A Sign Of A Better Future

Men would not date women thirty years
younger than them and young women
would have the confidence to say
to these men when the men propositioned them
'Go and find woman your own age
with equal experience and greater maturity.'.

In a more gender balanced society we would not
have to know who was transgender among us,
and who was in the midst of changing their gender,
and where we knew we would care rather than
use the knowledge to excuse outrage and anger
to flood the social media with, to trigger point.

In a more gender balanced society fewer companies
would demand to know the contents of an applicants
birth certificate before deciding how to view them.

In a more gender balanced society the fact of 'being gay',
'being lesbian' or being any particular identity 
other than pair-bonded heterosexual whom the law
was designed to approve of-one of each gender-
would not be an issue and a same sex bond
can be as much for life as any other kind of attachment.

Such a society seems a long way off,
but where you see glimpses of it
add them to all the other signs 
you share of hope for a better future.     

The Pain We Don't Need

Sex is where tragedy
turns most easily to farce,
which is why sexual abstinence
is partly abstaining from tragedy.

Such abstinence is less about morality,
though the reasons given for the choice
will always be presented in that framework,
and more about erring on the side of caution,
the better to abstain from unnecessary pain.

Reproduction

When 'moralists' seek to control those
they suppose to be weaker than themselves
by saying that sexual intimacy is dangerous,
those who are supposedly weaker presume
that the sex is where the dangers lives.

This is what makes want to live dangerously.

But the danger is less in the sexual activity in itself,
and much more in the lies that multiply around it.

Which is why the greatest truth lives in celibacy.

Old News Worth Repeating

I can never get over my surprise
every time I am told lies
about sex and power
by men who I hoped knew better.

When men lie their lies seem so sexy
to them in them that from there
it is a short step to tell more lies,
but this time about sex
to their captive audience,
and this multiplies
the imagined effect of the sexiness.

The deeper they go into these routines
the bigger the least recognised effect
-how they deceive themselves-becomes.

I wish they would learn the hard way,
without their fantasy erections,
the purpose for human affections.