In the past week, not one, but two men have written columns that suggest that men are just acting naturally if they get aggressive with women.  Rape, these men say, is just a natural instinct that we're suppressing.

First up is Scott Adams.  In his blog, he wrote an entry titled "Pegs and Holes."  Salon has done a pretty good deconstruction of the entry, but here's the most relevant part of it.  "Society is organized in such a way that the natural instincts of men are shameful and criminal while the natural instincts of women are mostly legal and acceptable."  This has resulted, he contends, in a "society [that] has evolved to keep males in a state of continuous unfulfilled urges, more commonly known as unhappiness."

Pretty damn insulting, if you ask me.  What Adams is saying is that if there were no laws prohibiting it, I'd be running around downtown San Diego, finding attractive women, beating them over the head with a baseball bat, and raping their unconscious bodies.  Or maybe I wouldn't be that savage, and I'd just chloroform them or drug them into a catatonic state so that I could have my way with them.

It's only the law, Adams contends, that's keeping me from running across the street to my local Hooter's, ripping off the woman's tops and exposing those hooters, and having my way with them on the bar.  I am supressing my instincts because I don't want to go to jail, and because of that, I'm unhappy.

Whatever.  And thanks for making me out to be a savage that belongs in a cage.

Adding fuel to the fire is Dan Rottenberg, of Philadelphia's Broad Street Review.  As some of you may know, an award winning reporter for CBS, Lara Logan, was sexually assaulted while covering the protests and riots in Egypt.  Now, nobody will condone or excuse the assault, and it does kind of add credence to what Adams contends -- that in a lawless environment, some men will take advantage of the situation to do disgusting and sickening things to women.

Rottenberg produced a picture of Logan in a low cut dress, which she wore to a black tie event.  He then asked the question "What message was the TV journalist Lara Logan sending here?"  Rottenberg then went with the "men are savages" theory, saying "Earth to liberated women: When you display legs, thighs or cleavage, some liberated men will see it as a sign that you feel good about yourself and your sexuality. But most men will see it as a sign that you want to get laid."

Actually, this man sees it as neither.  I can go to the beach right now and see women in pretty much just their underwear.  It doesn't make me think, hey, she wants to get laid, or hey, she's feeling liberated and good about herself and her sexuality. It just means, well, she's wearing a bikini. 

Same thing if I go out tonight and a woman's wearing a cocktail dress that shows a little cleavage and her legs.  It doesn't mean she wants to get laid, although on a Friday night in the Gaslamp, she very well may.  It doesn't mean she's feeling good about herself and her sexuality.  It just means she's wearing a cocktail dress that shows a little cleavage and her legs.

The kicker in Rottenberg's piece, though was this.  He said "Don’t trust your male friends. Don’t go to a man’s home at night unless you’re prepared to have sex with him."

You have got to be kidding me.  I've got plenty of female friends that I'd never want to sleep with.  Some of them are married, or dating people, and thus off limits.  Some of them I am not attracted to.  Truth be told, there aren't that many women that I really would like to have sex with. 

Confession time here -- Lara Logan is one of the women who I would.  Look at that picture.  She's very attractive, and she's smart, and she's gutsy.  But just because I'd like to hook up with her doesn't mean that I'd rape her.  And if she did come over to my apartment tonight -- yeah, right -- if she wasn't up for a roll in the hay, I wouldn't rape her.  And that's not because of the law, it's just because, well, consensual sex is hard enough to make good.

Forced sex, where you've got to hold down the victim at the same time you're trying to get off, has got to be nightmare.

Adams and Rottenberg need to stop insulting their fellow men.  We do have a desire to mate with as many women as we can.  That's what helps ensure our genetic code is passed down to future generations, and that's what keeps the species going.

But we also have another instinct -- to seek pleasure and to avoid pain.  I can't imagine that nonconsensual sex would be pleasurable.  It'd be a lot of work for not a lot of pleasure.  Honestly, it'd probably be easier to just head on over to bigboobs.com and find something that we could spank the monkey to.

And maybe that -- not society, not whether a woman is dressed sexy or not, not laws -- is what keeps us in check.  It's another instinct telling us, no, don't do that.

Whatever it is, I don't like people like Adams and Rottenberg portraying me as a savage who is only kept from rape and sexual assault by laws.

I am a man.  Those who say that men are savages are not.  Don't insult my manhood just because you don't have any.