Diana Manister wrote:
> 
> Dear Nancy,
> 
> I forget who took offense at my using the phrase 'animal sex' in
> connection with the typist scene but I know it wasn't you.

I didn't "take offense" at it, but I did dissent from someon'es use of
the phrase. Certainly the typist did not act like a holstein cow in
heat. One may argue about the precise description to give of their sex
(of anyone's sex in life or fiction), but "animal sex" is just a stupid
descriptive phrase to use in such descriptios. A bull as it mounts a cow
in heat is indifferent or detached in quite a different way than the
indifference of either of the typiest or her young man. In fact, the
bull is more of an automaton than either. As I pointed out in another
post, purpose seems to operate in the sex of bonobos, since their
sexuality is not governed by the heat cycle of the female. Sex for pure
pleasure is certainly the most fully human of all the motives that can
be brught it. Again, except for the bonobos, no animal does this as far
as I know.

Carrol