Tag: gender

Pneumonia!

pneumoniaFor those of you who noticed that WD was missing from the Internet last Tuesday, December 5, I have one word for you — pneumonia.  For the first time in my life, Flu Season means a lot more to me than, “What a pain in the ass!  I have to get jabbed in the arm again this year.”  Apparently, this year’s flu is particularly vigorous, and in my case, it was downright rambunctious.  In fact, it invited pneumonia over to play, and when the two of them got through with me, I ended up in the hospital.  Over the years, I’ve had my fair share of health care, but this is the first time in a long time that I was the guy on the stretcher.  My, my, my! How the medical profession has changed!

First of all, everybody is really, really young — so young “tummy” and “bum” are now acceptable medical terminology.  It was all very much like High School Musical without the music.  However, I know there were drugs involved because, at one point, I thought I was Gulliver lying there, watching a bunch of little people scampering around, acting liked they’d just captured a being from the land of the Old Buggers.

Second, everybody dresses the same.  I remember when doctors wore white coats and looked like serious storks, nurses wore green scrubs, were two ax handles across the shoulders and could flip a 100 kilo man over on his stomach (tummy?) as easily as a fry cook flips bacon.  These days, the guy in purple could be anything from a cashier to a cardiologist, and I have the feeling I gave most of my medical history to a very polite young person who was on her way to get her swollen wrist x-rayed.  C’est la vie!

Finally, and this is a biggie, the wards have gone co-ed — and, even though I believe in a lot more gender equality than most people (for example, I’m a big fan of women in combat) I do not approve.  Why?  Because men and women don’t get sick the same way.  When men get sick, they revert to their childhood and have one thing on their mind: IT’S ABOUT ME!  However, when women get sick, they go a lot further back than that.  They return to a time when plague, and famine and pestilence roamed the Earth, and women were the dominant gender.  This was long before the trauma and drama of shaming and blaming and feminine hygiene, at a time when serious girls didn’t get pushed around by sleazy Red Carpet Romeos who thought they had an Oscar in their pants.  (Kate Hepburn dealt with guys like Sam Goldwyn, she would have laughed Weinstein off the planet, and Ava Gardner probably would have introduced him to her size 5 patent leather slingbacks — but I digress.)

The reality is, sick women are the busiest beings on the planet because, for millennia, they had to be — or our species would have died out.  Think about it!  Give a man a cold and you get a useless mass of whining, crying and complaining — unable to defend himself.  Give a woman a cold, and you will get a clean house, the laundry done, the car washed, a gourmet meal, two kids bathed and in bed and a pot of chicken soup for the guy on the sofa, with the sniffles — and that’s all after she’s come home from work.  So, putting men and women in the same hospital room is just throwing fuel on both fires.

Let me demonstrate.  I was in the hospital, battling the worst strain of influenza this planet has seen in 50 years, with a whack of pneumonia on the side, and when I got out, I discovered I’d gained weight.  Impossible?  No!  You see, every night the girls from beds 1 and 2 would sneak down to the nurses’ station to use the microwave.  They’d come back with batches of homemade cookies, and we’d all watch Riverdale.  I was so sick I could barely eat seven per episode..

Women Get More Cool Stuff Than Men

cowgirlI am painfully aware that writing about gender in these troubled times is like being the goalie on a javelin team, but I’m going to do it anyway.  Stereotypes be damned!  The truth has to be told: women get way more cool stuff than men.  Yes, I realize there’s the whole punitive underwear problem and, beyond Barbie, toys for girls generally suck. But look around you: women have tons more fun with life than men do.  Why?  ‘Cause they get all the good stuff.  Here’s a selection of evidence to prove it.

Sleeves — Women get more sleeves than men.  There are bell sleeves, cap sleeves, raglan sleeves, lily-point sleeves, bishop sleeves etc., etc., etc.  In fact, according to one source, there are over 40 different sleeves available to women.  And what do men get?  Long sleeves and short sleeves!

Hats — Put a hat — any hat — on a woman and you’ve got instant sexy.  Put a hat on a man, and unless his name is Indiana Jones, Humphrey Bogart or Che Guevara, you’ve got a candidate for Geek Of The Week.

Colours — Women get all the colours.  Men get several shades of mud.  Don’t believe me?  How many men do you know who are climbing the corporate ladder in a 3-piece, electric-blue hounds-tooth suit with  ruby red shoes and matching belt?

Hair — Even Stephen Hawking can’t calculate the infinity plus one number of things women can do with their hair.  Meanwhile, on the other side of the chromosome patch, men have the faux hawk, the man bun and bald.

Shoes — I’m not even going to touch this one.

Stories — See a well-dressed woman dining alone in an expensive restaurant and there’s an elaborate story there somewhere.  See a well-dressed man dining alone in an expensive restaurant and … he just got dumped … like, 20 minutes ago.

And finally:

Girl’s Night Out — Girl’s Night can range from a drunken pub crawl through the streets of Maribor, Slovenia — where someone ends up with her panties in her purse — to Ramen Noodle Night with sweatpants, jasmine tea and vintage Ryan Gosling videos.  On the other hand, since the beginning of time, Boy’s Night has always involved a game, junk food, alcohol and the eruption of various bodily gases.

I rest my case!

Feminism Doesn’t Stand A Chance

equality1Like it or not, folks, despite our best efforts, here in 2017, feminism doesn’t stand a chance.  Gender equality might be a wonderful ideal, but it’s not going to happen anytime soon because men and women don’t get killed, dismembered or injured the same way — in the movies.  The fact is, as long as we maintain our Neo-Victorian attitude toward violent entertainment, gender equality will remain a distant dream.  Let me explain.

Shooting — When minor male characters get shot in films, their guts are splattered across three walls, half their chest is missing and their arteries are pumping enough ketchup to sicken Dracula’s sister.  If the action’s close enough, they fly backwards through a plate glass window, bounce off the windshield of a car and end up in the gutter with their head caved in.  When minor female characters get shot — actually, minor female characters seldom get shot on camera — but if they do, it’s usually because they’ve caught a stray bullet that causes nothing more than a vague look of surprise and a spreading red stain.  (FYI, the recovery rate for female characters from lethal gunshot wounds is astronomical.)

Fire — When men get set on fire in film, they run around, flaying their arms and screaming like a berserk barbeque briquette.  Women are instantly incinerated — no fuss, no muss and very little clean-up.

Torture — When men are tortured in the movies, they’re hanging by their thumbs.  The bad guys are punching the hell out of them while simultaneously zapping them with 500 volts, hacking away with a machete and blowing cigar smoke in their face.  There’s tons of slobbering and swearing and crying and hollering, and this goes on for at least three scenes — while the good guys are racing to the rescue.  Women, however, seldom get past the sinister music and the initial scream of anticipation before the camera cuts to the next scene — where they’re found half-naked in an isolated wooded area (shallow grave optional.)

Dying — When men die, there’s no coming back.  This guy’s been shot 4 times, stabbed, hit by a truck, blown up by 2 mortars and a grenade and dropped off a 12-storey building.  His face looks as if it’s done 12 rounds with a K-Tel meat tenderizer, and both legs are either missing or bent around like a Bavarian pretzel.  He’s coughing and spewing and spitting up god-only-knows-what while he vainly struggles to choke out his last words.  When women die, they are normally on their back, their head comfortably resting or cradled in the arms of … you get the idea.  There’s a tiny smear of blood from the corner of their mouth and they say something like “I’m so cold.” before their head slumps sideways and their eyes close — makeup completely intact.  Honestly, I’ve fallen asleep with more fanfare than that.

Let’s face it, people! The only time women get any screaming-ass agony in the movies is during childbirth.  And if that isn’t the final sexist kick in the head, I don’t know what is.

It’s sad, but until men and women get their heads blown off with some kind of equality in movies, feminism will remain merely a hope and a promise.