But nowadays, things are getting unnecessarily complicated, time-honored distinctions have been blurred and flavor-of-the-month trends are endlessly analyzed in order to satisfy the whims of heaven-knows-what special interest group. Nowhere is this more torturously evident than in the discussion of the alleged changing roles of the sexes and the rumored emergence of women into positions of prominence.

Now I'm old enough to remember the idyllic days of terminally perky, overgrown Girl Scouts who stirred loins with their virginal prissiness and delivered chaste, yet passionate, kisses with one high-heeled foot bent in the air. Actually, I'm a proud product of those times and have turned out pretty well, thank you. All-in-all, it was an era when everything remained, no pun intended, on the up and up. Back then, if a woman wasn't careful of the messages she put out, at least someone had the decency to pin a negative label on her that would brand her for life, making things easier for everyone.

All of this has changed for the worse, of course, and nowadays men find themselves surrounded by a gaggle of brainy, sexy and chic single women with great apartments and luxurious lifestyles. The only problem is that most of them are so secretly desperate for a man and a baby that they're constantly on the brink of becoming homicidal and suicidal psychotics with eating and shopping disorders. Worse, they look at you like you broke wind if you open the door for them, but still manage to excuse themselves to the powder room right as the dinner check arrives.

You don't have to be a genius to figure out that the lionesses' share of the blame for this situation lies with, as Rush Limbaugh would say, the "femi-nazis," who are hell-bent on unsexing women, extracting loving moms out of their homes and into combat boots, funding secular day care centers (where children are routinely molested) and roving the landscape in packs insisting on abortion-on-demand for all women, pregnant or not.

One of their number even wrote that men are incapable of progressing socially, but merely swing back and forth between isolation and gangbanging, which I felt callously failed to acknowledge the legion of God-fearing males committed to a simple, healthy life of obsessive voyeurism.

What is most troubling, however, about these misguided lasses is that, for example, they totally disregard nuggets of wisdom from truly successful women like Madonna, who counsels that today's woman would be wise not to play so hard to get, wear good perfume and "suck on your finger in the middle of dinner". To coin a phrase, they "just don't get it" that all this women's' lib nonsense is getting them nowhere.

I found reinforcement for this fact by skimming the introduction to Susan Faludi's Backlash in the library and found that she had accurately laid out the condition of those post-liberation women who selfishly wanted it all. Unless in my haste to not be caught reading such a book I misunderstood her findings, apparently her research indicated that almost all professional women are suffering from burnout and have succumbed to the infertility epidemic. She notes that most single women are grieving over the man shortage while shamelessly participating in a mass grovel for grooms that has them either begging for wedding bands from strangers or indiscriminately swinging sledge-hammers at reluctant bachelor friends.

Faludi goes on to observe that childless women are depressed, confused and hysterical while high-powered career women are being stricken with unprecedented outbreaks of stress-induced disorders, hair loss, alcoholism, heart attacks and comas. Having been enslaved by their liberation they have robbed themselves of the one thing upon which their happiness rests — men — and have consigned themselves to solitary nights, frozen dinners, closet drinking and futures as bag ladies.

That's about as far in the book as I got, but a friend told me that later on Faludi sort of takes everything back and blames the plight of women on a conspiracy of the religious right and the Reagan mentality. My guess is that what changed her mind was that at some point a female therapist convinced her she was sexually abused as a child. There's a lot of that kind of brain-washing going on nowadays, the same kind that also produced the universally-held-among-feminists assertion that the hatred of women is behind all fascism — an assumption that totally overlooks the genuine soft spot Hitler had for Eva Braun.

Trying to figure out what has led to all this "Year of the Woman" hysteria led me to take a closer look at the four high profile sexual harassment and rape cases that occurred within the past year or so and seemed to set the stage for all this nauseating hype. A little historical perspective enabled me to shed some light on who was actually responsible for all this sexual turmoil and where the blame really lies.

The case that set the tone for all this feminist whining and sulking was, of course, the Clarence Thomas fiasco. What my own scrupulous investigation surprisingly turned up — despite the Stalinist revisionism of the liberal media — was that Clarence had a rough life, mostly because of women. For starters, he had the colossal misfortune, after clawing his way to the top via affirmative action, to have a sister who humiliated him by going on welfare to take care of his grandmother, who apparently decided one day to become disabled for the sole purpose of disgracing her grandson in the eyes of his white bosses.

Then during his confirmation hearings, feminist women's groups (whose members were clearly resentful at being far too unattractive to ever be sexually harassed) attempted to administer a "high tech lynching" by trying to point out that — Long Dong Silver comparisons to the contrary — Thomas' most prominent appendage was his Pinocchio nose. Brother Clarence survived this assault only to find himself at home craning his neck looking up to a wife who had the nerve to dwarf him in height by several inches.

As far as his accuser goes, my research made it crystal clear that she was a spiritual descendant of the Salem witches and whose cool, thorough and detached testimony was proof positive she was lying in her teeth. Her professional jealousy and spinsterish loneliness enabled her to coldly concoct an evil story and then pass a lie detector test to boot. Sadly, as a spurned, typically delusional woman who regularly buttonholed passing joggers and then forever fantasized about them, she probably truly believed what she said.

While doing my homework on the William Kennedy Smith rape trial, I became aware that, when it came to women, young Willie's life was no bed of roses. With his father dead and two uncles gunned down, his fragile psyche was left in the hands of his mom and aunts who — along with the nuns from Mother Church —produced a tragically confused individual who was demonically driven to have sex beneath his mother's open window on a moonlit Good Friday night, yet could barely utter the word "penis" in the courtroom.

I also came to the conclusion that had his Uncle Teddy not been shackled with a mentally ill wife, while still physically suffering from his selfless attempt to save a drowning party girl, he might have been more of a help to the youngster. But with that name, wealth and those boyish good looks, Smith would have had so many women coming after him that he wouldn't be human if he didn't, from time to time, call one of them by the wrong name. How do you keep track, anyway? As a rich, single guy, they just wouldn't leave him alone nor would they take no for an answer.

I didn't have to do much investigation to surmise that as a struggling single woman, his accuser clearly sought attention, security and status — and would stop at nothing to get them. Based on her abortion, past failed relationships and unwillingness to cope with her father's understandable decision to abandon her, she was clearly angry at all men and would stop at nothing to get back at them. (I felt her weepy, emotional testimony was a dead giveaway that she was lying). Plus, on the night in question she was wearing Victoria's Secrets' underwear, a gift from her mother no less, which told me that the apple hadn't fallen very far from the tree.

Not only did she ruin a perfectly good drunk that night by talking about the loneliness of her pregnancy, but she had the gall to tell Willie that she initially liked him because he treated her as an equal. An equal? To a Kennedy? The word delusional doesn't quite cover that kind of thinking. No wonder the cops didn't believe her and made her tell her story five times before finding a few inconsistencies. Nor was it surprising that she went bananas when he called her a different name. (I saw Diane do the same thing to Sam on a Cheers rerun just last week).

While researching the Mike Tyson rape trial, lo and behold I discovered that women played a huge role in his life's hardship. After being dumped by his mother, young Mike had the misfortune to be preyed upon by a lonely white woman whose motives for taking him in remain a mystery and whose presence in his life clearly did a number on his identity.

Additionally, the champ was unable to rid himself of women who — after being on the receiving end of his butt and breast fondling, listening to his abusive language and reading about his admitted desire to rough them up — still brazenly refused to take responsibility for his behavior. In the face of this relentless insensitivity, Tyson remained, right up until his sentencing by an Old Maid judge, a devout Christian who signed autographs in church.

The first question that struck me a I perused the profile of his accuser was, "What was a woman who teaches Sunday School doing in Mike Tyson's hotel room?" Further review, however, forced me to conclude that such an obvious woman of the world saw in young Mike a meal ticket for life. So after participating in the consensual lovemaking that she dreamed would win his heart and wallet forever, she became so enraged — because instead of proposing marriage, he refused to walk her down the stairs — that she totally manufactured a rape story, perjured herself in court and risked going to jail.

Look, as preposterous as it sounds, you don't have to go around the block more than once or twice to realize that hell hath no fury like an unescorted- down-the-stairs Sunday School teacher/woman of the world. Oh yeah, her much too controlled, much too perfect testimony was evidence enough in and of itself to convince me she was lying.

I will admit, however, that these two "rape" cases did prove that we've come a long way in dealing with the subject. Way back when, rape was considered to be a crime against a girl's father, but now we at least understand that no woman can be raped against her will and that rape happens primarily when a woman changes her mind afterwards. As an expert witness said in the Kennedy trial, "You can't thread a moving needle".

Besides, on a more general and common sense level, any fraternity pledge worth his paddle-reddened behind can recite to you that thrashing around, screaming, crying, and scratching mean she's turned on and that passing out constitutes consent. That's just Basic Sex 101.

The mention of thrashing around brings me to the final and most bizarre "harassment" case, the Tailhook incident. I will be mercifully brief in my analysis of this travesty. Here we have 26 women — who obviously never enjoyed being girls, who never felt pretty-oh-so-pretty and who clearly never got over their submarine-sized cases of penis envy — actually complaining about having attention lavished on them by a dreamy crew of Top Gunners.

  While reluctant to dignify this abomination with any further comments, I do have two simple questions. One, can you imagine, say, a trio of those squirming, mini-skirted babes who sit on the couch of the STUDS TV show — or any red-blooded American gal for that matter   —not wanting to run that tantalizing gantlet? Two, how do you think, my dear Miss Sailor Wannabees, a little harmless breast-fondling compares to the horrors of war?

Although initially reluctant to swim into this "Year of the Woman" maelstrom, I have to admit that the task has done nothing to alter my assumptions and has left me somewhat invigorated and thankful. Invigorated because my views as to who the culprits in society really are have been reinforced, and thankful that in the specific cases I mentioned there were no children produced from these alleged encounters.

Can you imagine what kind of mothers those women would be?

December, 1992