees of explicit discrimination depending on the locale or type of club. The strictest hard core gay cruise clubs generally operate a 'men only' door policy, which does the trick, but this itself may be or may become illegal - who knows what horrors of forced integration are still to come?

However many of the more general gay dance clubs operate what they advertise as a 'gay majority policy' which is usually employed to refuse entry to large parties of girls only. Gay clubs are often the best clubs in a particular town and tend to attract groups of girls who want a night away from predatory straight men. Of course the large numbers of unwary girls in these clubs itself attracts the straight men and before long the club has lost all appeal for gays. In the case of hotels there are lots of hotels in various, often remote, parts of the country that offer gay only accommodation and advertise as such. Will such advertising be illegal? In the short term after this absurd bill is passed clubs, bars and hotels will continue to operate discrimination informally but all it will take is some petulant activist or a council with a bee in its bonnet or some obsessive bureaucrat to stick their oar in to ruin some particular venue or business.

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The picture below has been making the rounds of the net aviation (and other) communities the last few days. The young Aussie lads chanced upon a motor race event whilst on coastal patrol. They went into a temporary hover all the better to communicate with numerous and luvly birds on the ground.

Someone caught them in the act and the photo went up on a professional pilot's site from whence it spread to other places.

The lads seem to be in a bit of hot water over it, no doubt due to complaints from the PC (Pulchritudinously Challenged) sector.

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A few years ago I read of lower spine stimulation by a doctor working with paralyzed patients. It had 'interesting' effects when done in just the right spot. Another, or perhaps the same doctor, Stuart Meloy, a Winston-Salem, North Carolina anesthesiologist and pain specialist, has been experimenting with an FDA approved stimulation device for lower back pain. At least one woman in his pain trial had breathtakingly enjoyable orgasms along with the pain abatement.

Other work I have read reports there is a lower spinal nerve area which controls the timing of ejaculation in men. Perhaps it is the same? The article does not say. Dr. Meloy has completed an initial medical trial on the use of the stimulator, now dubbed the 'orgasmatron', by women with orgasmic dysfunction. According to women in the trial, it works exceedingly well.

It may beat the knickers off a vibrator, but at $17,000 for surgical implantation this will definitely be a rich girl's toy. I wonder if anyone has asked Woody Allen for a comment?

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Everyone is entitled to their sensibilities, however wacky, just so long as they do not try to make them the law of the land. As a result when I describe Los Angeles Times writer T. J. Simers as a 'weird prude', it is not with the sense of loathing, hatred and vitriol I would have used were I under the impression he was suggesting that his disquiet over a picture of a beautiful young woman in a pair of shorts (and presumed wish to see people share his puritan values regarding women) be reflected in the law of the land by imposing censorship.

But a 'weird prude' is indeed what I think he is. Whilst I see that bizarrely the age of consent in the benighted state of California is 18, in the vast majority of the world and even in much of the USA, the age at which one is permitted to engage in sex is 16. Moreover even if for some reason you conclude that the age at which young adults should actually have sex should be 18, surely only the most purblind would actually expect a 16 year old to be asexual even if they were abstinent.

So when an attractive physically active 17 year old has a picture taken wearing no less clothing than that in which millions of people have seen her win tennis tournaments...

... T. J. Simers asks, no doubt thinking the true answer is beyond the pale:

Now what do you think when I tell you the girl in the ad is 17 years old?

Well, yeah. The girl is question is Maria Sharapova and since she won Wimbledon, quite literally tens of millions of people know exactly how old she is. And what do I think? I think "Nice legs! What a babe". I am, distressingly, old enough to be her father, but that does not change the fact she is a very attractive young woman. So what?

He continues:

Sharapova may or may not be the most mature 17-year-old the world has known, but she's still 17. A kid. And if the message to young girls everywhere in the L.A. area is that sex sells - rather than Wimbledon championship tennis, shame on anyone who rewards AEG this week and takes their daughter to Staples Center.

Where were her parents? "There you go," said Lindsay Davenport. "I wouldn't do it, and I can tell you my daughter wouldn't either."

Well Lindsey Davenport was a great tennis player but I for one am also relieved she never struck such poses, though gallantry prevents me from elaborating what I think are the obvious reasons for that. But why oh why does Mr. Simers or Mrs. Davenport think a 17 years old should an asexual being? The advertisement was not one in which Maria Sharapova was offering to have sex with anyone, just displaying her athletic assets (her body) in a way in which many would find rather attractive. Being attractive does indeed sell so why pretend otherwise? Is the fact she is not pictured in the act of playing tennis somehow make her sexuality more obvious than these...

 

Clearly this is not a young woman who is in denial regarding the fact she is a sexual being and hardly seems like some bewildered victim of heartless ad man dressing her up as Lolita. I rather doubt the camera man had to wrestle a teddy bear out of her arms to get her to strike that pose. For T.J. Simers to find the WTA image offensive is perverse and suggests to me that he must have some quaint notions of what 17 year olds are really like and how people should perceive them.

Millions and millions of people are married or in long term sexual relationships by the time they are 17 and many of those are also parents, which suggests that the peculiar notion of infantilising young adults and calling them 'kids' for as long as possible is rather far off the mark.

I think what really made this whole thing seem so daft to me was that I have just got back from an interesting exhibition about the Crimean War which features an account of a 14 year old who had accompanied the British forces on that campaign and it all really does make some of the modern notion of a strict division between adulthood and childhood seem truly preposterous when talking about a worldly 17 year old Russian woman who, if you have ever heard her interviewed, is obviously no fool.

There is something profoundly odd about the mindset of a certain ilk of conservative.

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After legalising prostitution last year, the New Zealand government has now issued a 100 page Occupational Health and Safety manual.

The recommendations - which the New Zealand Herald said will also be distributed to brothels and sex workers - include detailed advice on safe sex practices such as the storage and handling of sex toys and disinfecting equipment.

Employers are asked to ensure condoms in a variety of shapes and sizes are always available, and to provide beds that support the back for a variety of services to be performed without strain or discomfort.

Sex workers are cautioned to watch out for occupational overuse syndrome, often caused by rapid repetitive tasks or forceful movements, and to carry a small torch in case they need to check clients for sexually transmitted diseases.

Comprehensive training of staff in the safe use of all equipment, particularly for fantasy work, is also recommended.

Ah, governments. Where would we be without them?

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Some readers will have observed that I fight an often lonely battle against the forces of the militant lesbian, anti-humanist, fascist, tree-hugging puritan conspiracy to wipe out masculinity. We know as a scientific fact that the best lovers are larger men. I have previously commented on the sexual inadequacy of skinny types.

It is therefore clear that the current obesity obsession in this country is part of a nefarious conspiracy aimed at wiping out Great Britain. Was Henry VIII skinny? Did Winston Churchill eat tofu?

Help is at hand in the form of a marvelous new book Eat What you Want and Die Like a Man: The World's Unhealthiest Cookbook. The reason for this masterpiece is set out in the Foreword:

I wrote this book because I was tired of being told what to eat. I was tired of the Food Pyramid and vegetable oil and small food. I was tired of pinch-faced little people who actually got angry when I talked about lard and egg yolks. I felt it was time for a backlash. Time to celebrate things like bacon grease and heavy cream. Don't we have better things to feel guilty about? Like the resurgence of velour?

This is not a serious cookery book, says the author. No doubt he could be sued by the pinch-faced little people.

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So says local MP Robert Brokenshire. It is a moot point, actually. I am not convinced the social fabric in Adelaide is really under that much pressure. There is nothing wrong with Australia that making us responsible for ourselves again will not fix.

That is by the by. Mr Brokenshire is a local MP who is angered by this website, which is a sperm donor registry. The problem with the site is that it is run by, and aimed at, lesbian couples.

Mr Brokenshire has introduced a private Member's bill in the South Australian Parliament to prohibit such websites.

At present, homosexual couples are not permitted to use publicly funded fertility centres in SA.

The Australian Sperm Donor Registry bypasses these laws because it only connects the donors with recipients – forcing potential mothers to arrange insemination themselves.

Ms Thompson, who started the registry with Ms Ryan almost a year ago, said they had 'matched up' about 70 recipients.

My first instinct is to ask why the State is funding any fertility clinics- but the notion that the taxpayer should pay for all health in Australia is one of those assumptions that is just not questioned out here.

Be that as it may, if the State decides to discriminate against certain people on the grounds of their sexuality, people, being free, try to work around such restrictions, in the way Ms Thompson and Ms Ryan have. But you cannot keep a good Statist down, and Mr Brokenshire and his Parliamentry thugs, who know what is best for this couple, and me as well, are on the case.

After all, there is a social fabric to protect.

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I recall, quite a few years ago now, watching one of those terribly serious TV documentaries that purported delve into the psychology of sexuality. The only part of the programme that I can actually recount was an examination of a gas-mask and uniform sexual fetish that appears to be almost entirely a British phenomenon.

The impressively qualified talking-head that they employed to interpret all of this, speculated that this particular fetish had its roots in World War II when the images of gas masks and uniforms (in the context of great national emergency and danger) left its imprimatur on a lot of impressionable pre-adolescent boys.

This was also shortly after Gulf War I when Israelis were all issued with gas-masks for fear of some chemical attack from Saddam. Hence said talking-head predicted the emergence of a similar sexual phenomenon in Israel in years to come.

It all sounded quite plausible at the time but its very difficult to judge whether or not they hold any objective truth. I was reminded of this, though, by a recent conversation with Dr.Chris Tame of the Libertarian Alliance on this subject and what (if anything) lies at the root of sexual fetish. The object we were discussing was not gas-maks though, but cigarettes.

In short, has smoking become eroticised?

I think there is quite a lot of evidence to suggest that it has. If websites like Smoking Models are anything to go by then some people are clearly getting their kicks from photographs like this:

And this:

The linked site is devoted to nothing except loads and loads of photographs just like these and while the girls are undeniably young and pretty there appears to be nothing which could seriously be described as pornographic. Nor is there any nudity as such. As best as I can tell, it is the actual act of smoking a cigarette which is the focus of attention.

I found the linked site by means of a 'Google' search which also thew up hundreds of sites just like it (although many are clearly of a more carnal nature) and that means that demand for this sort of thing must be fairly widespread.

At the risk of betraying a relatively sheltered life, I cannot remember seeing this kind of thing before. Perhaps it was only the advent of the internet that made it possible but Dr.Tame is quite a few years my senior and he seems to think this has fairly recent provenance. If that is true, then it begs the question of whether the Western world's sustained 'holy war' against smoking has caused this eroticisation. Is it possible that years of cultural demonisation of smoking as wicked, anti-social and dangerous has gifted to cigarettes a quality of thrilling taboo?

If smoking has indeed been fetishised then I suppose it is a variation on the time-honoured theme of unintended consequences. It would just serve the nannies and health-fascists right if all their efforts to eradicate the evil weed had resulted in turning cigarettes from a casual habit into objects of obsessive desire.

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Today I received the following email:

Brian,

Brian has started a webring of Brians with blogs. If you would like to join us, go and sign up here.

Brian

What is a webring? If I signed up to it, would the rest of my life be ruined? The Brian who sent me this email seems to be gay. Not that there's anything wrong with that, consenting adults, some of my best friends..., I'm personally in favour of gay marriage, blah blah blah. But if I sign up, will I be bombarded with gay porn for the rest of my days?

In general, I feel that it is good that we Brians are getting together, and if a webring is what I think it may be, we can perhaps sit on one, in a circle, perhaps somewhere in the countryside, and discuss the Brian Issue. That is, we can discuss why cuckolded husbands, send-up substitutes for Jesus Christ, etc. etc., in the movies, all seem to be called Brian. Brian is not a cool name, is my point. Maybe we Brians can get together and change that. (The danger, of course, is that by getting together in such ways as these, we might merely confirm all the existing anti-Brian stereotypes, and cause Brianphobia to become even more deeply entrenched.)

Meanwhile, how many indisputably cool Brians can be assembled? I offer two outstanding contemporary sportsman: the West Indian cricket captain and ace batsman Brian Lara, and the Irish rugby captain and ace centre threequarter Brian O'Driscoll.

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Having already done most of my schoolboy sniggering in private (although I reserve the right to indulge it again at a later date) I think I can now bring myself to say a few (semi) serious things about this:

Belgian legislators are hoping to bring that to a close with a parliamentary bill that would draw prostitutes into the legal fold and bring the industry under state control, providing sex workers with labour rights and greater health protection.

But for a fee.

The sex workers themselves would be expected to pay up when the tax man calls - boosting state coffers to the tune of an estimated 50 million euros a year.

It represents an attractive option for a country currently struggling to balance its budget deficit - a means of generating money while affording prostitutes better protection.

Not so much legalisation then as part-nationalisation and while it would be nice to imagine that Belgium's lawmakers have been driven by a genuinely liberal impulse it is more likely that they have been prompted by the desire to get their sticky mitts on all that revenue.

However, I think complaints would be out of order. The trade in (ahem) 'personal' services between adults is not a crime and should not be treated as one, so although they may have to hand over a chunk of their earnings to the state at least the prostitutes (and their clients) will have been freed from the constant threat of arrest and prosecution. That is a good thing.

Aside from the fact that we can now justifiably and factually regard them as pimps, the Belgian government would undoubtedly argue that they cannot legitimise the sex industry without subjecting it to the same taxes that every other legitimate industry is forced to stump up. Nor should it be overlooked that gangster protection may prove cheaper than the Belgian state but tax-inspectors generally do not use razors as a means of enforcement.

I sincerely hope that HMG decides to follow the Belgian example on this issue but I don't expect they will do so anytime soon. Even in this day and age there is still a deeply-ingrained Sabbatarian disapproval of 'bawdiness' in this country that manifests itself as a very noisy and effective 'no' lobby at the merest mention of relaxing the laws on prostitution. I wish it were not so because even a taxed-and-regulated sex industry would be an improvement on the current arrangements.

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Cultural commentator - from a generally conservative vantage point - David Brooks has some interesting things to note about the popularity of men's magazines like Maxim, and about what this says about our culture. In a nutshell, he suggests that this shows that the advance of feminism and even political correctness (however you want to define that) may not have produced the results some commentators may have wanted.

He also makes the point, which to my mind rang true, that 'reactionary' attitudes are often not the preserve of the upper classes, but often most deeply held elsewhere, such as among America's rap music artists. Here's a nice quote:

We have a dynamic urban culture that treats women like whores and that regards owning a Mercedes as the highest possible human aspiration, and the leading articulators of progressive opinion have nothing to say about it. They can't seem to bring themselves to admit out loud that their most effective ideological enemies have turned out to be the same underprivileged people they wanted to rescue from oblivion.

This observation is hardly new. Yet even someone like yours truly, who likes to watch action movies, dreams of fast cars and feels no shame in enjoying pictures of lovely women, can feel a bit troubled about where things can be headed. I don't know if the kind of things Brooks frets about are problems that have to be 'fixed' in some way.

There definitely has been something of a backlash in parts of our culture against the dictates of political correctness. It doesn't surprise me all that much that the kind of mindless dreck published by the Maxim mags of this world is so popular. Maybe we are just observing the cultural equivalent of Newton's law at work - every action has an equal and opposite reaction. It applies to space rockets and it applies to culture as well, maybe.

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Student Amy Keel in the Harvard Crimson explains why she destroyed a phallic sculpture:

"As a student of Harvard University, neither I, nor any other woman, should have to see this obscene and grossly inappropriate thing on my way to class. No one should have to be subjected to an erect penis without his or her express permission or consent.

Many women and men, including myself, are the victims of sexual assault, child sexual abuse and rape. The unwanted image of an erect penis is an implied threat; it means that we, as women, must be subject to erect penises whether we like it or not. There was nothing "challenging" or "subversive" about the penis. The only thing it did was create an uncomfortable environment for the women of Harvard University."

Presumably she would not have enjoyed the parties at the very countercultural communal flat of my CMU grad school days. We had wild ones. If you are a true conservative rather than a libertarian, they were everything you feared was going on some where... and more.

There was one Halloween party where a large chunk of the Fine Arts department ended up in our flat. It was a night Fellini could have been proud of.

Some of the costumes were so creative I remember them to this day. There was a gay friend of the household from Globe Players, our Shakespeare company, who came as "The Dope Fairy". He wore a pink tutu, ballet tights and a Santa's bag. He moved about the party spreading happiness where ever he went... and then there were the four fellows from Painting and Sculpture. They really put effort into it. It must have taken days to build the chicken wire frames, paper mache them and do the painting. They came as organs. Male and Female.

Have you ever had a 6 foot breast bump into you at the punch bowl? Or seen a face staring out at you from the middle of a hairy...

Perhaps I'll skip that one.

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It seems some of the conservative media are getting all hot and bothered over sex on the campus. If the allegation that tax payer funds were used were true, I would agree on that very limited issue. Universities should not be State funded. Period and full stop. In any case, the University of Arizona event in question apparently wasn't campus funded:

The university insists none of their money went toward promoting the controversial festival. It was underwritten by a public-funded arts council and held both off- and on-campus.

Another even less objectionable event occured in Indiana:

Other universities have also lately had trouble maintaining the line between sex and education. At Indiana University, officials are probing whether any laws were broken when pornographic filmmakers from Shane's World entertainment, based in Van Nuys, Calif., used a campus dorm to make an adult movie last month.

It's hard to see what laws could be broken. I don't think any force was used by the filmmakers. Hell, if you were an undergrad and a porn starlet hopped into YOUR bed, which of the following would you say?

1. Help, Police! I'm being attacked by a sex goddess!
   
2. Thank you God!
   

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David Blunkett, Britain's blind Home Secretary proved his blindness extends far beyond mere eyes.

New sex offence laws to be unveiled by the Government next month could include a crackdown on date rape.

Under the proposed law, reportedly being introduced by Home Secretary David Blunkett, men accused of rape will have to prove they made efforts to ensure their sexual partners gave agreement.

They will no longer be able to rely on the defence of "honest belief", a legal loophole where suspects can be acquitted if they genuinely believed the alleged victim wanted sex.

What happened to the presumption of innocence? This is utter madness. Rape is an appalling crime, but how exactly can a guy who "genuinely believed the alleged victim wanted sex" somehow prove it to be a justified believe? Is he expected to get a second opinion from some third party before continuing at each stage? Perhaps lawyers like David Carr will find an new lucrative source of business as 'dating lawyers', sitting at the bottom of the bed and witnessing each declaration of consent.

Him: May I touch you there, my dear?
Her: Oooo, yes please!
Lawyer: Consent recorded.
Him: Oh yeah, baby...
Her: Ahhhhhh....
Lawyer: Umm, is that 'Ahhhh yes' or 'Ahhhhh no'?
Her: Yes! Yes!
Lawyer: Consent recorded.
Him: Lean back a bit...Oooooo!
Her: Mmmmm... a little lower darling.
Lawyer: Hold it! As your lawyer I must advise you that if you proceed, it could be construed as potentially non-consensual as she has clearly stated you are not touching her exactly where she wishes to be touched! Whilst not admitting anything to the generality of the foregoing on behalf of my client, I must advise my client to, er, withdrawn and seek written confirmation before continuing...

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The PC anti-sex brigade has claimed another victim. Chicago Tribune columnist Bob Greene has been forced to resign - I would call it fired - for sleeping with an of-age teenage girl over ten years ago.

Whatever happened to sexual liberation? The Berkeley Free Sex (and Speech) Movement? Is the Anglosphere being taken over by prudes? And if so, where did they come from? They sure as hell weren't in the left when I was, back 30 years ago when everyone was bonking away like an Austin Powers at the Plato's Cave nightclub.

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Adriana and Perry have discussed Leah McLaren's articles but the problem isn't that English men are all closet poofs. The problem is that Ms McLaren's sampling method was unscientific. "Old Etonian skinny boys make poor lovers" is hardly news. As I pointed out some weeks ago, she should have followed expert opinion: larger men have more sensitive mouths, lips and tongues. This makes us heartier eaters and no doubt better kissers. Typical of a North American health-freak snob to get it wrong.

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I knew it wouldn't take long for someone to respond to Leah McLaren's criticism of the English male. By the way, Perry, I was not merely amused by her remarks, I also agreed with them.

The gentleman defending Englishmen's pride and amorous skills sounds nice and perfectly serviceable. Nevertheless, Leah based the conclusions in her article on about a dozen 'dates'. Perhaps not enough to make sweeping statements about the entire male population of the British Isles, especially as there are always exceptions, but sufficient to get some insight into their 'mating habits'.

Instead of discrediting Ms McLaren's motives, one should ask - does any woman agree with her? To me her rather unkind analysis of an English male rang true not as an old adage about the reserve and reticence of the quintessential English gentleman, usually so painfully and embarrassingly at odds with his own emotions that only 'tragic' and 'desperate' situations a là Jane Austin novels force him to articulate them.

Leah may have been harsh in her judgement but yet... harsh. It all depends on what you are after. If she expected to be overtly fussed over, adored and ultimately made feel above all women, well she was probably not going to get that on the first or even the fifth date with an Englishman. In that sense, English men are perhaps slower but more solid once they sort out their sometimes convoluted emotions. (And I am talking about the kind of gentleman who wrote the article, I would not want to presume an emotional dimension in the laddish section of the population.)

Leah says she prefers a straightforward North American male who looks her in the eye telling her whatever she wants to hear. Good trick, if you can manage it. This is where the grain of truth in what she says is hidden. The English man does not understand women. Leah may have even been right about why that is. Separation from maternal affection at an early age, exclusively male company during the crucial formative stage, etc,..blah blah. None of this necessarily means that he cannot understand a particular woman once he decides to make the effort. What it does mean though is that he is indeed no match for the more romantically skilled nationalities, such as Italians for example. And believe you me this is not just another cliche.

To be fair though I'd much rather have a date with an English gentleman than an oily Don Juan.

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Canadian Leah McLaren's remarks about the sexuality of English males amused Adriana but a gentleman who actually dated the winsome Ms. McLaren has a rather less charitable view on why she wrote the things she did.

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This is what you get for having a female contributor to Samizdata - I don't think any of the guys would care to link to an article by Leah McLaren about The tragic ineptitude of the English male.

Leah is a Canadian reporter who moved to London and found her 'dating' experience profoundly inadequate. If you are an English male and thinking well, perhaps, it's just her, she wasn't interesting, attractive, sexy, blah, blah, blah enough, don't even go there. She is right whether you like it or not!

Obviously, there are exceptions, I hasten to add in order to salvage my reputation and male egos of those who might take my emphatic agreement with Ms McLaren personally.

The truth of the matter is that the English male is confused by women in general, and by English women in particular. He handles foreign ones better, simply because he can be more patronising to them, especially if their first language is not English....Ouch! I know that hurt.

The trick of a quasi-normal interaction with an English male is to stop behaving as a woman and just be a person easy to talk to. Generally, it works provided they can get past certain features of the female anatomy. Obviously, this approach is not suitable for 'dating' and Leah may have to stick with North American ex-pats. Good to hear that things have really changed there over the last 10 years...

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Blogger Susanna Cornett disagreed with my earlier post Free love or fight

Here's the reality: Believing there are appropriate and inappropriate contexts for sexual activity that should be socially enforced is not inherently "anti-sexual", and no more or less than what Amon does. Maybe conservatives and libertarians are more alike than he thinks.

If I want to go on the road with a rock band and over the course of 10 years sleep with 1000 women (like at least one heavy metal star claims), and if all were willing and if I have taken appropriate precautions against the negative outcomes, then it is my prerogative to live that lifestyle. I have used no force, I have coerced no one, and I've had a jolly good ten years.

If a well known gay blogger suddenly decided he wanted quantity and variety and went to gay orgies every night, but took precautions then that is his business.

It is true that I would call for the repeal of all laws of victimless crimes. I'd also call for the removal of all public assistance for those who partake of those life styles and get burnt. You are free to do it - but on your own shilling.

I have no problem with nonviolent social enforcement. If I live in your town and you absolutely hate my life style, you don't have to talk to me or do business with me. If enough people agree with you, I might find it best to move elsewhere.

The government has no place whatever in sexual matters.

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Dale Amon is someone with whom I actually have an unusually high degree of agreement on many many issues. In his article Free love or fight! however, I find myself agreeing with his conclusions only partly and even that for rather different reasons.

Whilst he is quite correct that there are elements of the Republican Party in the USA which are supportive of profoundly repressive actions by the state regarding sexual freedoms, I am not sure the issue of abortion comes under the category of 'sexual freedoms' at all. It is a contentious issue pertaining to definitions of life and death rather than sex, which whilst the proximate cause, is a separate issue.

Similarly I know many Republicans who are very libertarian regarding matters of sexual liberty... profoundly so in fact, taking the view that provided possible results of sex such as disease and pregnancy are treated responsibly and of accepted consequence, then the fact a person might like to have wild monkey sex is none of any one else's business. The 'Ashcroft' faction does not define the entire Republican Party's views on sex.

Of course there is indeed a certain paleo-conservative constituency within Republicanism in the USA which is inimical to libertarian values on many issues... but then I would argue they are just as inimical to neo-conservative values. Similarly there is a large and just as toxic 'anti-sex' element within the US Democratic Party, largely drawn from their still large number of paleo-feminist supporters. In reality I suspect the Democratic Party's infection with Political Correctness is probably the greater threat to sexual freedoms (abortion is another issue entirely) than the Republican Puritan elements will ever be.

I am convinced that libertarians can indeed find significant elements within both the Democratic and Republican Party with whom to work, based on the inherent contradictions of these philosophically fuzzy groups that make a subversivist approach both practical and productive.

My worry about whether libertarians can actually find any common ground in the short term with mainstream Republicanism is more due to the fact it is becoming clear that George Bush is just another economically incoherent crypto-Keynsian. For all his talk about free trade, he has added not just steel tariffs but also wood tariffs against Canada, honey tariffs against Argentina, textile tariffs against Pakistan and sugar tariffs against Mexico... never mind that Mexico and Canada are NAFTA members.

I shall blog another article soon about the economic and political harm being done by the US government not just in their own country but also elsewhere, as they undermine the very people they should be supporting.

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In his Weekly Standard article Condi Crazy, Lee Bockthorn goes straight to the heart of why I never have and never, ever will vote for a Republican:

But no matter how much these pro-choice Republicans whine, the GOP will always be a pro-life party. Why? Because the abortion issue goes to the heart of what both major parties are about. For Democrats, it's a proxy for their entire worldview regarding sexual freedom and unfettered moral autonomy. For Republicans, being pro-life is about remaining the party of Lincoln: Just like slavery, unlimited abortion on demand threatens equality (and thus liberty) by denying a class of human beings their inalienable rights and equal dignity merely because it is convenient to do so.

It is not even the abortion issue per-se that angers me. Libertarians are split across the issue. I'm solidly pro-choice: others are not. That's fine so long as we all agree to keep the State out of it. What is key is Mr Bockhorn sees Republicans as inherently anti-sexual. I am profoundly pro-sexual freedom and unfettered moral autonomy... within the limits consensual activity and personal responsibility for the results. Some libertarians may prefer a more "traditional" family, but they would never consider ramming it down my throat.

The quote shows how fundamentally flawed it is to ever think we as Libertarians can accomplish anything at all with the Republicans.

We just don't have all that much in common.

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Sometimes I leap to defend libertarian ideas with a glad cry, filled with the joy of battle. And sometimes I do it with a peg on my nose, scarcely able to believe that it is my fingers doing the typing. In the latter spirit do I second the Brian Micklethwait line in an earlier post. Incest between adults falls into the category of wrong (and in my view impious, and, no, I am not joking or posing when I use that word) actions that nonetheless should not be illegal.

I did not enjoy writing that, but it got me thinking. Might a libertarian society be more, not less conformist than our present one? A favourite theme of mine is the coming return of the age of the verbal oath made in person. For the last few hundred years we have leant on the crutch of documentary or camera proof but the time is coming when technology will allow us to fake anything. Then, my friends, a man's word had better be his bond, at least if he wants to borrow money. The only way of telling who is creditworthy will be personal recommendation. Well, in a similar way, we have leant on the crutch of law to regulate our social relations. Should that crutch be removed, a man or a woman's reputation may once again be his or her most precious possession. And since reputation is decided by others, public opinion will matter more.