Tuesday, November 08, 2005

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.

26 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Thank you for not using the word 'patriarchy'.

11/08/2005 12:41:00 PM  
Blogger Aunt B said...

Well, you know, I thought the subject of the post was important, so I wanted to keep the words small and easily understandable for my target audience. I know how you tend to fall asleep halfway through the word 'patriarchy.'

It must be the wearisome burden of benefitting from it.

11/08/2005 12:52:00 PM  
Blogger Kleinheider said...

The implication that I probably "don't prefer 'to think too much' when being entertained."

Well, I did bold "most" so as to be clear I didn't mean "all." For every generalization there are exceptions. You are undoubtably an exception. In fact, I almost did an asterisk explicitly excepting you, Coble, Brittney so you wouldn't take it personal, but then what fun would that be?

As to my main point that women prefer not to think too much in their popular culture choices, I definitely stand behind it as a general rule. You and your associates may be exceptions but you've been in the vicinity of enough highly intelligent, yet intellectually vacant, Vandy chicks to know what I say is true.

11/08/2005 01:29:00 PM  
Blogger Ryan said...

5. Having to hear about how great Hemingway is???

You wound me! "Hills Like White Elephants." "A Days Wait." The greatest book written, "The Sun Also Rises." "The Killers."

Not to mention being the model for all those rockin' Key West shirts.

Hope you are good.

R.

11/08/2005 01:35:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

You should amend the first list with:

7. Half of my chromosomes.

11/08/2005 01:36:00 PM  
Blogger Kat Coble said...

I for one don't like to think at all when I'm being entertained. Hence my enjoyment of Teletubbies and Regis Philbin

11/08/2005 01:41:00 PM  
Blogger Exador said...

"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."

Sorry, but all of your solutions to life's little problems require someone to invent them, and we still have the corner on that market. You also left off killing spiders.

On the plus side, we think women are pretty swell too. Otherwise, we wouldn't tolerate you.
(Tee Hee Hee)

11/08/2005 02:35:00 PM  
Blogger Lee said...

I've watched The Producers with my current girl, and she laughed some, though I haven't busted out the Blazing Saddles yet.

If she busts out laughing when Sheriff Bart says, "Scuse me while I whip this out," then I know I've found the one.

11/08/2005 02:55:00 PM  
Blogger Aunt B said...

A.C., all I can do is shake my head.

Ryan, how the hell are you? Are you ever coming back to the blogging world? Hemingway pretty much seals for me that there are inherent differences between men and women. Sarcastro can't read the word 'patriarchy' without falling asleep. I can't even hear the word 'Hemingway' without being bored to tears.

YBHC--or the last list with "constantly being second guessed."

Kat--I tried to read your comment, but I find reading you entertaining and so I just have to let the words flow right in my eyes and right out again, because I just hate thinking critically about things I enjoy.

Prof--no, I know the unwisdom of crawling into bed with you and your cute boy. Fun, perhaps, but unwise.

Exador--cats kill bugs. You're going to have to stake your claim on something a little more skilled than that.

Lee--If that line doesn't get her, then she has no soul.

11/08/2005 03:07:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The wearisome burden of hearing you name check "the patriarchy" comes from the inevitable mewling and sniveling that precedes and follows it.

Funny how you never hear men say "What do we need women for? Imagine a world without girls." We know what makes life worth living and tend to dismiss overeducated broads with mullets and a trucker wallet who try to tell us otherwise.

Wall-mounted lighting also needs light-bulbs. The only difference is that one is mounted on a horizontal plane and one is mounted on a vertical plane, oh wait, is this too technical for you gals?

As far as Granny deciding not to remarry, was that really her decision? Was there a long line of suitors after a decent interval, or did the law of supply and demand kick in?

I would gladly see the collected works of Hemingway burnt to a cinder and his body dug up and thrown on that bonfire if it would get you girls to drop this little slumber party fantasy of what the world would be like without boys, for five minutes. Because the world would still be a shitty place and you would run out of people to blame for it and to say to you "What the fuck, B?"

The password (I shit you not) is wormn

11/08/2005 03:25:00 PM  
Blogger Kat Coble said...

Wall-mounted lighting also needs light-bulbs. The only difference is that one is mounted on a horizontal plane and one is mounted on a vertical plane, oh wait, is this too technical for you gals?

Yes.

Besides, I find most men to have a problem with exaggerating horizontal angles.

11/08/2005 03:31:00 PM  
Blogger Exador said...

If only Granny had "Sarcastro's Guide for Girls."

11/08/2005 03:31:00 PM  
Blogger Kleinheider said...

A.C., all I can do is shake my head.

Why? Because what I say is so patently false or because you dare not admit that I might have a point.

You are not one of the females I am talking about. However, they do exist, and they outnumber you. It's a fact.

11/08/2005 04:23:00 PM  
Blogger theogeo said...

A.C., I call bullshit! The pop-culture pissing contest is a trap!

First, there's no accounting for taste (though I do love trying to tell people what's good and what's not, I know it's presumptuous and futile).

Second, if you really want to push the women-don't-like-to-think-while-being-entertained meme, then how can you explain men's preoccupation with porn (the ultimate non-thinking entertainment) and sports (ok, you think about obscure stats from 1976 and possible plays, but would you really deem watching sports more of an intellectual exercise than watching a cleverly written romantic comedy)?

Also, it should be noted here that framing the argument this way automatically presupposes that the entertainment you say is favored by women is less valuable than that favored by men. Why are romantic comedies and dramas pooh-poohed on just because their focus is interpersonal relationships and not eye-poking and explosions?

Lastly, did it ever occur to you that a lot of women might not like traditional slapstick because it looks like a boys' club to them? The same way you might not like Steel Magnolias because all that concentrated estrogen makes you feel like you're not part of the club?

B, this isn't really what your post was about, I guess, so sorry to be clogging up the comments.

11/08/2005 05:58:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Oh horseshit. I feel like I'm watching some damn screwball comedy from the 1940s and if that is so, can Hepburn and Tracy get on with it and get together in their delightfully incompatible and necessarily feisty way so we can all go out for Cokes?

11/08/2005 06:24:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Needing something implies that there's some end-date, some point at which we won't anymore.
Are you kidding? I don't see that implied in any way. Need is eternal.

Need is a lot less personal than want, but in my painful experience, want is a lot more transient. Women are fickle when it comes to relationships. That's why a guy wants to be needed in addition to being wanted.

Being wanted is better, but being needed extra insurance. 'She can't divorce me, who would fix her car/kill spiders/ put the kids through college/ open pickle jars.'

I'm not saying it's entirely rational, but it's still true.

W

11/08/2005 06:35:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

True W, but using B's logic, we do NEED women. As they are interchangeable and can be easily replaced.

11/08/2005 06:42:00 PM  
Blogger Aunt B said...

Sarcastro,

Funny how you never hear men say "What do we need women for? Imagine a world without girls."

Yeah, gee, I wonder why most straight guys in the U.S., home of the homosocial homophobe, could not cotton to that little thought experiment.

We know what makes life worth living

You're welcome.

Wall-mounted lighting also needs light-bulbs

Yes, but we can reach lights mounted on walls.

As far as Granny deciding not to remarry, was that really her decision? Was there a long line of suitors after a decent interval, or did the law of supply and demand kick in?

Mocking the dead. That's real classy. Is that also in Sarcastro's Guide for Girls? "Chapter 7--Fall in Line, Ladies, or Even Death will be No Refuge for You."

And, for your information, my grandma had the same problem I have--old men all the time pestering her and vying for her attention.

Professor,

My god! I hope this third party wasn't Sarcastro. I mean, he seems very keen on putting a stop to any so-called "slumber party" behavior and I'd feel terrible if he were barging in on you and your cute boy in bed and interrupting so that no feminist fantasies could be articulted.

Kat--Tee hee

Kleinheider--Because I don't even know where to start. I don't have enough hours in the day nor enough rope to keep you tied to a chair to make you listen.

But let's just stick with the easiest thing. The premise of your post is that most women don't enjoy humor because it taxes their brains, but the very study that started this whole flurry of posts says that women actually seem to enjoy jokes more than men.

Theogeo,

One should never apologize for taking up space to have rigorous discussions, even if, or especially if, they veer off-topic. As long as everyone's respectful of each other, go for it.

Anonymous,

I'm not sure who the Hepburn and Tracy are in your analogy, but if you're suggesting that Theogeo and her man take Kleinheider into a "slumber party" scenario similar to the Professor's, I'm all for it.

W., well, true. That's why your comments reminded me of Moya Cannon. What we want is something pure and unfazed by the frost, just out of our reach. What we get tends to be messy and painful and sucky.

Messy, painful, and sucky--just like the man who would suggest I'm easily replaced.

11/08/2005 08:00:00 PM  
Blogger Sharon Cobb said...

If a man doesn't know the velocity of the African swallow, he's gone from my life. In fact, I decide whether or not I'll go out with a man based on his knowledge of that routine.

11/09/2005 03:47:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Oh, Poor Deluded Spinster,

Nice ad hominem attack on all men being homophobes. Why, some of my best friends are lesbians.

So ceiling mounted fixtures are beyond your grasp due to the ladder and/or step stool being too technologically complex for your limited skill set?

As far as dead Granny goes, you dug her up and plopped her in this conversation first. Somehow I don't believe that an elderly woman from your genetic stock was the being chased like the only woman on a pirate ship in whatever depressed Rust Belt village your people hail from.

Gotta go. The pathologically unhappy girl over at the Small Dog Trousers weblog needs some attention now.

11/09/2005 06:37:00 AM  
Blogger Aunt B said...

You know, usually I'd be pissed, but today I feel bad for you. It must be very difficult for you to reconcile your belief that you desire and deserve tiny young beautiful blonde girls with the amount of time you spend over here antagonizing me.

In fact, I'm starting to suspect that all this bluster is no longer about convincing me that you want and deserve something better than me, but about convincing yourself.

Good luck with that.

Love,

The Happy Spinster

11/09/2005 07:21:00 AM  
Blogger Exador said...

B,

I think you may be on to something there. Sarcastro uses blogs to cruise for chicks. Not that there's anything WRONG with that. He has an uncanny grasp of the concept that eludes many men; that women love a man that's mean to them. It's a balancing act that's tough to master. The man is wise beyond, or at least up to, his years.

After reading that riveting post about the afghan, are you a spinster? Or more of a crochet-er?
Either way, that post made me feel better. I was a bit self-conscious about my blog entries getting too boring, but not after reading that.

11/09/2005 07:39:00 AM  
Blogger Aunt B said...

Good lord, let's not hope he's wise beyond his years, because that'd be some fucking wisdom.

Go ahead. Mock the afghan. That's real nice. I suppose we could all post heartbreaking stories about our adorable dogs, but my readers demand a balance of cute and boring. Some of the more conservative of them don't want to hear about tits and cooters every day.

Anyway, I'd rather be a spinster than an old maid. Old maids have to move in with their brothers and help raise their children. Their only escape is card-playing or death.

A spinster can drive a fast car and drink a lot of gin-based drinks. If I'm going to be a single gal, give me the life of fast cars and booze.

11/09/2005 08:13:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Wait a minute, don't you already live with your brother, old maid?

I'd say I was wrong and full of bluster about all of this, but the silence of your pals has convinced me I'm right.

Convincing myself of deserving better is not the issue. It is the fear of settling and winding up with you.

11/09/2005 11:36:00 AM  
Blogger Aunt B said...

It is the fear of settling and winding up with you.

Thanks.

11/09/2005 01:06:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

You are right. That was over the line and uncalled for. I apologize for my ugly and mean-spirited comment.

11/09/2005 04:11:00 PM  

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