Re: Brian Ribbon

i appreciate your response and you sharing the text i was referring to, but i think you are missing a crucial point: that you ARE getting stuck in what patriarchy has often done: radically objectifying such a kid, stranger or not. (Anyway, that's how it comes across to me.) That you are focused on what YOU WANT (your so-confined desire's Frame of References), not what HE wants or may be oriented to (even in your story he is not asking you or showing any sort of such interest!). So i think by such statements you are NOT LISTENING to his OWN intuition and desires for what he wants and are therefore SETTING A BAD EXAMPLE! Maybe you wish to liberate him, but where is that liberation? WHEN is it? Sex can liberate but not without meaningful communication! (i would think, based on your otherwise interesting blog posts, that you would agree with me.) i think you should think long and serious about this kind of thing and what is supposedly "normal" and your attempts to communicate such to the public on your blog, etc. (just because "most men" seem to be WAY TOO ALIENATED from groanup gay men or 'straight' women doesn't mean its even close to "good" - or our best!) Because to not take on your mindset on this one is to weaken your bigger picture arguments! Because i think you come across this time around as not so liberatory as you'd like to think. Btw, David Thorstad would agree with you. He (like several other NAMBLA members, it seems to me) used to think that "sex is good" period. No communications, no explanations "needed". Sex to him was "No Big Deal" (and this DOES merit discussion!) and he always used to sneer and scoff at me, saying i was much too sentimental about it. Too sensitive. Etc. Not like how he chose to see the tough exteriors of teenagers. And i can agree to an extent WITHOUT agreeing that engaging them in such rather callous interactions (along "the Four F's" kind of so-called wisdom) is "good" all by itself. (Surely fitting gay 'norm', tho; i.e. One Night Stand Culture made Under Duress for so long.) But i think of him and his generation (coming out of the World war generations, notably) as the MOST PATRIARCHAL, the most aloof, the most ALIENATED. In other words, a MOST unfeeling, uncaring, un-empathizing group of men. Whom were forced to sublimate their OWN humanity in order to survive and thrive. Granted, war's insanities have a way of manufacturing such persons! But many men do not think of this as "important" and thus, i have to agree with the liberation feminists in resisting such! And becoming a sort of "thorn" in the proverbial "foot" of patriarchally-challenged thinking by saying WHAT I REALLY THINK!