"Flirting" in the digital age

Once upon a time, a guy who took pictures of his private parts and showed them to women was viewed as a deviant, someone a girl wouldn't want to be around. Now, he might be a hot new "dating" prospect, and the crude digital self-portrait is just his charming way of, um, flirting. Little Miss Attila writes:

Everyone lies about Twitter-flirting, and everyone knows that everyone lies about Twitter-flirting.

And, from the comments:

I just hope that this was simply a flirtation, and that that distance made it feel “safe.”

So this is how people flirt now? I confess, I don't get it. Whatever happened to the subtle glance, the discovery of appealing qualities and shared interests, the chocolates, flowers, and wine (or if you prefer, the bottle of scotch)? All those romantic stops along the way have devolved into an express train that ends abruptly in a crude satisfaction of appetites.

I'm tempted to tell these Romeos they're doing it wrong -- sit down with some Cary Grant movies and Sinatra CDs and take notes. But they aren't looking for a soulmate, just some carnal recreation, and the "direct approach" must "work" often enough, or they wouldn't keep doing it.

Seamless segue to Mark Steyn's Happy Warrior column. It's about the implacability of the thought-police gods, but it also speaks volumes about the contemporary  disconnect between men, women, love, and sex:

Recently, Surgery News, the official journal of the American College of Surgeons, published a piece by its editor-in-chief, Lazar Greenfield, examining research into the benefits to women of . . . well, let Dr. Greenfield explain it:

They found ingredients in semen that include mood enhancers like estrone, cortisol, prolactin, oxytocin, and serotonin; a sleep enhancer, melatonin; and, of course, sperm, which makes up only 1%-5%. Delivering these compounds into the richly vascularized vagina also turns out to have major salutary effects for the recipient.

As this was the Valentine’s issue, Dr. Greenfield concluded on a “light-hearted” note:

Now we know there’s a better gift for that day than chocolates.

Oh, my. When the complaints started rolling in from lady doctors, Surgery News withdrew the entire issue. All of it. Gone. Then Dr. Greenfield apologized. Then he resigned as editor. Then he apologized some more. Then he resigned as president-elect of the American College of Surgeons. The New York Times solemnly reported that Dr. Barbara Bass, chairwoman of the department of surgery at Methodist Hospital in Houston, declared she was “glad Dr. Greenfield had resigned.” But Dr. Colleen Brophy, professor of surgery at Vanderbilt University, said “the resignation would not end the controversy.”

Remember when science was about discovering truths? Note that the accuracy of the findings isn't the issue here at all. Dr. Greenfield's real crime is his revelation that "unprotected" sex -- the old-fashioned kind, once the norm of married life, and (not incidentally) that which has perpetuated the human race over the millennia -- is biologically good for women. That finding is anathema to feminism and the contraceptive culture, movements in denial about the fundamental truths of life and love, and thus it must be hushed up and the offending male punished, severely enough to make the next guy think twice about publishing politically incorrect science. We're to speak no evil against the post-sexual revolution's new normal, which Steyn has called a "hyper-sexualized society" that is "paradoxically, sexless, and certainly joyless."

*Follow-up: Steyn on the new "flirting"

Many thanks to Michelle Malkin for the buzzworthy link.

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