Women Don't Need Men

Oh, People of Earth, the whining and moping coming from the tender, delicate menfolk today is heart-breaking. Women don't like Monty Python. We don't like the Three Stooges. Most of our brains work in some inexplicable fashion. Our strategy of ignoring Maureen Dowd and hoping she'd go away wasn't clear enough. We went off and did some things without them--like feminism.* Poor, poor men. It's rough, I can tell. So, bring your blankie or your gun or whatever it is that makes you feel safe and secure and go ahead and curl up here next to me. I'm going to tell you a hard truth. No, we don't need you. Sorry, but there it is. Without you, we'd find some other way to open jars or change lightbulbs--maybe everything would come with some kind of pop-top and we wouldn't have ceiling fixtures, just wall-mounted lighting. But here's the deal: need is a shallow thing anyway. Needing something implies that there's some end-date, some point at which we won't anymore. Need implies that you're all interchangeable. If you've got one and you lose him through some tragedy or act of carelessness, you just go find you another one and everything's fine. And here's the truth: we want you around, even when you're being giant fuckers. Both of my grandmas were married for their whole adult lives to the only men they'd ever been with. When my grandfathers died, neither of my grandmothers remarried, because they didn't need men. They wanted their husbands and, if they couldn't have them, they didn't want anyone. My god, when I think of sleeping next to my grandma in Michigan and waking up because she was crowding me off the bed and sitting up and seeing her reach her hand back to the empty spot where my grandpa used to sleep ten fucking years after he died, my heart aches. Not just for her, but for you morons who, again, are pissed off because you want some crappy shallow thing, like to be "needed" and we're offering you something that can transcend death--want, or as the poets call it, desire.** But what the fuck? Obviously, the menfolk need real things they can print out and put in their pockets and refer back to later, so, here goes: Things I, personally, owe to men (off the top of my head):

1. My ability to drive a car
2. My sense of adventure
3. My mad kissing skills
4. Mrs. Wigglebottom
5. My job
6. Song of Myself

Things I would/will miss when men vanish off the planet:

1. The way you smell
2. How funny you are
3. No one to protect me from killer hobos***
4. Good fights
5. That kind of swaggering, smoldering sexuality a la McKinley Morganfield
6. Rap music will suck
7. No one will go to hockey games with me
8. I'll be left with a bunch of friends who claim to understand me and few who will come out and say "What the fuck, B.?"

Things I will not miss:

1. The many ways in which you sell yourselves short.
2. The many ways in which you imply that your unhappiness is our fault when you constantly sell yourselves short.
3. The implication that I probably "don't prefer 'to think too much' when being entertained."
4. Rape.
5. Having to hear about how great Hemingway is.

So, there you go. I hope the men feel better now. * Just as a side note to dear Lee: Lee, if you're dating women who don't find Blazing Saddles to be so funny they about cry every time it comes on, find some new women to date. Christ Jesus. **I don't mean this to be confined to just some kind of heterosexual discussion of sexual desire. I hope y'all see that it's obvious that no matter what variety we come in, we love you guys as friends and relatives, even if not as lovers. *** Though, of course, the amount of killer hobos will plummet.