Can we please put the feminist whining about slut/prude to rest? Pretty, pretty please?

It's dead. It died some time ago.

I am referring to this piece by Nigella Lawson, who writes a column for Guardian about a new study that shows, shocker of shockers, women are more inclined to have sex drunk than when they're sober. If Ms. Lawson had left her column at "duhhhhh" I would be nodding and laughing in agreement. But nooooooooooooo. She had to go on and rant that society is having a concerted effort to suppress women by not allowing them to accept their urges, such as sex.

She is upset about the "shock" people felt when they read the survey. She didn't provide any examples of this shock, she just said it was there and the shock is an example of how we seek to suppress womanly sexuality.

Suppress womanly sexuality? Men are trying to do this? Tell us who, please, and I'm certain that there are a number of men who would like to pay these people a visit. Most men do not have a problem with aggressive women, sexually or otherwise, anymore. Not some men or enlightened men or liberal men. Most men. Some men might prefer the silent woman, but, ahem, the "strong silent type" has been known to appeal to certain women, too, and I strongly doubt that's an attempt to supress masculinity.

Of course women, men too, tend to wild behaviour when drunk, but that must be the point. People drink for a number of reasons - I'm not talking about alcoholics here, which is a deeper issue - and one of them surely is to lose their inhibitions. And maybe that is why some consider even these tame findings alarming. Drunk women are looked upon more harshly than are drunk men because femininity - as a construct - relies on, is defined by, inhibition. What is natural - sexual appetite, anger, body hair - is deemed unfeminine. Being drunk is worse: it's a brazen refusal to be quiet, well-behaved and ladylike.

It's not surprising that many women, too, are ashamed of their behaviour when drunk, protesting that their actions are out of character, but people often need to have drink inside them in order to do what they want but wouldn't dare to do sober. This purportedly out of character behaviour might horrify them, but this hardly supports their claim. If they weren't so horrified, then maybe they could be more themselves when sober. While inhibitions aren't necessarily bad - civilisation in some parts rests on them - to go through life feeling that only certain behaviour is acceptable is almost guaranteed to lead to bouts of immoderation once restraints are loosened.

For women this is particularly difficult because we have been conditioned to believe that we are acceptable only when we are pleasing. Agreed, men who behave loutishly are scarcely nice to have around, but they are not rejected wholesale for bad behaviour. Indeed, a certain amount of forcefulness and loudness is thought to be masculine; boys will be boys. But what can girls be? Do we really have to sip from scant saucers of champagne giggling that the bubbles go up our nose?

Well cry me a fraggin' river. Some women have to get drunk before losing their inhibitions. But, as she says, "men too." At the Bleu Edmondson show on Saturday night, a girl in a green sweater caught my eye. I never pick up women in bars (though I've been picked up a couple times), but I'll tell you that just going up and talking to her seemed like a lot better idea at the end of the evening than it did at the beginning. Of course, I don't have gender repression to rely on as an excuse. Or, I guess, in a way I do. The way my mind works, and why I never pick up women in bars, is that I figure they get guys coming up to them looking to get some that I would seem like all the rest, even if my intentions were more pure (and being who I am, they are). So then do I get to whine about gender roles and how they screw up my social life because they inhibit me from just going up to every woman that catches my eye in a bar? No, because it's not gender roles, it's me. I could if I wanted to, but sans a whole lot of beer, I don't want to.

I'd be willing to bet that most women don't really care to just go up to a random man and take him home with her, either. Some want to, of course, and they probably do. If they don't, don't blame me (singularly or as a man). Let's just say a woman doing that is more likely to meet with success than a guy is. Unless of course she's looking for such with me, in which case she's going to be disappointed most likely. Oh wait, is that because she's aggressive and I don't like aggressive women because I'm hardwired not to and age-old gender oppression tells me not to? Or, more likely, is it because I'm just not interested in one night stands with random women? It's hard to tell, isn't it, since you don't know me or know what really goes through the mind of any man (only they individually know).

Which is why the way she frames the entire subject is a losing proposition. You can infer or dismiss anything by applying it sociologically to gender. If a woman picks up a man in a bar, has sex with him, and regrets it the next day, well it's naturally because she's oppressed, right? What happens when a man, as in Charlie Robison's "Life of the Party" song, wakes up and realizes that the woman she took home "gained herself two-hundred" pounds? Oh wait, that's probably because of the gender oppression of men's excessive weight of importance on weight (no pun intended). No matter what we say and do, it can be traced back to our role as the oppressor. No matter what women say and do, it can be traced back to their role as the oppressed (or, in this case, inhibited).

I don't think this is a game I really want to play.