Friday 13 February 2015

What Women Really Want

As a member of the male variant of our species, I can safely say that after a certain age there's a certain question that comes to haunt most (if not all) of us:

"What do women want?"
It's an innocuous enough little question but it's frustrating enough that the '?' eventually becomes more of a '!' over time. After a while though, the question becomes so bewildering that it starts to become a little ridiculous. The structure of the question itself is a little broken and the cracks reveal the heart of what we've imbibed since we were boys.

Mainly it comes down to the sentiment expressed by the title of "Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus." Screw that stupid book by the way; possibly no other phrase shuts down conversations about gender dynamics as quickly as that f&!@#ng title! And it's not always clear that they've read the book either, it's often just a stand-in for "...but you just don't get it!".

My problem with that sentiment is that it paints Women (with a capital 'W') as this separate species that have different motivations from us Martians Men. Worse still, this perpetuates the image of women as social masterminds who hold hapless men in their sway using the power of their magical lady bits. In a way it casts Women as having a specific Agenda and if we could only decipher it then all would be blissful.

Btw, if these women were having secret meetings to decide the Agenda, I'd like to think Helen Mirren would chair them. :D

Seriously though, the more I think about it the more it seems like the big secret about what women want is that they don't really have much clue! And I mean that inasmuch as basically no-one (man or woman) has any clue. I might even go so far as to say that if you took a man's "soul" (however you imagine it) and put it in a woman's body, he/she/it would eventually be behaviourally indistinguishable from the average woman.


I know a lot of women are probably rolling their eyes at me right now but I think this stuff bears being said. It's one thing to just intellectually know something and quite another for it to actually be a meaningful meme in society. In the 'nature' vs 'nurture' argument, claiming that "women are from Venus" completely denies the possibility that there's any role that society plays in shaping the way women behave on a day to day basis.

Another big issue I have is that these myths are perpetuated and then capitalized on to get us to buy crap to try and barter our way into women's pants hearts. Chief among these insults to reason is the multi-billion dollar diamond industry. I'd rather not go into all of it but suffice it to say that the evidence shows that diamonds (of any shape, size, cut, clarity or heritage) are literally worthless. You could read further here : Diamonds are Bullshit, or you could watch the video below.



So yes, this is my big epiphany for you this Valentine's day. Should make a great topic for awkward conversation if you're on a first date tomorrow. ;)

And if you prefer your revelations in pithy one-liner form, well:
Women are just like men... plus the magic bits.
Imagine that on a t-shirt; Dare I say it, we could change the world!

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