Patricia: Okay, so there's a distinction to be drawn between what women fantasize about, and what that perhaps says about their psychology, and what is naturally their psychology. I'd like to suggest that even though women may fantasize about romantic scenarios, that certainly doesn't mean that they're naturally romantic or that they're naturally inclined to dream about hooking-up to a man and becoming dependent on him for nurturing comfort, protection and so on.

Kevin: Okay, Sue, what do you think about this idea of a natural tendency to be romantic? Do you think it's right to say women are naturally romantic, or what?

Sue: Yes, definitely. They're very romantic in the sense that every wakeful moment and every sleeping moment of their entire lives is spent in this very mode of mind. There's no change. We were talking before about the literature women read - everything from The Woman's Weekly to The Cosmopolitan to all the magazines on the shelves, you know, Bride, Mother - there's heaps and heaps. Within each of those magazines, from the front cover to the back cover, every page is full of just this: getting your man, how you're going to get him, what you're going to wear, and what colour shade of lipstick--

Kevin: Maybe things are different in the cloisters of the University, but out there in the suburbs this is the case, isn't it?

Patricia: I tend to agree with you that a lot of women still go for the bridal magazines, that they'll still pursue this romantic kind of ideal. But there's a huge leap, I think, from saying that women enjoy reading these glossy magazines, where women are represented as being dependent on men and appearing as though they want to be protected and nurtured, to saying this is what women naturally are. I mean, the media has a lot to answer for. The media is very powerful.

Sue: So Pat, can I ask you: is this only an appearance, then? You're saying that it's all an appearance, that women really don't want to get married, and that women aren't buying these magazines to help themselves towards this goal of theirs. So we've all been mistaken, and all those magazines on the shelves are--

Kevin: Have all the women been duped into it?

Patricia: Yes. Yes, in a certain sense, yes.

Sue: By whom?

Patricia: By the media. Women are socialized to believe they need a man to survive. They haven't separated themselves from mother. They haven't learned to masturbate themselves. They haven't learned that they're responsible for their own sexuality. They haven't learned that they can cope on their own. You see, women can pay their own rent, go to work from nine to five, be incredibly responsible, but when it comes to sexuality they just miss the boat. They don't realize that they can put their hand down their own pants and do what fairly much a man can do.

Kevin: So what do you think, Gil? Do you think women have been totally conditioned by society and the media? Or how much of it do you think is genetic, for example, or hormonal?

Gil: I'd like to extend even beyond women, in the sense that gender itself is constructed - and even further, sexuality is constructed.

Kevin: Constructed by what?

Gil: Constructed by our language, which is embedded in our culture. Language is culture and vice versa.

Kevin: Well, if we didn't have any language at all then none of these things would exist. That's fairly obvious. But we do have language, so things exist, and so we have the sexes.

Gil: But we have to try to differentiate between the society we're in at this present moment, and what you're maybe talking about, which is presuming there's this state of Nature beyond language, beyond this constructed culture. What would you have? Well, of course, there'd be obvious differences, because we have different bodies. I mean, I have a penis and Pat has a vagina. We're looking at two different bodies which get the information and look at the information differently and turns out viewing sexuality differently, but--

Kevin: And we have different values as well, don't we?

Gil: Yes, this is all true, but I think there's a difference between arguing that, just because this may be the case, obviously one would be nurturing and the other one wouldn't. I mean, depending on what sort of culture we're in, and what sort of values we're brought up with, what sort of society we have, what sort of language is in place, the sexes will be different. And in this case I would say a lot of it is that women don't have the same opportunities as men have in terms of being able to express their sexuality. Women are always being seen in terms through the male, rather than as individuals.