Talking with girls - ask a group of you whether it's acceptable for girls to cheat on a boyfriend, in certain circumstances, when you have fallen in love with another boy say, plan to move on anyway, and you're (almost) certain there is no chance of being found out. When the wise-cracks have died down - how many of you agree that it is acceptable?
But - place the question differently and look what happens. Place the question right after I've asked you about the acceptability of boys cheating on girls, questioned you about the acceptability of your own boyfriends cheating on you? Will I now get an awkwardly different answer, from the same one of you, to the question of whether girls' cheating is acceptable?
Doesn't the answer to this type of research-question depend on when I ask the question of you? Doesn't it depend on what question I asked before? Did the people working on the 'Hite Report' into sexual behaviour ever chew on the corners of their clip-boards while trying to get round this one?
These are the sexual principles that you girls hold; and I'd assumed (as an awe-struck schoolboy) that you'd hold a resilient view on something so fundamental to your own behaviour. A resilient code. I see now that you can answer an ethical question in one way then barely six months later, when you've forgotten all about it, answer the same question in an opposite way and not notice at all. The silver has turned out to be tarnished and small boys are not prepared for this.
What about other codes that people hold to? Questioned about telling convenient lies to a boyfriend (then questioned again after contemplating boys' convenient lies to you); questioned about petty theft from an employer (then after dwelling on being thieved from)?
Aren't you supposed to decide on an ethic based on what best favours everyone? But instead aren't your personal ethics (with a few obvious exceptions) conditional upon circumstance and self-serving? Are you making it all up to fit with what you've already done and want to continue to do, rather than the other way around? An ethic is something you settle on before you act isn't it? You've got it conveniently for you the wrong way around. I see the showy confidence and I'm confused by you; or perhaps it's an angry fascination.
Are the boys any the less self-serving and inconsistent? It's an unevolved, a bow-legged, people isn't it?
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