MEN ON WOMEN

Mostly dull answers to dumb questions on what men want from women. ""What encourages you to ask a woman out?"" ""Encouragement from her--a smile, for example."" ""What would you most like a woman to suggest you do on a first date?"" ""Talk and get to know each other, then have sex."" ""Go out to eat and then go back to her place."" (Most men also like women slim, long-haired, and lightly made-up.) ""Are you getting more of what you want from women than you did five or ten years ago?"" ""Yes, because I'm asking for more."" In this line-up, the occasional practical or quixotic reply is a refreshing exception: the man who appreciates a woman more socially adept than he, or the one turned off by a woman who eats sardines in mustard. What Gillies (My Needs, Your Needs, etc.) contributes by way of comment is unrelievedly banal: ""When a group of men who are described by women as 'willing to be open and vulnerable' ""--i.e., the interviewees--""still express fears of intimacy, I see it as a powerful message that we men still have a lot of growing to do in that area."" A section called ""Keeping in Touch"" reports assorted male pleasures short of intercourse; ""The Post-Sexual Revolution"" brings a near-unanimous vote for fellatio even without ejaculation. So the book has a little something to tell some women, maybe--but not nearly as much, in any category, as competing entries.