Why do some women act like sexist men?

When my friend and teacher Iris Leal read the manuscript of my most recent novel, she she said she felt it was a little misogynistic. Admittedly, the Israeli writer and critic also pointed out many things that she liked about the book, and over the decades I’ve accepted her advice with gravity, but this time I was simply shocked.

I loved writing Myrna, my central character. A strong independent woman, she comes to terms with her sexuality, flees the middle-class married mediocrity of 1950s London and builds a new life for herself in California.

So I filed that particular criticism in my brainbox under ‘Hmm, naaah’ and moved on with my life, until a couple of days ago, when I received an email from a reader, accusing me of being misogynistic in this colyoom’s recent piece about Ann D’Another Thing.

The reader felt my scribbling betrayed a deeply sexist core. The accusation rather frightened me. Twice accused of misogyny, I had to read the piece again, but the process felt ludicrous. Both my heart and head knew the truth.

Back in the mid-1980s when I met Iris, I was a reflexive idealistic lefty. I knew exactly what was wrong with the world. Truth and lies were white and black, because black and white sounded racist, or was it the other way around?

It was complicated back then, when young men had to be on board with feminism. Thankfully, it was ideologically unquestionable, while the fact that I actually fervently believed in it was helpful on a more base level. Unlike lots of other less-convinced blokes, I never had to worry about ‘slipping up’ verbally, thus ruining a date with a sexist clunker.

Despite what my parents told me (and hoped for!) I didn’t compromise my ideals as I grew older, and still believe as fervently in women’s rights now as I did back then. The reason, I suspect, that I am now accused of misogyny is that I’m upset, and my feelings might be bleeding into my scribbling.

You see, as a man in the 21st century, I’ve been tolerating extremely unattractive and blatantly sexist behaviour from women for years.

During those militant years of the feminist revolution, we all hoped for the eradication of pay disparity, chauvinistic behaviour and a breakdown of the patriarchal society that had made the world such an unpleasant place.

Happily, progress has been made in some of those areas, yet I’m deeply saddened to see the way some women think it now acceptable to behave towards men in exactly the way they found intolerable as victims.

I can hear my female readers going:

“Oh, poor diddums! Can’t you take it? Welcome to our world!”

It makes me sad to think I fought, marched, shouted and campaigned for that world to change, only for it to be recreated in mirror-image. Television chat shows host groups of women who feel absolutely comfortable sitting around having a really good laugh about how terrible their husbands are in bed. Endless commercials portray men as nose-picking semi-comatose idiots incapable of using a microwave.

Meanwhile my printer is spitting out my work, I’m setting the oven to pre-heat, sweating some onions in a skillet, hanging out the laundry whilst putting on another load, listening to two women on the radio crowing about their ability to multi-task. They’d like to see a man try to do that, so they would, oh ho ho.

Yes, you’re right if you think I sound a little angry, yet mostly I feel sad. As far from a misogynist as I have ever been, I’m sad and disappointed that after all those decades of struggling, women are enjoying their improved status in society by denigrating and slagging off men with gay abandon. We all wanted society to change its attitudes, laws and behaviour to women, but surely we aspired for something better: something feminine, wise, inspired and compassionate.

I certainly never imagined that I’d be accused of misogyny for writing something negative about somebody who happens to be a woman. That level of logic that requires me to despise all men because I think Joe Stalin was a crazed psycho.

Sometimes the abuse comes subtly. Ann Robinson had equine expert Clare Balding and Sikh chef and comic Hardeep Singh Kohli on her lovely TV show ‘My Life In Books’. At one point the two women are bemoaning the lack of female writers in their choices. Turning to Hardeep, Clare Balding observes:

“That’s why we know so much about you!”

Then Ann Robinson leaps in with:

“And put up with you!”

They all laugh heartily, as do the Snapper and I, but inside I’m a little upset. As a bloke I’m expected (ironically) to ‘man up’: to shut up and laugh along with the joke. Yet if we all keep doing that, then sexism becomes once again as entrenched and acceptable as it was all those dark decades ago.

Yes, it was a tiny apparently harmless joke, but could there be any acceptable scenario in which a man would speak thus about a woman? No, thankfully, those days are long gone. 

So why is it okay to publicly and often proudly slag off men on a regular and systemic basis? Surely the sexual revolution dreamed of greater things than mere revenge?

Meanwhile, I’m aware that sometimes I become over-defensive about my status as a modern man, and would like to apologise to the supermarket cashier who hadn't offered to help any women in the queue, yet turned to me and asked:

“Will I sort out your stuff and pack it into bags for you?”

I’m sorry. I know you were only being lovely, and you didn’t deserve my response. But over the years I’ve grown tired of being treated like an imbecile, simply on account of my gender.

Still, you deserved to be shown courtesy, which was sadly lacking in my grumpy reply.

“Just because I’ve a penis doesn’t mean I don’t know how to shop!”

I'll have the Early Bird menu without the sexist assumptions, please!

The Snapper’s splendid parents are back in Galway City, so last night we had a lovely meal at one of the many Quay Street restaurants offering recession-busting Early Bird menus

The food was cooked simply and to great effect, while the service was friendly and prompt.
On three separate occasions whilst in the restaurant I felt so very male, which, surprising as it might seem to many of you, was not a terrible phenomenon.

The first time my testicles affected my brainbox was when my mother-in-law told the waitress that she didn’t want a starter and proceeded to order her main course from the Early Bird menu. The waitress (who was friendly and German) suddenly interrupted her, telling her that she couldn’t order from the Early Bird menu any more, because it was a three course menu. If she wanted that dish without a starter she’d have to go to the á la carte menu.

Had she said ‘Madam might find ordering á la carte more reasonable if she requires only two
courses’ I might have understood, but she didn’t.

My testosterone took the Spinal Chord Expressway to my binary male brain, and I had to bite my lip to stop myself intervening. My in-laws were in my home town, so I felt protective, but in a trice the Snapper applied her charm and a lifetime of restaurant management experience to the situation, explaining to the waitress that her mother would have this dish on the á la carte menu, without that but with this, so that when it turned up, exactly as it appeared on the Early Bird menu, it was exactly what her mother wanted.

As I sit here and write this, I still cannot for the life of male logic understand why wanting to eat less disqualified my mother-in-law from the €25 euro Early Bird menu. Had she been a difficult customer, asking to insert something that wasn’t on the set menu into it, I would have understood, but she didn’t. She simply wanted two courses of a three course menu, but was told that she couldn’t have it, which also meant that she had to order dessert separately from the group, and generally might have felt unnecessarily marginalised, had she not been such a good sport.

By the time her rhubarb crumble arrived we three had already finished our Early Bird desserts (no manners, some people!) so her husband took a spoon to help himself to a taste. When the waitress returned she noticed the two spoons on her plate and joked about how my mother-in-law must have been using one spoon to eat with and the other, to fend off us dessert vultures. Then she went and spoiled it all by spouting well-worn nonsense about how she could manage that, because as a woman, she could multi-task.

Sitting there I felt for the umpteenth time aware that even though I have dangly bits where girls have not, I am very able to multi-task. Not for the first time this colyoom stands up for men, because we have to be subjected to sexist ridicule as a matter of course, each and every day.

Yes, I know it’s a patriarchal society, and that if women ruled the world we’d have no nuclear weapons, but that is not my personal fault. I’m a socially-aware sensitive New Man who is oh-so very tired of hearing my gender freely and openly slagged off on TV, radio, in print and in real life.

Quite possibly women are better multi-taskers that men, but that doesn’t mean that all men are unable to multitask, any more than it means all women are unable to comprehend the workings of the internal combustion engine, or that all gay men are great dancers, or lesbians wear pork pie hats.

It’s a nonsensical sexist assumption, but for some reason women are allowed to publicly proffer those, while we verbally-battered men are way too scared to say anything of the sort.

The third time I felt fantastically male last night was wholly down to me being a clumsy oaf.  Our table in the restaurant was tucked into the eave of the attic space, and as I slid around to settle into my seat, I brushed a candle lantern that was hanging in the window, spilling candle wax down my jacket, over my jeans and onto the floor.

In retrospect I could have been a complete pain and complained that a restaurant having something loaded with hot wax swinging at head height from the ceiling might not be a very good idea, blah blah blah, Health and Safety, blah blah blah, but I didn’t. Nevertheless I was admonished  by my wife and felt pretty badly myself about the mess on the floor.

Later, as I returned from the restaurant loo, I thought it would be polite to apologise to our waitress about the mess, so I went over to her and said sorry, at which she unleashed a good-natured yet lengthy and preachy lecture about how I must stay behind and clean up the mess; how my wife would have a nightmare ironing the wax out of my clothes; my poor wife this and my poor wife that.

Of course it was my fault I knocked into the lantern, but beyond that, it was not my fault that it was hung so low, right by the table, and it was certainly not my fault that in this waitresses’ eyes I had caused all sorts of problems for my wife.

I decided to let her spill her venom, resisting the strong temptation to point out that actually, it was my jacket and my jeans that had been damaged, and that I (and therefore she and her restaurant as a whole) was pretty lucky I hadn’t been burned by hot wax hitting my neck or other bare-fleshy parts.

God forbid I had said something along the lines of ‘ow the little woman was goin’ to ‘ave an ‘eck of a job gettin’ that crap off've me clothes.

But I didn’t. She was the one making sexist assumptions, not me.

Is Jury’s car park a Testicular Priority Zone?

One of the great things about walking into Galway City is that you never know exactly what might happen. If you look straight ahead and do not engage with the rest of the world, there’s a chance you might get everything crossed off your list and be back at the car, job done, nifty nifty.
There’s also the chance that, even if you send out the ‘don’t come near me I am a dangerous predator’ vibes, the sister of the bloke your mate went out with will suddenly feel overcome by the desire to walk over and say hello, and even though you haven’t a clue who they are, they seem nice and sure, let’s go for a coffee, and before you know it four hours have passed and you have to dash home and liberate the kitty from the clutches of the hamster.
All very possible, as long as your car is not in a Pay and Display spot, because then you’ll only have two hours to do everything, see everybody and get back to your motor.
So I go to Jury’s car park, because there I get a ticket which is payable upon leaving, leaving me free to enjoy Galway as long as I want to. A typical example of the late 20th century multi-storey, Jury’s car park has sharp bends, steep ramps, and white-lined parking bays that are just wide enough to squeeze yer family saloon into, using both side mirrors. But once your motor is safely ensconced in Jury’s, you are free to linger in town or leg it out, do a runner sharpish, depending on whether you bump into friend of foe.
Unlike anywhere else in town, your time in Galway is not dictated by the time on your ticket.
But the Snapper, by her own admission “doesn’t do Jury’s car park”, and neither does Angel’s wife, and nor do several other women of my acquaintance.
Much as we men are constantly reminded by ye women that we are useless at multi-tasking (and me here right now all typing, thinking, blinking and breathing, simultaneous and co-ordinated despite dangly bits between the legs) you are surely fairly willing to accept some limitations in the arena of spatial aptitude.
We know that women are safe drivers, because insurance companies are interested only in making money and they rate women drivers as better risks than men, but is there something about all those twisty-turny first gear climbs and manoeuvring into tight-squeezed spaces that puts the wind up the fairer gender?
Is Jury’s car park a Testicular Priority Zone?
Before you start plunging your lubed Rabbits into my jugular vein, take a deep breath and realise that I’m only asking. Of course there are some females who use Jury’s car park, but many don’t, yet not one bloke I know would hesitate to swing in there and enjoy its temporal benefits.
So let me know if you’re a woman who uses it, enjoys it, and also, could you please tell me if any of you stop using Jury’s during your PMS days?
Is it possible that like the adult arachnophobe who was once a six year-old who suffered a scary spider in his sandwich, some of the women who refuse to use Jury’s car park were traumatised by their first attempt, which unbeknownst to them happened to coincide with a dose of Pre-menstrual syndrome?
Believe me, I’m well aware that my hypothesis at this point looks ridiculously obscure, preposterous and irrelevant enough to score a massive funding grant from some high-blown academic research institute, but it has long been accepted that during the pre-menstrual days, there is a pronounced drop in the level of a woman’s mechanical and mental efficiency, causing impaired reactions and judgement.
And why do I give a damn? What have the workings of a woman’s inner sanctum got to do with this lowly scribbler?
Nothing personal, ladies. I’m just curious.
At this point I cite the case made by the American lawyer, jurist, and political commentator Alan M. Dershowitz, in his 1994 report: ‘The PMS Defense, The Abuse Excuse, and Other Cop-outs, Sob Stories and Evasions of Responsibility’ in which he describes an incident involving a female orthopaedic surgeon who was pulled over by a US state trooper on Thanksgiving night, after he saw her swerving her BMW.
When the trooper asked the driver how much she’d had to drink, she identified herself as “a doctor” and told the trooper that it was none of his “damn business.”
The trooper then asked her to place her hands on top of her head, but instead she tried to kick him in the groin, yelling: “You son of a [expletive]; you [expletive] can't do this to me; I'm a doctor. I hope you [expletive] get shot and come into my hospital so I can refuse to treat you, or if any other trooper gets shot, I will also refuse to treat them.”
After being arrested, the driver kicked the Breathalyzer machine, before failing the test and being charged with drunken driving.
The driver’s lawyer argued that women absorb alcohol more quickly during their pre-menstrual cycle and that women with PMS became more irritable and hostile than other people.
Amazingly the Virginia judge figured this made a lot of legal sense, and acquitted the woman. Needless to say, the doctor and her lawyer were ecstatic, but my point is this:
As the first-known instance of a PMS acquittal, it may well prove to be a test case, serving as a precedent for future cases.
As a bloke I am the least-able person to judge whether a woman suffering from PMS might be safe behind the wheel, or an insanely raging hormonal death deliverer in charge of a fast-moving lethal weapon.
According to the above court of Virginian law, a women suffering from PMS is also the least-able person to judge her own driving. If she can’t even control herself when talking to a copper, how is she meant to keep to the Highway Code?
Even though I can already feel your female fury bubbling up as I scribble, there is no hint here of sexism.
Simply, if you’re a woman driver who frequently uses Jury’s car park in Galway, please let me know if it feels more challenging parking in there when you’re suffering from PMS, and if so, ergo, do you think you are safe to drive?