"For ever complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong." - H.L. Menken

Fox News has billed itself as "fair and balanced," but lately has been known more for being chauvinistic (a word with a fascinating etymology) and predatory. Or so the news reports tell us.

I'll start by agreeing sexual assault is wrong, bad, appropriately illegal, and a violation of basic human decency. Sexual harassment is wrong, bad, appropriately illegal, and a violation of basic human decency.

That said, something in me wonders if the pendulum has swung from the crude macho culture of the previous generation to a place where yet again we've criminalized the benign and bubble wrapped the professional victim.

According to a recent CNN article 23% of college women have experienced some form of sexual assault. That statistic defies common sense until you dig deeper and find out that sexual assault is defined as any unwanted sexual contact including touching. Who defines the touching as sexual? A: the victim. A hand on the shoulder qualifies as sexual assault if the recipient chooses to identify it as such. And on some campuses sexual assault can even be verbal. According to the Center Against Rape and Domestic Violence sexual assault "can take the form of unwanted verbal, visual, or physical contact." Note that here, too, the "victim" defines the contact and that it can even be visual. Someone feels another has looked at them in an unwanted way and bingo! - sexual assault.

According to CARDV sexual assault is "never the result of the victim's actions" (emphasis theirs). Thus, a female may dress in a way guaranteed to elicit stares from males but be the victim of sexual assault when those stares happen, or are even perceived to have happened. (Been on a college campus lately?)

Yesterday I told a female she was pretty. What I actually said was, "I'd forgotten how beautiful Alonzo's wife is." She is beautiful, her smile quickly spread, and she took it as simply the compliment I meant it to be. She's as sweet and kind a person you could ever meet, I'm something of a father figure to her, and I was pleased to be able to compliment her.

None of us gets enough compliments, they brighten the entire day when we do get them, and I've yet to meet the woman who doesn't want to be thought of as attractive. I would NEVER say that to a woman I wasn't real sure wouldn't haul me up on charges, and I've often thought how thankful I am to no longer be in the the workplace. (You can say pretty much anything to a goat and they don't get offended.)

I don't like where our culture has gone. I don't like being so afraid of giving offense that paying a compliment becomes risky behavior.