ot all women are lazy; some of them
are interfering bossy boots
All women hate me. Previously, only the vast majority of them did. Now it's the whole lot. There is no refuge. They come at me from a devilish multiplicity of angles, baring their teeth, their terrifying hormones co-ordinated in some mysterious way by the waxing of the moon and the ebbing of the tides.
And there's only myself to blame. Writing here a few weeks ago, I mentioned the apparently incontestable and harmless (I thought) fact that women are utterly boneidle. I suppose I expected a degree of chagrin in some quarters, largely from women who were, actually, utterly bone-idle, and thus resented the fact that they'd been rumbled. I didn't, though, expect the hatred of feminists. I thought I was arguing from a feminist perspective: i.e., go on, you lazy cow, go out and get a job! But the feminists were even angrier than the very idle women. They were quite furious. They screeched at me on the radio. I'm sorry; I didn't mean screeched. I meant they raised their voices.
And the thing is. I feel as though womankind now sees me as some kind of a misogynist, a sort of Strindberg, except without the talent. I'm going to get a reputation for being a 'woman-hater', like the columnist David Thomas or maybe the libidinous Stephen Byers — when nothing could be further from the truth, believe me. And having the hatred of every woman in the world and the great Clive James is too much to bear. So I want to redress the balance. In order for you to be under no misapprehension. I have compiled an inventory of aspects in which women are very clearly superior to men. It's not exhaustive: but then, how could it possibly be? It's just an attempt to redress a very grave wrong.
1. Women's diction is better than men's and they are disinclined to use long words for the sake of it. You have to say, in most cases, their pronunciation is quite wonderful. Except for Janet Street-Porter, obviously. And Cilia. But by and large women do not feel suffused with shame at having correctly pronounced a word. Men think that sounding the end of a word, or, for that matter, the start of a word, is effete — especially working-class men. And for similar reasons also associated with rampant machismo, they feel a desire to pepper their conversations with long words usually possessed of a Latin or Greek suffix or prefix, when the simpler English equivalents are ready to hand. Only a man would use solipsistic when meaning self-centred or self-obsessed. And listen, guys: you have a deep and abiding love for your wife. You are not uxorious.
2. Women gave us Finland. For which we should all give thanks. At the turn of the previous century, the Finnish economy was based almost entirely upon fishing. The men would go out and fish, for weeks, sometimes months, on end, and the women were left at home to run everything — including the local and national government. Finland was the first — and arguably only — country where women had control of everything that mattered. And look what a wonderful thing it has become today, as a result. Pristine white snow covered with pine cabins and the menfolk perpetually pissed out of their skulls or killing themselves. It sounds almost utopian, aside from the constant diet of herring. And those long winter nights left alone in front of the television while the women engage in endless meetings.
3. Women do not drool on trains. You know what I mean. You've seen men, halfcut or fully cut, dozing and snoring slumped across two seats on the 23:30 to Basingstoke and dribbling copiously on the seat cushions, or on their coats, or on the breast of a squirming neighbour. Women never, ever, do that. Have you ever seen a woman drool? No. Me neither. And the reason for this isn't their much-vaunted self-possession: the reason is purely biological. Like voles, women have weirdly malformed saliva glands. That's why they don't drool.
4. Women are almost always in favour of legislation, regardless of its point, impact or effectiveness. Talk to women — go on, do it, it won't hurt much — and you will find that they are almost always in favour of more measures. Measures to stop things. Measures to start things. Measures to curtail stuff.
Look at the big pressure groups and charities endlessly campaigning for 'action' of one kind or another — run by women, all of them. Well, mostly. Believe me, women have a faith in the communitarian approach which deserted men in about 1848. They're never happier than when legislating about something, or demanding legislation about something. This is because they think we, the men, will run amok if not vigorously trammelled in some way by the state. As a result, lawyers and politicians have plenty of work and we all have some wonderfully progressive legislation on the statute book.
5. When women eat stuff it doesn't stick to their teeth. I don't know why this is. Maybe their teeth have an invisible coating of Teflon, like voles do. Or perhaps it's simply that they eat different stuff from the rest of us, stuff that never sticks. You never see women eating offal, for example. Instead they eat things which break apart in clean, delicate flakes, like swordfish. (Have you ever seen a man eat swordfish, incidentally? Have you ever met a woman who doesn't like swordfish?) They're not mad on sauces, either, women. Maybe that's why they don't smell of food after they've eaten, like men do. Men always smell of steak and kidney pie, no matter what they've eaten. Women, meanwhile, eat only stuff which is odourless and tasteless and impossible for a normal human enzyme to break down.
6. Women reject the tyranny of the orderly queue. Queues are, of course, phallic and inherently repressive. Women are quite right to have no truck with them and instead just breeze up to the counter with a confused and slightly fey expression. When lots of women are trying to get something, they are able somehow to intuit a natural order among themselves, a sort of morphically generated consensus as to who should be served first, apparently entirely regardless of who has been waiting the longest. To witness this in action, hang around the lingerie counter in Selfridges for a few hours, until the police are called.
So, there we are. I could go on all night. Some women. I dare say, will argue that this is not an adequate recompense for my having described them as lazy, and even that the points I have identified are trivial or perhaps sweeping generalisations. Maybe so. But at least credit my sincerity of purpose and desperation to atone.
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