Dave Bryant: Your analogy might fly if paddymac had ever come back to post a statement saying that he didn't mean to be offensive or demeaning toward women. However, his posting history indicates that his August 12th statement that I referred to above, to the effect that anyone who didn't see his "feminine shaves" thread as beautiful or humorous is some sort of an "-ist", was his most recent post to date. I'm not "standing on a chair" straining to see something that isn't there; the only thing that isn't there is another post from paddymac. I must conclude that he intended to be provocative, and it worked; some of us have been provoked to anger!

I'm really disappointed by some of the posts from male Mudcat members that I'm seeing here; if the comparatively liberal folk community thinks that women should "drop the matter" and put-up-and-shut-up rather than speak out when they feel they're being degraded as a group, then maybe our culture isn't so far removed from that of Chaucer's day after all.