Thursday, April 19, 2012

Katie Roiphe in Newsweek on women's sexual fantasies

Is this a trend? Well, a long time ago, I read an interview with the late rocker Gerry Rafferty, in which he used the word "factoid". Nowadays, factoid just means a bit of trivia, but he tried to deploy it with the following meaning: Factoid: n, An event, trend, or set of circumstances which does not exist, except in newsprint. I thought that was a very clever and useful mot, and I'm sorry it never caught on. I suspect it applies in this case, too. But there's no doubt the practices Ms. Roiphe ticks off are real, of course. I don't envy their practitioners. Being a happily and securely married head of a nuclear family, I don't think I'm missing a thing. There's one thing that sexual liberationists don't have that most other people do: A private life. Technical note: I don't know why I can't insert line breaks recently, my apologies for the jammed-up layout.