> On the other hand, I do see lots of young men these days who are also very
> comfortable with the power of women, and who have no problem relating to
> girls as mates. It doesn't occur to them not to, and it doesn't threaten
> their own sense of themselves as male. They are boys who have been raised
> with the assumption that women are human beings too and of as much
> consequence as girls, so the idea isn't a shock. So it goes both ways.
> Though I begin to wonder if that's just an Australian thing. US society
> seems in general much more macho and certainly much more militaristic.

I think the US is very mixed on all of this - obviously huge money goes into
military training for both men and women to become "a set of killer stares."
etc.
I think one of the issues is that young and older men who are comfortable
supporting the ambitions of their women friends, have some how become
uncomfortable supporting the legitimacy of their own ambitions (That 'giving
up' for the gander, translates into 'loosing one's goose.'  (Such is the
assumed self-degeneration of the male if he becomes a "house husband, stay
at home daddy" - instead of being perceived as a full human being, often
having lots of non-capitalist fun playing with kids, let alone doing a
shit-load of work.  (Independent, i.e. "Survivor" non-academic poets are
used to this treatment, too, I've noticed - as in, when you gonna get a real
job!) So it takes a lot of conviction to bold break the mold and achieve an
identity, etc.

But the internal crisis of many men who can no longer have an automatic leg
up over women - as you suggest, Alison - is probably a "big time thing"
about the globe. Getting to a new integration of the masculine and feminine
is a tough business for men, and I suspect women as well. Hysteria- and
murder - trumps a bunch - tho I was not aware of suicides on account of it.

In 1975 I edited an issue of my magazine, Shocks, with a subtitle, "men
looking at the women in themselves, women looking at the men in themselves"
or some such. Frankly, other than getting a ton of entries from people that
were real twisted or damaged - it seemed - around sexual/gender issues, we
got very little good stuff. In the world at large, it seemed, only David
Bowie had his body/song on the pulse. And, boy, did he have to move fast.

Why not imagine, for a moment, Donald Rumsfeld in serious drag! (I guess
that's a diversion!)

Stephen Vincent