JUST SAY NO

Blanche is my dog. She's a puppy and wants all the big grown-up boy dogs to like her. So she goes and wags her tail and licks them and they growl and tell her in so many doggie ways that she's a pest and to get lost. The guy dogs are busy knocking each other around to see who is the top dog, getting ready for the day when a female in season blows by. Now, this is not likely to happen at an LA dog park, where most of the dogs are fixed and the seasons never change. But dogs are the quintessence of faithfulness, and their faith is no more swayed by science than any other true believer's. If you hump it, you will come.

Blanche, in a natural dog universe, would find herself one day the center of that universe, her season having arrived. Suddenly the big boy dogs would be lining up for her attention. And such is Mother Nature's sense of humor, that Blanche would now view her suitors as pests, at least for a while. She would snap and reject them until she was good and ready, and only then go for a dog of her preference, established pecking order notwithstanding. She wouldn't need to earn her status as the Most Important Dog in the Park. Nature would give it to her free, twice a year. Status comes as a part of her sex.

Now, what made us humans not be animals any more is that us females stopped going into heat so we no longer had a biological need to say yes to the males, so if they wanted to get laid they had to actually please us. Give us presents. Build us houses. And pretty soon you got the Taj Mahal and Faberge Eggs. What is civilization but a large plan to decide who gets access to the most beautiful women?

But some women only get the first part where Blanche is now, the puppy stage, where the boys interested in establishing rank are not interested in her, because no matter what she does, she can not confer rank. Some women get all hurt and confused by this, wanting to compete for rank with the men instead of remembering she is the point of rank and to rise above it. And to remind men of why they strive.

This is why women have a duty to civilization to say no to men more often than they say yes. Make him have to work harder to get that yes. When he complains that taxes are killing him and regulations have stripped his profits and couldn't you just love him for himself, just knit your brow and explain you have a headache. Soon, like 3M did after the Clean Air act was passed, he'll find a way to turn a profit from those regulations, and be showing up at your door with a pearl and ruby brooch to swoon over. He just needed a little incentive, and that's you saying no. Don't do it for your own selfish needs. Do it for civilization.