From: utzoo!decvax!decwrl!sun!gnu Newsgroups: net.women Title: Re: friends and lovers Article-I.D.: sun.210 Posted: Mon Mar 7 22:31:09 1983 Received: Tue Mar 8 07:42:03 1983 References: crimson.1469 Roberta Taussig was sad that Anton Aylward (and, by extension, other men) would not offer sexual closeness to some of his female friends. My own experience is that sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't -- but sometimes when it doesn't you are left without a friend. It seems to me that we've all been taught that sex is such a Big Deal (be it a positive or negative Deal) that when sex comes into the picture with someone we care about as a friend, the relationship can change in un-nice ways. I've avoided sexual things with friends because I'd rather keep the friendship going strong than risk it for some (small amount of) additional closeness gained by sex. Part of the problem here for men, in particular, is that "offering sexual closeness" to a woman is quite often not an acceptable thing to do. Why didn't any of Anton's female friends offer sex to him? Putting the man in the role of having sexual closeness offerred is pretty unusual (and nice), especially from close friends. I don't know if in general men deal with having to say "yes or no" better than women, but at least they don't have to fight their way thru fears about having it forced on them, being thought of as "loose", and all the other garbage we throw at women. John Gilmore, Sun Microsystems