A Simple Correction

We had her before us, we the men who are her admirers and who therefore have an interest in the health of her sexual desires, and we the women who were angry about her impertinence. We had tricked her into coming before us, I'll admit it; and after all, who were we to elect ourselves as some sort of council that sits in judgement over her behaviour? But of course that's what all of us do all of the time - and we'll be in trouble if ever we stop making judgements and stop caring that others all around us are plainly in the wrong. Despite all this obvious common-sense, when she realised what we were up to (with our little moral council) she came at us, screaming at the top of her voice and kicking out her heels. We kept our nerve and insisted she repeat the statements and questions she had been the author of.

She had written in the personal column, and implied a slur on normal men which neither we men nor we women were prepared to let her get away with. She had asked: 'Where are the decent men? In my marriage I always discouraged my husband from entering my bedroom. Where are those men who are not after only one thing: where are the decent men?'

It was quite easy really. Once we had taken her back to her twelfth year, once we had made her recall the knock her mother would give on her bedroom door, once she had heard again the enquiry, made in all seriousness, "Are you decent?" and once she had slid together her childhood bedroom and her adult bedroom (you must be decent in there) why then, at that moment, she could not avoid facing her little prejudice in all its silly nakedness.  

Why could mother have not asked: "Are you appropriate?" That may well have been what she in fact meant. May very well have been what she meant. Is this another woman too lazy to watch her words? I suppose I should know, for I hope this woman will be my mother-in-law before long. Her daughter and I 'set the date' some time ago. I fancy those ten minutes arguing with the council turned out to be rewarding for the woman - she became happy thereafter, finished writing to the personal column (I fancy I may have had something to do with that also) and now everything will be fine for me. It will be fine I assure you.