Most men are good fellows who would honestly rather give pleasure to their partners than not, if only out of vanity. The new sexual chivalry, however, threatens the male with the dreaded old failure to get it up, and also with failure to keep it up for the long process of his partner's excitement, as well as failure to please even when he does.

Suddenly, it's no longer altogether normal or fair for a man to fuck like a man, and he's likely to be scolded for it if he insists upon it his way, or if he knows no other way, or if there is no other way, or if he is reluctant to make love in an unmanly way because - whatever trendy folk advocate - he really does not want to be effeminate, least of all in bed.

Intercourse is an aggressive act, requiring physical strength and even a degree of hostility. Physical penetration would be a painful abasement for a heterosexual man, even if he happened to be attracted to it for reasons of his own. He doesn't offer such indignity to a friend, or put a friend in place with head down, ass up, tongue first, legs apart, all the positions the male considers at the very least undignified when he considers them coolly. Some degree of audacity is necessary to any male who wants to get it up, and the closer a female comes to equality, the more difficult it is for him to put her in the postures of his sexual fantasies. The female to some extent probably has to remain an alien of strange, even repellent appetites, so she can be turned into all-cunt. Otherwise, she may reverse the procedure to which mankind owes its continuing existence, and subject him to dehumanizing humiliation.

Sex is not love for a man. In his fantasies he designs a sexual accomplice, not a permanent lover. Over and over again the fiction in men's soft-porn magazines embroiders the male romantic ideal: an erotic encounter with a gorgeous wanton who goes off into the sunset alone without leaving so much as a glass slipper under the bed.

Not long afterward, our impresario decided to start the first English girlie magazine, and overnight I found myself no longer a publicist, rather one of an editorial board poring over transparencies of women with no clothes on. Our biggest problem was not finding women who would strip for the camera, it was in stopping those who shouldn't. Droves of females applied in answer to our advertisement. We saw photographs of naked housewives, naked secretaries, naked bank clerks and schoolgirls, as well as a lot of professional strippers, taut and depilated as marble.

After a few weeks, I began to understand what the men preferred in stroke-princesses. While I always chose bones, strong lines, and faces that looked as if they could spit in an eye at twenty paces, my male colleagues went for the dimple, the pout, and the pink. When it came to their sexual icons they liked a tootsie who advertised her availability yet managed to persuade each voyeur it was for him alone she was arching her back and sweeping her hair up from the back of her neck. They wanted neither a threat nor a victim, only quality of cheerful acquiescence I soon learned to recognize, a face and posture that promised wholehearted, unquestioning acceptance of whatever was on offer: the sort of girl a man could love and leave, simply by turning a page. The smallest trace of embarrassment in the girl's smile or in her eyes embarrassed the men, any hint of the film star's self satisfied narcissism also put them off, and so did the sleek, costly beauty of a fashion model.

Angry feminists say pornography demeans women by presenting them as sex objects, yet hundreds of women write to advice columns complaining that their boyfriend's pornography makes them feel they aren't sex object enough. It isn't easy for any woman to understand the male's atavistic gusto or his quick, infallible celebration before the image of cunt. As long as women see sex as love they are bound to be miffed when men offer to the open air what they feel should be pledged to them.

Current demands make it almost impossible for a man to do the right thing sexually without sacrificing freedom, independence, robust maleness, pleasure and hilarity, to the female's cry for fidelity, eternal love, security, and, more recently, equality from acts perpetrated by the human penis. It also confuses any thoughtful man that women advertise loudly for mates who are considerate, gentle, full of foreplay and respect, and then they fantasize and fall for men who are bold, overbearing, "firmly shaped," self-assured, wicked, and real fuckers.

Maybe some day the female's dream of intercourse as a rapturous, exclusive, eternal expression of true love, separate from lust or procreation, will bring the sexes into glorious unity; for the moment, however, her passionate extortion is increasing the market for hard porn and divorce lawyers, as men are finding it ever more difficult to squeeze themselves and their erections into the shrinking maneuvering space between being a wimp or being a rapist.

Wedding bells summon a man back to the nursery from the playground this whole planet used to be for him, and the marriage license is seen by his bride as a permit to begin his reformation and transformation into husband.

"In-Love" is unquestionably a form of temporary insanity corresponding roughly to the in-heat frenzy of other animals. No intelligent person would set up a corner shop in such a manner, let alone a household and a new line in human beings.

Most young men fall in love where it flatters them and then marry out of other weaknesses. A man has his reasons to marry, good or bad. A woman, however, is probably marrying out of an impossible romance. She expects security and fidelity, loving sex, constant attention, flowing communication, heaps of sensitized emoting, a house, adorable babies, a decent car and, having been liberated, she expects equality too, as if it were his to give. Altogether, she requires everything unliberated womankind ever did from marriage, and a lot more. What she brings to the match, however is considerably less than women have in the past. Sometimes, she'll cook on alternate nights and wash half the dishes; often she will earn less than her husband though she'll spend as much; and for children, she'll have someday, only not yet.

After the first delirium, marriage becomes a battle between two egos. Generally, his takes a bigger beating, because he had more to begin with. The woman who made him feel a giant is making him feel a mouse who has taken the cheese.

A man's bride will one day begin to tell her husband that he hasn't any feelings and is not capable of understanding what she feels. It's not easy for him, hating scenes as he does, to get through to a woman who is in the throes of being sensitive, or to tell her truthfully that he does have feelings; he is feeling trapped, impotent, restless and scared. Her swift, angry reactions censor anything he says that she cannot bear to hear. From this point on, he will probably begin to withdraw, possibly shouting those classic words of Mantalk to a frenzied woman: "You're Crazy!," which actually means she's driving him mad.

There is a general pattern to most marriages: long honeymoon, followed by short turbulence, another long honeymoon, more turbulence, shorter honeymoons, longer turbulence, babies, upheaval, disappointment, possible infidelities, turbulence, and then at last if it is ever to arrive, the calm of two chastened wills, not ecstatically happy perhaps, certainly happier than they could ever be apart. It seems a shame that marriage can't be saved as a retirement plan for sensible grown-ups after the children have left home.