Hormone vote
Although no contemporary Greek will admit it, one cannot ignore the Greeks' virulent misogyny. The philosophers judged women inferior, the myths made them out to be insidious and lethal. Hesiod claimed that the creation of woman came about as a punishment for Prometheus's kindness to man. And Homer revealed his extreme misogyny by giving female names to the dangers that confronted his hero, Odysseus, during his ten-year attempt to return home: Scylla, Charybdis, Circe.
The last Greek to write on somewhat parallel lines was called in by Colonel Ladas in 1967, given a lecture and then kicked very hard in the groin. (Somehow I don't expect the same thing to happen to me, although I do expect the press to cast doubts on my mother's ancestry). So what better vantage point to observe the British elections than the birthplace of democracy (selective), homosexuality, and misogyny. Especially as the English claim the ancient Greeks as their cultural fathers. (While trade union officials claim modern Greeks as their progenitors). Significantly, the first person I spoke to in Greece about the election was an Englishman. Very rich, an Old Etonian and of noble birth, he is considered a great catch by the ladies in swinging London. What he is not is evidence for Edison's axiom that the chief function of the body is to carry the brain around. In fact he is almost demented. He nevertheless parroted something I'd heard in England from people with more upstairs than himself: 'I cannot stand the way that woman speaks,' he hissed through invisible lips. 'And I could never vote for a woman against a man.'
The Greeks were worse. Most of them made remarks similar to those of Callaghan, as to who Mrs Thatcher is getting into bed with. When men feel threatened they do tend to make that kind of remark. The worrying thing is that here in Athens that's all I hear, and that Britain has a prime minister who knows the low level of his audience and speaks accordingly.
My next step was to call my illustrious mentor, Professor Aspinall of Kenya, Tanzania and Mozambique. His theories were the most convincing and explained to me once and for all the rise of Mrs T. Every male, said the professor, has a 70 to 30 per cent hormone count: 70 per cent male hormones, 30 per cent female. Every female is the opposite. A woman's trust consolidates the man's dominance. 400 million years of field experiments have proved that the female is sculpted differently from Spectator 28 April 1979 the man for obvious reasons. Each sex is sculpted in order to fulfil his or her role. Thus man's closest species, the macacque, is bigger than his female counterpart, stronger and the one who decides where and if they will move breeding ground. Simultaneously, the male will respond t° outside dangers to the group, while the female will remain unconcerned at the threats. She knows the male is responsible. Getting back to Mrs Thatcher, Professot Aspinall says that her male hormone cotMt has gone up dramatically because she is surrounded by males without enough male hormones: the state has taken over the male or father role, the male species feels (Its' robed, his position usurped, as the ottlY function left to him by the omnipotent state is taking care of bills and old people. Aspinall insists that women like Mrs Gandhi, Marcos, Elizabeth I and Cleopatra inherited their fathers' dynastic strength the latter, that of her consorts. Mrs T is not in that group. She has entered a vacutial which suggests that the men around her suffer from a very low testerone count. Aspinall's scientific analysis confirrned; in effect, something I had been thinking ail along. She is the only person in Britaln today with any balls, definitely more so than a man called Charles who is forever riding horses and blaming management. And ten times more than the lily-livered Callaghan' Being a male chauvinist pig I almost regret not being English so that I could vote.
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