OUT of the auditorium they drifted, alone, in pairs and in larger groups. Some were wiping away a tear, some were quietly reflective, and others were engrossed in an animated conversation fuelled by the power of the film they'd just seen.

Practically all of them were women.

The occasion wasn't a rare trip out for the sisters of the Poor Clares' nunnery, and neither was it York's annual Hen Night Convention. It was a showing of Ang Lee's acclaimed new film, Brokeback Mountain, a work that appears to have put the fear of God into the heterosexual male population of the Western world - or at any rate, into many of the men I know.

Asking around at work and among my female friends, it seemed as though women everywhere were banding together to go to see the film because their partners had flatly refused to accompany them.

Such refusals are not unknown when the film is an unashamed chick flick like Bridget Jones part 13, and they broadly reflect the widespread determination of most women not to sit through Things Exploding III or I Spit On Your Grave - The Prequel.

But Brokeback Mountain has been nominated for umpteen awards and is set to be one of the outstanding films of 2006. Across the globe, there have been rave reviews for the performances of its principal actors, Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger.

Presumably, some of the critics must have been heterosexual men, although you'd be forgiven for wondering how on earth they managed to rise above the apparently universal male repugnance felt for Brokeback Mountain's theme, a gay love affair between two troubled cowboys.

Mention the film to most straight blokes and an involuntary shudder grips them as they contemplate the Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name.

"Ugh. Why should I want to see two men doing that?" is the standard reaction, and when you point out that the most graphic part of the film lasts for at most 15 seconds, with both men keeping their clothes on, it somehow fails to reassure them.

These are seasoned cinemagoers who manage to sit through, say, the opening 20 minutes of Saving Private Ryan, if not without discomfort, then at least willing to endure the gruelling sequence for the sake of learning something about the realities of war.

But contemplating Brokeback's theme seems to be something with which some men are profoundly uncomfortable, even if the purpose is to enlighten an audience and make them more humane. It's as though they think that being gay is contagious, and even watching the film could expose you to catching the "condition".

You certainly feel that if the Brokeback's same-sex love affair had been between two women, there would have been less resistance - but that's another story, I suppose.

Talking about this with some friends at the weekend, most of the men and women eventually got around to admitting that they felt uncomfortable watching sex scenes in general.

This struck me as rather sad. It may well be true that a lot of sex scenes are gratuitous, intended to titillate rather than to inform, but others are profound, moving and vital to the success of a life-enhancing piece of television or cinema.

And when you consider how comfortable we seem to be with witnessing realistic images of death, torture and maiming, that are much more extreme than most of the sex scenes in today's mainstream cinema, it seems a shame we remain embarrassed to see people engaged in a positive human activity.

Updated: 08:50 Wednesday, January 25, 2006