In this column I pose questions and raise issues. I don't always agree with the conclusion, implied or stated. The purpose is to put a slightly different spin on each item and to promote discussion.

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• When Clinton pandered to pop feminists, he was playing to his strength as a ladies' man, and won by the female vote. Gore, who is anything but a ladies' man, has been trying to do the same thing. If he continues along this tack, he will fail.

• One of the biggest mistakes women can make is to believe what they read in those "what do men really want" articles in women's magazines.

• It is the duty of every citizen to uphold social standards; but the world is increasingly driven by the need of corporations to sell things, and sales are not maximized by upholding social standards.

• Having standards isn't bigoted. That would be like saying a person who prefers a nicely prepared, nutritious meal over a Happy Meal is doing the same thing as a self-righteous vegetarian who condemns everybody who is not vegetarian, too. The former is good health and good taste, the latter is arrogance and conceit.

• A single writer of books about certain issues is a voice in the wilderness; it takes many writers about those issues to make a market.

• As I walked home from working out at the club one evening, two more enlightened members of our community shouted "fagot!" as they drove by. Interesting how, whenever somebody does that it's always as they're driving by. Never to my face. Were I enlightened, I might conclude this means all homophobes are cowards. Being neither enlightened nor gay, I just figure they're buttheads.

• The "silent treatment" is a well-known female strategy in relationships. But women don't restrict this behavior to intimate relationships, many also use it on friends and coworkers. There's a word for those who do: immature.

• We owe no allegiance to they who pledge no allegiance to us.

• Pop feminists presume men owe support to women who give nothing to men in return.

• Feminism in the 1960s: feminism will heal both men's and women's pain because they are the same. Feminism in the 1970s: healing will begin when men stop fearing women's power. Feminism in the 1980s: not until men stop making women afraid. Feminism in the 1990s: children's pain is tied to women's and children take priority over men, therefore so do women. Feminism at the dawn of the 21st century: nobody cares about men.

• I keep reaching up for a relationship, only to discover I'm reaching down. I give up.

• Many western women say their husbands don't pay enough attention to them, and sue for divorce. But as single mothers they discover other needs, like somebody to help raise their children and share the bills. So many seek men who won't monopolize all their time but will provide some support and companionship. In other words, the same kind of men for the same kind of relationship they had in the first place.

• Liberal prayer: May there always be an abundance of things to complain about.

• Conservative prayer: May there always be an abundance of things to fear.

• You can hardly turn on the television without seeing some "he-done-me-wrong" movie or newscast in which some evil man victimizes a woman. Pop feminists hardly acknowledge this, but what will they do when the pendulum swings the other way, as it has already started to do?

• Men are in the driver's seat of love because women put them there.

• Some scientists worry that in 30 years time robots may replace us. The answer to this should be obvious: rather than worry that the machines we design and build will replace us, we should design ourselves into the machines we build.

• Tom Leykis says men in Seattle are the biggest wimps in the world. If he lived in King County, where feminists make virtually all the hiring and firing decisions, he'd be a wimp, too. Or living on the verge of poverty.

• Enabling is a fine thing when it enables you to create a family, build a home, create a community and build a business.

• Constantine used Christianity to maintain his empire. Christianity was instrumental in creating and extending Europe's empires. And Christianity is the foundation for the economic empires of the Americas. Whatever else may be said about it, Christianity can be called the religion of empire: it moderates the moods of the masses, mitigates the excesses of the upper classes, and gives common cause and purpose to all.

• For a few blacks, white bigotry is as important to them as it is to those few whites who are bigots.

• I know little about the Jehovah Witnesses, but I do know two members of the church fairly well. They are both gentle, affable men. However, the first is obese; intentionally so. He says he has a relationship with food. To say he is gluttonous would be an understatement. The other is a slut, constantly trying to charm his way into some woman's bed. Corruption, not conquest, is his goal: it is not enough to simply have sex with her, she must become a slut, too. I know little about the Jehovah Witnesses, but I think these two tell me all I need to know.

• Tom Leykis makes men's issues vulgar, and in the process has created a huge following. There is nothing surprising about this: if he hadn't done it, somebody else would have. Interestingly, however, during the past several years I have known men with great talent for radio who declined to do this for one simple reason: they have too much class.

• Many attribute men's greater economic success to the evil while male antifemale hegemony, yet laugh at men's greater success at committing suicide.

• Like most of us, I grew up hearing and reading about the evils of "testosterone poisoning," as the pop feminists call it. Recently, however, while looking for a healthy way to improve my workouts, I began taking DHEA and Tribulus Terrestris extract. The result? Aside from improved workouts and increasing lean body mass, I enjoy talking with, listening to and being around others more, and many have commented that I seem friendlier, more outgoing and gregarious. Poison? To the pop feminist stereotypes, perhaps.

• As I have remarked more than once, I have Asperger Syndrome. However, the supplements to normalize my testosterone levels seem to be alleviating this condition. (Either that, or it's Fatima's perfume, Angel by Thierry Mugler.) This warrants further study.

• The only thing that angers political lesbians more than men who hate lesbians, is men who are aroused by lesbians.

• Feminists said women want to be treated equally in work and play, love and romance. A lot of men believed them. One dirty little secrets is, a lot of women are leveraging this to promote female supremacy. Another is that a lot more women than men wish they could trade the liberation of 2000 for the security of 1950.

• Many men still put women first, while fewer and fewer women put men first. As the backlash against pop feminism evolves, men en masse will begin to adopt the same attitudes toward women which pop feminists have encouraged women to have toward men.

• Many of her detractors make much of the fact that when she was young, Dr. Laura was a floozy. But when it comes to heeding advice, who are most folks going to listen to? The tight-lipped biddy who bristles at the mention of impropriety, or someone who, having been a floozy, advises against it?

• In America, the trend is toward diversity so extreme that standard English is giving way to a multitude of languages; kind of like the way it is in India.

• Apathy is the emotional state of those who believe nothing will change no matter what they do.

• The stereotype is that all men feel superior to and look down on women; yet, when the modern woman finds men who treat her as an equal and looks to her with respect, she often despises them.

• If whites are superior to blacks, how come it was not black women but white women who created pop feminism?

• There is no chance I will vote for Al Gore. That said, the criticism he is continually trying to reinvent himself to win votes, while accurate, reflects a profound misunderstanding of what it means to have Asperger Syndrome (AS). People with AS constantly process so much more data than normal people that it is incredibly difficult to emulate or understand normal emotional behaviors. To put it bluntly, if those of us with AS seem slow and wooden to normal people, most normal people seem unpredictable and psychotic to us. So, Gore is simply trying to isolate what will persuade a nation of psychotics to appoint him Commander-in-Chief. As someone with AS, I'm less concerned about a president with AS than the psychotics who might put him there.

• If those of us who are autistic or have Asperger Syndrome are generally more able to pick out physical patterns than normal people because we are more able to see the trees than the forest, then it might also stand to reason this holds true in analysis of paradigms as well: working from particulars to concepts to paradigms, we are less likely to be held back by the preconceived notions of a concept derived from a paradigm in search of supporting particulars.

• If (white) America should make slavery reparations to descendants of black slaves, then shouldn't (white, black and Asian) America make lying-cheating-stealing-murdering reparations to descendants of American Indians?