When this happens with people who are related to each other in a family bond, there’s a big chance that these changes will be accepted. Maybe not at once, but surely in the end. This acceptance is far more uncertain when two friends are involved. So, when someone is changing, it is possible that some friendships may end.

And is this the difference between friends who like each other, and who don’t really mind to let each other go – and those friends who love each other, thus accepting that making chances are part of our lives…

On the point of animals feeling love, though it seems we are wandering away from the focus, I wonder if friends have to actually “love” each other. Maybe defining these feelings could give more clarity. Is it possible for friends to like each other a lot without loving each other? We can surely speak about “degrees of (love, like)” in this instance.

Social animals also seek and need hands that feed and are dependent on them to a greater extent than they may like to believe. Intelligence and communication may happen in many more ways than we are conscious of or like to think that we have a hold on.

“In proportion to the issues that create friendship there must be between the two friends a freedom in feeling and language large enough to make sure that neither one is superior nor the other inferior.”

In this quote I do acknowledge the balance that is necessary for friendship and in some strange way I still think this can apply to friendships (relationships?) with animals. This feeling is surprising to me even not being an animal lover (here comes love again)!

None of it is even true on the sociological level. When women in America wanted to play housewife and make apple pies the men of America organised a grim society of hard work for themselves and a relatively easy domestic routine for their spouses. When women changed their minds and started demanding equality in the workplace the entire economic system was restructured to make opportunities for them, especially the more aspiring classes, simultaneously throwing unskilled male workers on the scrap-heap where their families have suffered for the emancipation and enrichment of some but not all women.

Class, race, education and religion remain far more important than gender yet gender is the one that has been stuffed down our throats until it chokes us for the last four decades. And I am now so allergic to hearing about it that far from wanting any further justice for women I simply want them to shut the fuck up for the rest of my life, especially those who complain the loudest, the wealthy ones in western societies who have more than most of the world’s men ever had.

Interesting too how you approach the human-animal connection.

Is a dog or a parrot capable of feeling love? or is it a matter of instinct, of knowing the hand that feeds…

It may be constructive to view friendship in terms of the nature of friendship at any particular time and with any particular thing. It should be possible to experience social relationships like master/apprentice, dentist or doctor and patient and at other times experience the character of friendship when you are not in your dentist’s chair. Because in another setting you may be a friend to your dentist, a friend that he or she is in dire need of. When we look at it from this standpoint words like inferiority and superiority seem to have less relevance to the actual situation or friendship at hand.

Technically we might agree that animals are inferior to people. But what about the friendships that humans have with animals and vice versa (to the extent that animals understand this in their given capacity). Even in this instance taking a “character of friendship” perspective that Diderot proposes may be a more constructive way to observe friendships, however difficult or easy they may sometimes be.

Monarchs, presidents and other human beings will have a need for friends and whether they are “equal” or not seems to be more of a technicality.

Of course there are a great many men who are exploited, but generally it is by richer and more powerful men, and not by the few rich and powerful women. The evidence still shows that women do a huge proportion of the world’s work, in exchange for a tiny portion of it’s wealth.

I believe it has been in the interest of capitalism to set mena nd women againts each other, to keep our minds distracted from the great injustices that are perpetrated on all of us.

From what I gather the film is a thriller, and so many of them are biased in the other direction. Think of all the Chandler women, and the idea of women presented in the whole noir genre.

The suspicion and bleakness is just part of the genre, and complaining about it is akin to objecting to innuendo in Carry On films.

I’m reminded of the Michael Winner film. He was challenged about the sexism in his films on the Channel 4 discussion programme After Dark, and he said that if someone came to him with the gender roles reversed, he would still be inter5ested in making the film. What was it called? Dirty Weekend, I think. A female main character who was raped and abused went on a spree and killed lots of men who tried to take advanatage of her.

I don’t read a film like that as a commentary on the relationhsip between all men and all women – it’s justa story that chooses to look at the dark side of a few extreme situations.

Now that may illuminate and tell us something about the wider society we live in – but mostly I think it doesn’t. Mostly I think these are just stories where we can indulge our desire to split off all the nastiness that is in us all and project it safely out there, and then leave it behind afterwards. Just like some people do when playing violent computer games.

I think your understanding of feminism is deeply flawed and based on a very few extreme examples. Of course the radical separatists exist – but mostly feminism isn’t like that at all. The vast majority of feminists are living perfectly happily in harmony with the men in their lives – and just want justice and equality, and for women to live free of fear. Most of us think that would be better for men too.

This is a film of almost unparalleled bleakness of vision in which no man can even have a decent thought. This is what I have understood is the heart of feminism since I witnessed it’s birth on the campus of Sussex University straight after Germaine Greer’s obscene book, in 1968 – and the world was suddenly full of hatred.