Shannon- Good for you for sticking to your principles. I have mostly male friends as well with 2 or 3 female friends. My oldest son is the same age as you and he won't date some of the women in his age group because of how they dress. What a lot of younger females don't seem to understand is when you dress with all the goodies on display, you do get the attention, but it's never the "right" attention-especially at work. Where I work there is one other female who is 25. Tight jeans, accompanied by stilettos and a down to there shirt get her a lot of attention. She made a comment to me about how our employer was talking to her chest the other day. I said what do you expect when you place it all out there for everyone to see? How can you expect people to get past what you're showing and listen to what you are saying? Me, I'd rather have people listen to me than stare at my chest. Next day she came to work dressed a bit more professionally. Smart girl in more ways than one.

As I said, the word equality was used initially to point out how some females act like pigs in public. Equal to how some men act. And I still say public adjusting by men should get them fined or some such. Nothing worse than a guy talking to you and suddenly reaching down and making an adjustment. "Do I know you that well?" I think not. While I understand it needs to be done, excuse yourself and go take care of business.

Truly great madness cannot be achieved without significant intelligence.

Don't worry about the generic "you" issue, that's how I take the word by default. Seems to be used that way more in Oz than overseas from the number of offences taken on forums though. The third person is status quo here. A true Aussie bloke never gets his feelings hurt. "Jeez, that's sad! A bloke could get upset, if he turned his mind to it!"

I have a different take on the multiple layers of gender, and one I think is much simpler.

I get really pissed off when I hear a man is "getting in touch with his feminine side" (or the reverse in whatever form it may take). We have no feminine side. Women have no masculine side. We have male or female physiologies. We learn social behaviours. I accept that what we call "gay" is simply part of a given person't personality, if you like.

What the politically fashionable self-diagnosing types imply is that some behaviours are male or female by nature, an attitude which, in the words of one of Orly's kids, belongs on the stupid pile.

Nurturing isn't the prerogative of women. Enjoying fiddling with an engine isn't copyright to men. They simply fall among many possible capabilities that it's good for everyone to have a working acquaintance with. As long as we categorise activities according to gender, gender bias will survive. So will the repertoire of foolish pigeonholing such as "he's such a girl" and "she's a bit butch".

About 30 years ago the "Notebooks of Lazarus Long" began circulating in sci-fi circles, and I liked them enough to keep a copy. They are aphorisms attributed to a space travelling character who achieved immortality. A favourite among them, possibly appropriate here, is this;

Worth a read - a few are dated, but an intelligent readership of the better forums will probably enjoy them.

For the record, I try to do my "adjusting" without an audience. Shannon, superb attitude! Being who you are, not what the group thinks, raises us above the hive-mind that I am sure society finds easier to manage!