A young man and woman are having a friendly chat after a zumba class. He was in the front row in shorts. The fresh-faced blonde seems totally relaxed but then he freezes. ''Did you just look at my arse,'' he asks angrily, arms firmly folded.
If you recognise these words, you'll know they are similar to the opening gambit of a column by Bettina Arndt which appeared on Sunday. The activities have been changed to protect the, ahem, depraved. And we will go into some of those activities in a minute. But let's summarise, for those of you who missed the cyber storm.
Arndt, a long-standing columnist on sex and relationships, argued that when women dress provocatively they are teasers. The former sex therapist is from the generation which tries not to use foul language in public (and people, I am so there with her on that).
What she did say was this: ''While there are women who claim they dress sluttishly just to make themselves feel good, the fact remains that, like the [Slutwalk] protesters, the main message sent is about flaunting women's sexual power. It's an 'UP YOURS' gesture of the most provocative kind.''
She went on to argue that when women wear clothes which expose their body bits - and here she quotes some random Perth psychotherapist - they are indulging in ''biological sexual harassment''.
It's the biology, stupid. Or what Richard Dawkins calls the selfish gene. Men are responding to their native urge to rut.
Were there any blokes out there who read Arndt's column and recognised themselves as utterly beholden to their penises? Or who recognised themselves as beta males, who behave appallingly because they can't get the women of their dreams?
Because if I was a bloke, I'd be insulted by Arndt's caricature of masculinity. Here's why.
All of us - men, women, gay, straight, transgender, intersex - act in a world which has competing pressures. It's the pressure to perform. The pressure to be in a relationship. The pressure to earn. To rate.
And all of us learn to conduct our lives so we can more or less juggle all those things, to greater or lesser effect. What we want from each other changes over time too - check out the work of Justin Wolfers, a contributor to the Freakonomics blog and an economist at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, who compiled a list of attributes men want in women, and how they've changed over time.
Hope you lot didn't have shares in chastity. Market's at an all time low - no other attribute either dropped as much or grew as much in 70 years.
We learn to bend the truth with our partners, just a little. It doesn't pay to answer directly: ''Yes, your bum does look big in that.'' Particularly since I can't find the study which says that happiness rises in inverse proportion to the size of your arse.
But we concede, we accommodate, we are civilised. Because we need to be. Not men, not women, all of us. And, astonishingly, being civilised means controlling our urges. The urge to tell a colleague exactly what you think of them. The urge to nick that expensive bra. The urge to stuff your mouth with an extra piece of cake. The urge to chuck a sickie.
Arndt's column demeaned men as hapless water buffalo who can't control themselves as the sight of a pert pair of knockers, or a shapely bum cheek (mind you, even I have trouble not staring at women in bum-eaters. Fantastic trick of gravity. Except I don't think most 20-year-olds who wear them have had much to do with gravity yet).
So aside from characterising men as impotent in the face of glory, glory, glory, here's the other thing.
Arndt's sketch of women as all flounce and no bounce implies women don't have libidos. Because if we did, we too would be jumping the bones of the nearest babe.
The Arndt column is built on the anecdotes of the sad and the surly. And while I could never describe myself as a sex therapist, I've spoken to many men and women about sex, as a friend and as a journalist.
My observation is that women want sex and they love it. They love it just as much as men. And it's only self-control - and conditioning (dammit), that stops us ogling and pinching.
When we see gorgeous men we have the same reaction that men do when they see gorgeous women. But we've learned to look slyly and not to touch. Can you imagine the reaction if a woman drunkenly fondled a bloke's buttocks?
We want to. We've just been taught no. But it's possible that along with dressing to please ourselves, we women are also learning to be more honest about how we feel about sex.
A group of young women of my acquaintance were describing the physical attributes of a young male newsreader. One turned to the group and said: ''Every time he's on telly, it's like a party in my pants.''
I'd never heard the phrase before. But even at my age, I knew exactly what she meant.
Follow me on Twitter @jennaprice or email me: jenna_p@bigpond.net.au
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