Actually, Countess, you also said:

"This is because there is no direct female equivalent of those persons of male gender of the persuasion that women are, per se, inferior to them and created purely for them to look at (and down on)."

It seems there is.

You have entirely over-reacted to a passing comment. Back when we were young and our hormones rampant we all went to folk clubs to score (by which, this time, I refer to sex, although other scoring was not unknown either). The males did it, the females did it, the others of either type did it. We all did it. Each of us showed out, as best we could, for sexual partners of the preferred gender. We all kept an eye out for it.

The Hagstrom acoustic brochure was based on it - a leggy (female) blonde with a Hagstrom J-45.

The Daion acoustic brochure was based on it - the "Love at first Cmaj7" brochure.

Both still sell on ebay.

It happened to the chap who was the president before me of my hall at university. He went to a folk club, and there was a girl there, and both agreed they saw nothing else but each other all night.

It happened to Jacqui and me. We were sort of going out together, and one night we went to a folk club (Man of Kent, Rainham, Kent) and it was a bit tricky in that her husband was the most significant guitarist there that night (not exactly "guest" 'cos it wasn't a guest night, but you know) and damned cupid chose that night to twang so that we had the very unsettling experience of each other (she and I, not her husband) seeming a bit brighter and a bit more in focus than he rest of the room. We grew out of it later! You might have known her - very involved in the old Phoebus Wakes at the Rising Sun in Catford, resident NTMC, for a while sang pro with a trad harmony band rather like the Young Tradition, called "the Chapmen".

Two gay friends of mine, rathre more recently, reported being a little unsettled at a Joan Armatrading concert when the person of gender (well, actually, they said "Diesel Dyke") next to them yelled out "Oooh Joan, I'm coming".

It isn't necessary to knock it. The odd flip comment does not mean we are all suddenly going to start behaving as if we leapt off the pages of a John Norman "novel" from the Gorean cycle. Chill!

Flirtation in its many forms is part of the process by which we discover if a person to whom we are attracted is attracted by us. It can get pretty direct at times - remember Peter Andre showing Jordan his dick on prime-time TV? I had a friend who found a piece of paper with a girl's name and phone number on, in his underpants one morning, and he couldn't remember how they got there....

It doesn't often happen to me these days but even I have been pretty directly jumped by women at folk events. I wasn't really offered the option of politely making an excuse and leaving. It was either be rude (or at least insensitive) or go along with it.

Don't be the only one left out! Come to Knockholt and join in (but not if you are going to poison the atmosphere, there has been one elderly woman (technically a Lady, since she has some rank) there with her toyboy who has been rather a pain some years) the drinking and song!