Television
All man
James Delingpole
Glastonbury was horrible this year and personally I blame God. He knew damn well that He owed us some decent weather after last year's wash-out but instead He came over all Old Testament on us. 'Ha, ha, ha,' he boomed, 'I'm the Almighty and I can do what the hell I like. Here, try this whacking great rain cloud. And here's some more rain and here's lots of mud. Oh, and here's a teensy-weensy bit of sun, just to show you how much fun you could have had if the weather had been nice.'
Then I got back to find that letter in The Spectator rightly taking me to task for my ill-considered use of the word `Towelhead' and I felt even worse because it wasn't clever or funny and because actually I like Arabs. A lot. So if you're an Arab and you're reading this I'm very sorry and I hope we can still be friends. I am evil and I must die very painfully, perhaps by being pinned out in the blazing sun (should I ever return) and eaten alive by vultures.
Good. So that's blasphemy and racism dealt with. Now I can move on to sexism. And, sorry girls, I'm on really safe ground here because I've just been watching a fas- cinating programme called Why Men Don't Iron (Channel 4), and I now have incontro- vertible scientific proof that that ludicrous feminist movement some of you have been backing over the last few years has been talking utter rot.
It turns out that the reason we blokes rule the world and you chicks don't is that we're meant to: it's in our genes. Your job is to care for our babies, wash and iron our clothes, feed us and make love to us in any number of imaginative ways. Ours is to drive really fast cars, jump out of aero- planes, lose the housekeeping on the roulette tables, destroy all our enemies, accumulate hundreds of brilliant toys and generally have as much fun as we can all the time.
That, at least, was the message I inferred from the documentary. Admittedly, the programme didn't put it quite so bluntly but there's political correctness for you. What it actually said was that women's brains are better suited to co-operation and consensus, while men's are designed for winning high rank, beating the opposition, sensation-seeking and risk-taking. It proved this with a simple experiment.
Two sets of opposing basketball teams, one all-male, one all-female, were tested for their testosterone levels before and after a game. The men experienced a huge surge of testosterone before the game and another one if they beat the opposition (but not if they lost). The women's levels, however, remained much the same. It emerged, furthermore, in interviews that whereas the women didn't mind overmuch whether they'd won or lost (what mattered was how well they had played), the men's sole aim was victory.
Similar rules apply to dopamine and serotonin. Dopamine, of which men have far more than women, is the accelerator pedal in your brain which makes you want to drive fast cars, jump out of aeroplanes etc. Serotonin, of which women inevitably have more, is the brake pedal which inhibits impulsive behaviour. However, when a woman is exposed to certain visual stimuli — e.g. the frocks in Betsey John- son's South Ken boutique — her serotonin brakes mysteriously fail to operate. The programme didn't actually mention this fact but I know from studies of my own that it's true.
Anyway, the point is that no matter how much women may whinge about glass ceil- ings and rampant inequality in the work- place, they've mainly themselves to blame. With one or two rare exceptions, they're simply not horrible enough to thrive in the competitive world of male power politics. And if, against the odds, they do rise to the top, they won't actually enjoy being King Rat as much as men do because their brains don't release the same 'Gosh how incredibly successful and wonderful I am' chemicals.
This, more or less, was the programme's blushing conclusion. The fact that it was clearly so embarrassed about admitting it speaks volumes for the terrifying power women have won for themselves in the last few decades. Not content with being pretti- er and shapelier than us men, enjoying infinitely longer orgasms, having a pair of breasts to play with whenever they like and an in-built chemical excuse not to join the rat race, women have yet managed to per- suade us that they are oppressed victims of a phallocentric society and that we blokes should spend our whole lives feeling guilty about it.
Well, I'm sorry but it won't wash. As soon as I get the money together I'm going to buy myself a big red Ducati 916, a D- type Jaguar and a dozen cool new games Alastair Campbell was furious. He thinks he is the most dangerous man in Britain.' for my Playstation; I'm going to learn how to snowboard out of an aeroplane, check out a few war zones and join a casino. The wife may grumble but what can I do? I'm just acting naturally. I'm a man.
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