I have never seen any reason to be embar­rassed about my body. I am pretty. I have sensual skin that browns easily and a sexy figure. My parents were always relaxed about nudity.

So when I was eighteen, out in the South of France for the summer, I enjoyed going top-less sunbathing. Why have those bikini lines that make your breasts look like icebergs? One day, as I was lying there on the popular pebble beach desper­ately trying to tan, I heard… “Just look at all those tits!” as a sailor’s voice carried across the water: the British Navy had arrived.

I looked out to sea and there was the naval ship. So I was less than surprised when half an hour later (they’re quick, those boys!) my sunlight was being blocked by a very pleasant young sailor. Of course, he wanted to know all about me. It was my after­noon off and, since he was only in port for a few hours, I didn’t see much point in getting to know him. We talked and he walked me back to my apart­ment. Sorry, nothing happened…

Some men like to display their male sexu­ality by aiming sexual remarks at women. That summer I was occa­sion­ally offended by men’s appre­ci­ation of my sexual attrib­utes. “Hey, you with the big tits!” was once shouted at me from across the road. I can’t say that I’ve ever wanted to be singled out for my tits. It’s nice to have some but how to explain to a man…

It’s the way the man shouted for all to hear. It made me feel, not like a person, but like an object to be ogled at without any sens­it­ivity and also with the implicit know­ledge that I could not retaliate by shouting some­thing similar back. How do you make a man feel like a piece of sexual meat? Female sexu­ality does not so natur­ally include such vocal displays of appre­ci­ation for the sexual attrib­utes of the opposite sex. So it can be diffi­cult to understand.

Imagine you had to wear your penis on your chest under your tee shirt, but essen­tially for the whole world to see. Would you appre­ciate comments from women about the merits of your sexual anatomy? Men may feel that it can never be insulting to be big. Well as a woman you can be both too small and too big. We are all sens­itive about being iden­ti­fied as unusu­ally different.

So when you think a woman is dying to be told how big her breasts are — give it some thought. Men perhaps feel that they would love to receive sexual heck­ling from women. Maybe. Just think how you would feel if a gay man made a sexual remark to you.

Well there’s a parallel here. Sexual remarks are great when you are the one dishing them out. Sexual compli­ments are only appre­ci­ated if you find the other person sexu­ally attractive and women often take longer to decide on this point than men. Also women are not so often in the posi­tion of singling out the man they find attractive. Women’s sexual arousal is not driven by looking at naked images of men so we have less to gain from phys­ical intimacy with the opposite sex.

For the most part, my exper­i­ence is that male commentary is most often not intended to be offensive. I enjoy being whistled at by passing men and I always smile and wave back. Even quite recently, a passing French man made some remark I did not entirely under­stand — “Nice arse” or similar — and seemed surprised when I thanked him for the sexual compliment.

Once in informal company I used an impolite four-lettered word for a woman’s private parts. I was surprised that even in this day and age the women were shocked by the mention of such a word. Of course, the men said nothing. Although rarely admitted, censor­ship of nudity exists because most women posit­ively dislike looking at anyone’s genitals up close (even their own).

I have always told my young daugh­ters to use the word ‘pussy’ for their sexual anatomy, which I consider to be about as rude as the word ‘willie’. I was really quite angry when our young nanny told them to use the phrase ‘front-bottom’ instead. It would seem that women are offended by almost any explicit refer­ence to their genitals regard­less of who is making the comment.

By accepting inter­course, regard­less of female orgasm, women never need to engage on other more expli­citly sexual activ­ities. It’s this aver­sion to the phys­ical that gives men the impres­sion that women are sexu­ally inhib­ited. The facts are: female sexual arousal does not occur as easily as male but also women do not obtain the same rewards that men do from phys­ical intimacy.