"Friends with Benefits" has existed for all of eternity, but has sometime in the last decade gained popularity as a term to describe sexual encounters with friends on a strictly casual basis. Whether or not this is a good thing is not for me to judge, but sometimes I wonder whether the women involved in this situation really benefit from the "arrangement" as much as the men.

On Christmas night, I was driving back from a nice family Christmas dinner and flipping carelessly through the radio dial in search of something nice to listen to. Instead of some lovely Christmas carol, I stumbled into a misogynistic world of a talk show for men and by men. Just in case you are curious, I am in no way referring to Car Talk or any other show that can be found on NPR. No, the offending show was much, much worse.

There were two topics of conversation, both relating loosely to dating ethics (and the term ethics is really a stretch here). The first was the ethics of keeping girls in the "bullpen" (as in the baseball term meaning "relief pitchers") and the ethical dilemma in question was how much the women in the bullpen needed to know. The only thing that the women needed to know according to the hosts was that their "relationship" was not exclusive. Nothing else. They didn't need to know how many other women were in the bullpen, that they were being referred as nothing more than sexual relief partners or that that had little standing in the way of anything remotely resembling friendship. It wasn't the worst thing I have ever heard, but the idea of women as "relief pitchers" apparently pitching to men's sexual needs does  not really appeal to me. (never mind the fact that women could more aptly be named as catchers).

The second ethical dilemma revolved around whether dating single mothers is a good idea. You may recall the movie or the book "About a Boy" in which the protaganist joined a single parent's group although he didn't have any kids. His rational was that single moms were hot and because they had kids, had more trouble getting dates, so would be more eager to date him. On the talk radio show I happened to tune into, the hosts were very clear about this when a man asked whether it was worth it to date single moms. They said, "Do not date single moms. Obviously, the only reason single moms want to date is to have more children." WTF? I would hope that any single mom considering dating someone who would get advice from a radio talk show run by chauvinistic pigs would run fast in the other direction.

I couldn't take any more and didn't listen for the last question, but it made me realize that there is more than a gender gap between the sexes, there is a cultural gap as well. I know very few, if any, women who honestly take sex as casually as Samantha on "Sex in the City", but I am sure there are some.  And I am not naive enough to think that all women who enter into casual sexual encounters expect more from the relationships, but I do believe that there are more men with "bullpen" type situations or who wish they were in this kind of situation than women. I don't know the reason why this is the case, whether it is socialization or evolutionary. Frankly, the risk is more on the woman's side if she gets pregnant than the man's so this may have something to do with it as well.