I would like to believe that there is an extremely interesting story behind this one.

There is.

But let's just leave it for interpretation by men everywhere.

this reminds me of a very particular sad day, that became a very particular angry day.

There is nothing sadder than realizing in the afterglow, that you never got kissed on the lips, not even once.

That is how whores do it.

There is a hint.

He had poor dental hygiene or she was just tired of being used.

reading your haikus
always makes me stop and think -
Now, to comment more...

Oh my. Loaded. Funny. Dark.

i like

It is because men are clueless to the esoteric and mysterious needs of the woman.

Vac, I'm not so sure the need to feel cherished is either esoteric or mysterious. & You can give soft kisses without worrying about breath condition.
Good one ePriddy

I know why.

The needs may not be esoteric, but the means of communication are. I'm a man - show me a spot on a map and I'll find a way to get there and disappoint you.

so sad.

here! your kiss, mouth picture girl:

x nada

Because she is a man!

"It is because men are clueless to the esoteric and mysterious needs of the woman."

It is not even mysterious. Blow jobs fall off over the course of long term relationships in direct proportion to the decline in romantic kissing.

Tell that to your sons, fellas! And make a note of it yourselves.

Whores don't kiss on the mouth because it is an intimate act in relation to screwing.

Women want intimacy long term. So nobody ever ask that over-general, assuming-we-are-cogs-in-a-like-quantity, idiotic question again!

Women are more complicated than men. You may all want the same thing, or things if you count pizza as well, but varied women want varied things.

All of us, or at least all the ones I know, want one thing communally: to be kissed like we were 16 again, forever.

I'm happy you think so.

I wasn't able to give my ex-wife what she wanted. It wasn't intimacy or kisses or attention. It was another man.

But yeah, just give me blowjobs and pizza. That takes all the pain away.

I wasn't trying to be mean.

But a good man I know once told me, "Hit me over the head with it. Subtlety is lost on my kind."

I am convinced he was right except in the most unusual cases.

Your wife may vary.

You explanation makes this post more powerful. I'm glad that my hunch was confirmed. Thanks.

very sad. poignant.

Lovely, sad, and to borrow, dark.

I know that men aren't simple. I have been married to one for so long that I have known him longer than I haven't. That is a long time.

But when I say that women are more complicated, I mean that we organize our personal data in much more convoluted ways. Ask a woman to describe her relationships and they will all interlink. Like a complex social web of a spider with a very long memory.

Ask a man to describe his relationships, and they tend to remain distinct and straight forward. This isn't always an accurate picture, but if he starts talking about inter-relations in his life, I would check his gender brain chemistry. Men are less complicated.

Women don't make it more complicated, we process it that way. It is just the way we are.

But I will say it again, your wife may vary.

It is not better or worse, just different.

This haiku is actually mre complicated than I suggested, but I am going to leave it for interpretation.

I don't kiss and tell,
But lips fail more ways than one.
This knife cuts both ways.

having had both friendships and love relationships with both sides- I think I can accurately say that the women that I've known are more complicated than the men that I've known
not smarter, but more knowing, for lack of a better term- I have to spell things out less with women, and I get in trouble much much quicker with women

i like kissing

"I just would like to know what you think is physically different enough between men and women to be able to say that women are just more complicated. There are definitely social standards that are different that causes the formation of different kinds of relationships and different kinds of organization of these relationships based on social conventions of one kind or another. But this does not make women inherently more complicated. It just makes them different."
Aaron, you are smarter than me. That gotten out of the way- what is physically different between men and women is pretty apparent (even to toddlers- which can be embarrassing if you are the one minding them and they are running around 'discovering' the differences during a diaper change) and mirrored by internal chemicals that start chugging out during puberty.
We have evolved for different purposes (even being the same species) so we have different ways of going about the biological goal of reproducing. Men and women are not interchangeable. That doesn't mean when you divvy them up & all the men are going to be in one category and all the women in another, but on a sliding scale the majority of women are going to be on one side due to their chemical combination and the majority of men are going to be on the other side due to their chemical combination. Overlaying this women have different social skills drilled into them than men.

Aaron, look for a pm :)

Oh, please don't take this conversation offlist!
It is very interesting.

One of the reasons that we are more complicated is that we are driven by biological imperatives based on hormones, monthly biorhythms, and a perceptual capacity that is enhanced for childbearing and the etrnal vigilence that is mothering.

I smell more effectively than I did prior to giving birth, and better than the average man without that enhancement. Our senses are more finely attuned, according to scientists, not anecdotes.

Thusly, we process more data, as we sense more data. The bitstream coming into our systems is more sensitive and requires a more complicated organizational approach to the data. The connectivity between our left and right brains is more well-developed. Our sexual response involves more factors.

One subtext of this post was a response to rape. How many men caught that? But the women did, as evidenced by their comments.

And that is why I think it is biological, not personal or adaptive behavior.

Men are awesome. They built the infrastructure of modern civilization and I admire and enjoy all the roads and such. I especially love the internet. Women built our social structures based on interpersonal relationships. They are like the difference between Newtonian mechanics and metaphysics. NM are complicated and incredible, MP are frequently so esoteric as to be incomprehensible to most people, women included. The nature of this bifurcation of work is changing in the modern world, but most of the earth is not "modern", so it is still the way of it for most of the world.

We are different, starting from our biology and working out. And I am good with that. Just the nature of our interior plumbing and capacity to generate a placenta, make milk, and gestate...these things make us more complicated.

See "Ultra feminine" haiku to understand more about how great it is to be a girl, by the way.

More complicated has no "better" implications. Frankly, the short expo on penis envy would be, "God, wouldn't that be so much less complicated."

And on a lot of days, I would trade. But I am complicated that way!

Ok, Karen ran out on me before we could have another argument over this topic, but she classifies me as a cultural feminist. She considers herself a liberal feminist. I am going to put up synopses and links to the two different viewpoints that I think are at play here. I'm assuming that you are a liberal feminist, Aaron. If you aren't, straighten me out. We are not going to come to an agreement, I know that from living with Karen :) wives are good for that.

Ok, Cultural feminism as defined By Jone Johnson Lewis, About.com:
"Cultural feminism is a variety of feminism which emphasizes essential* differences between men and women, based on biological differences in reproductive capacity. Cultural feminism attributes to those differences distinctive and superior virtues in women. What women share, in this perspective, provides a basis for "sisterhood," or unity, solidarity and shared identity.

* The phrase "essential differences" refers to the belief that gender differences are part of the essence of females or males, that the differences are not chosen but are part of the nature of woman or man."

from Wiki: "Josefine Donovan argues that the nineteenth century journalist, critic and women's rights activist, Margaret Fuller, contributed to cultural feminism. She says that Fuller’s Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845) initiated the cultural feminist tradition. It stresses the emotional, intuitive side of knowledge and expresses an organic world view that is quite different from the mechanistic view of Enlightenment rationalists."

and remember the gender differences are not 2 distinct groups but sliding scale. I, for one, am probably heading off toward the male side of female. I know many men in the nursing program that are doing the opposite slide, although I wouldn't think of telling them that, because due to our society that would hardly be seen as a compliment.

straight from Wiki Liberal feminism:

"Liberal feminism, also known as mainstream feminism[citation needed] asserts the equality of men and women through political and legal reform. It is an individualistic form of feminism and theory, which focuses on women’s ability to show and maintain their equality through their own actions and choices. Liberal feminism looks at the personal interactions of men and women as the starting ground from which to transform society into a more gender-equitable place.

Liberal feminism tends to have a neutral vision towards different gender; it requires women to mold themselves to fit a citizenship that it perceived to have already been constructed in the welfare of men. Frequent criticisms of liberal feminism that suggest it overemphasizes equality, causing it to fail as a response to development of women’s citizenship. According to liberal feminists, all women are capable of asserting their ability to achieve equality, therefore it is possible for change to happen without altering the structure of society."

now you see why I wanted to do this pm :/ hope it's ok E

A weakness of liberal feminism is that it assumes that women want the same society that men have generated in their own self-interest. It implies that we want to have equal shares of the same social goods that they have prioritized in generating the social and cultural structures we have now. And I am assuming that the people controlling the money and power are responsible for the greater aspects of general culture.

Women don't necessarily want to buy into this system and be equal with the other rats in the race. The things that are valued in our current normal work environments and social structures are not in accordance witht he values of a lot of women, which explains why a lot of them/us opt out and stay at home with reservations and issues developing as a result.

The problem with cultural feminism is that there is an implacation that diversity allows for one set of features to be "better" than another. Adapted strategies are not better no matter how different they are from the mainstream. Different strategies in a system tend to be more or less effective, and that is about all you can say about it.

Regarding complexity, I would note that men have two x chromosomes, identical. And that women have an x and a y. That makes us more complex de facto, regardless of opinion.

Equality is not dependent on identical features. We can be two completely different animals (and I would say we are on many levels) and both deserve exactly the same rights and goods and services. Equality in the face of gross diversification is going to become more of a factor as we wncounter other intelligent life and as we acknowledge more of the intelligent life we already have encountered and not treated as such. (Consider the false dichotomy attached to masters and slaves or quarrelling ethnicities)

I went to Aaron's blog and noted a great similarity in his writing to the other friends that I argue with regularly about geeky science things. I would probably understand a lot more of it thatn he gives me credit for. Which calls in question his liberal feminism in situ versus in theory. ( I like you, Aaron, just to be clear. I think we have a very different perspective on this subject.)

And I am cool with this happening here. It is very interesting.

My capacity to type and think have no bearing on my ideas, none I tell you!!!!!

Oh Aaron, you complete me.

I enjoyed arguing with you. But I think you are right on the agreeing to disagree. I was only chiding you on the assuming I would not understand your blog.

Chiding, alas, has no emoticon. And so I am perpetually misunderstood online.

But it will have to do. Thanks for diving in. And to julie, for doing the heavy lifting.

There is an old post from beta called "feminine or feminist" by stellaa that would interest anyone who was interested in this one.
Feminine or feminist?

It got a little heated, but it was very interesting as well.

And to everyone else who also added to this most interesting conversation.

Actually, I prefer Alice Walker's term for feminist: Womanist.

Highly rated haiku.