REACH OUT AND DON'T TOUCH SOMEONE

Henry Beard and Christopher Cerf know all about offending people. Oops, that didn't come out quite right. Rather, in researching their new book, The Official Sexually Correct Dictionary and Dating Guide (Villard Books, $10), the pair have become experts on the ''don'ts'' and, er, ''don'ts'' of '90s romantic etiquette. They rattle off extreme examples of college sexual- harassment policies and women's-movement doctrines with the split-second timing of stand-up comics. A sample routine: Cerf: ''According to the University of Toronto, a male professor should avoid excessive eye contact with female students, but (another college's) women's handbook says that if he doesn't make eye contact with women, he's discriminating. This presents a problem.'' Beard: ''Or take coffee. There's a professor who says that asking students out for coffee is bad. But (others) insist that not asking female students out... is wrong. We suggest a professor go out with a woman but blink his eyes.'' Cerf: ''Or just install a coffee machine.'' Beard: ''Or don't become a professor.'' Other subjects these Satiric White Males cover in their book (which follows a traditional, dictionary format): Beethoven (a feminist music scholar contends that a passage in his Ninth Symphony is sexist); hamburgers (the author of Beyond Beef suggests that they cause wife beating); and ''success objects'' (the men's-movement term for societally pigeonholed males). Speaking of success objects, Cerf says, only half-jokingly, ''Kinsey, Masters and Johnson-the other sex manuals are pitifully out of date.'' Adds Beard: ''Yes, today there's much more at stake than being embarrassed-like being arrested.'' -Erica K. Cardozo