Do you still respect me? I've been thinking some more about that old lady sex blog and my entry. I don't think so! It used to be a given, that gentlemen were not supposed to kiss and tell. Add ladies to that, as they gradually acquired incidents to kiss and not tell about. That governed behaviour after the fact. There's more to it than that.
There's a line in Philip Barry's play, The Philadelphia Story (made into a movie twice, each with a great lady of the silver screen: Katherine Hepburn and Grace Kelly). In the first film, James Stewart referred to the rules of gentlemanly behaviour. Tracy Lord's fiancé has leapt to the conclusion that she slept with Mike, the reporter, the night before, had an affair as the euphemism went. Mike explains that the so-called 'affair' "consisted of exactly two kisses and one rather late swim...After which I accompanied her to her room, deposited her on her bed and promptly returned...." Tracy is miffed, asking whether she was so unattractive, distant, forbidding, as to put him off.
"You were extremely attractive," he says - "and as for distant and forbidding, on the contrary. But you were also somewhat the worse - or the better - for wine, and there are rules about that, damn it."
You see? Rules. At least, there used to be rules.
That's a far cry from the date drug non-gentlemen use to have their way with women these days.
So, I think this old lady will abide by the old rules. Too bad. I might have gone viral.