Politics, restaurant menus and porn are the quickest ways to learn that someone likes things you find disgusting.

Good examples of that are Donald Trump, escargot and gang rape, three things that disgust me, but are keenly desired by some people. Just knowing that will make you look around for a long time before you sit next to a stranger on the bus. The fact that I can type the word "bus" without automatically putting the word "school" in front of it indicates that I might have at least some history with people whose wants and needs are not only disgusting, but poorly concealed.

And, for the next few minutes at least, America will wrestle with the larger meaning of a possible gang rape case out of Cornell University, where seven men are alleged to have gang-raped a woman, unless, of course, she was willing, or willing at first, but not later, or willing with the first couple guys, but not with the last few.

Doesn't matter. It's all rape. It she wants to stop halfway through, you stop. If you don't, it's rape.

Of course, everyone involved was drunk and high. Even a week of covering the police beat will teach a reporter that at least a majority of criminals are high during the commission of their crimes. The ones who aren't high commit their crimes to get money so they can get high. Most judges don't accept "we were both drunk" as a defense for beating your wife.

It's entirely possible she was willing all the way through. That's the restaurant menu lesson; you may think it sounds disgusting, but it's on the menu for a reason.

The men (I refuse to call them boys) were all willing, and I say that with more than three decades of being male under my belt. You don't stumble into that kind of thing by accident, and if you do, you get out quick.

If you're a finished product as a man, and you stumble on a woman being used, you try to stop it, even if you get hurt trying.

That's one thing that isn't in the recently debated question as to whether a woman would rather be in the woods with a bear or a man.

Women who pick the bear point out that if the bear kills them, he's just being a bear, and if he mauls the woman badly, at least people won't say she's a "slut" because she let the bear rip off her right leg. The man's motives aren't much more complex, and people will ask you what you were wearing when he attacked you.

What is never discussed is that, if a woman is in the woods with a bear AND a man and the man starts raping the woman, the bear won't help her. However, if the bear attacks the woman, a man will (or should) try to help, to wound or kill the bear, to drive him off.

Male or female, we are all humans and bears, all decisions and instinct, all with a liking for something on the menu that sounds disgusting to most other people.

The supposed progress of civilization depends on our ability to hold back the bear, to muzzle, or hobble, or chain the instinct, to beat it to death with God or good manners, or a law book, or something our father or mother carefully taught to us.

I've been a young man, and any grown man knows what I mean when I say I've been a young man.

I've been mean and cruel and drunk and young and strong and beautiful and stupid and violent and unable to look at women as anything other than a collection of body parts.

And I was better off than some. My father, a combat vet who told a lot of jokes, told me what men do and don't do, and he linked that with shame at not acting the way a man acts.

And it wasn't about swagger and sex and motorcycles and sports and guns. After a war, that stuff didn't seem important.

It was about honor, and shame, having one and avoiding the other.

To find out more about Marc Dion and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit www.creators.com. Dion's latest book, a collection of his best columns, is called "Mean Old Liberal." It is available in paper back from Anazon.com, and for Nook, Kindle, and iBooks.

Photo credit: Will Barkoff at Unsplash