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June 24, 2005
More Peej For Your Reading Pleasure
rom Modern Manners: An Etiquette Book for Rude People. All I would ask with this particular excerpt is for you to keep in mind that this book was originally published in 1983.
But what do women want? Perhaps we can shed some light on the question by examining feminist objections to traditional female societal roles. Feminists believe "unliberated" women are not in control of their own lives, that they are not given adequate opportunities to realize their own potential. They feel women are overburdened with domestic responsibilities, underpaid for professional work, and exploited in every way. Of course, the average man can make the same complaints. But the cases are not comparable. Those conditions make the average man want a drink. They make the average woman want a law degree, a convertible, children, a Rolex watch, a seat on the stock exchange, two Valium, a lovely home, the lead role in a movie biography of Lotte Lenya, a pretty bracelet, the Nobel Prize, and a husband.
No matter how liberated she is, every woman still wants a husband. No one knows why, but it's true. Even Jane Fonda has a husband. Of a sort.
Being a husband to all women is, biologically, a dauntin proposition. Locker-room claims to the contrary, most of find it's all we can do service just one woman, let alone the whole sex. However, it is the privately held opinion of most women that their spouses are not much good for this anyway. There are other more characteristic and less physically taxing ways of acting the husband.
Even if you live alone, you should put your feet up on the furniture, smoke stinky cigars, and never take the garbage out. Identify with the role. Try to be a husband at all times. Refer to any woman within earshot as "the old lady," aske every woman you meet, "When's dinner?" and go right up to women you've never seen before in your life and tell them they've put on weight.
Another of woman's grievances is that male sexual techniques do not result in satisfactory female climaxes. (Personally the author is sure this is true. He did once get a woman to yell, "Oh, God! Oh, God!," but it turned out his golden retriever had bitten her on the foot.)Men must therefore be certain to provide orgasms to any females with whom they are allowed intimate contact.
The author wishes he could be more specific, but he cannot. Although he is in favor of feminism, he is still only a man and, frankly, does not know anything about where female orgazms come from. However, women seem to get a lot of what they like at cute little shops with names like "Things 'n Stuff." Maybe, next time you're at the mall, you should check it out.
He-men used to do things like fly jet fighter planes and climb Mt. Everest. They did these things to impress timorous and admiring women. Once women stopped being timorous and admiring, it was the secret hope of all us he-men that we could stop flying jet fighter planes and climbing Mt. Everest and spend the rest of our lives in a cozy restaurant with nothing more dangerous than a bad oyster for miles and miles in any direction. Unfortunately we just look too cute in our flight suits and parkas for women to let us stop. This is why Margaret Thatcher had to invade the Falklands.
Men have always been expected to be helpful to women. The same is true now but the mode of helpfulness has changed with changing sex roles. One example will suffice. In the past a man was expected to give his seat to a woman. Today it would be much more courteous for that man to give her his job.
Having acquiesced to feminism, most men are adjusting to present realities. There have been no mass suicides among professional ice hockey teams or other all-male groups, and so very few of us have been rounded up and placed in camps other than the usual fishing ones. But what does the future hold? What part will men play in the society of tomorrow? Well, women have taken our jobs and homosexuals are wearing the parkas and flight suits, and that probably means we'll be sitting around the house in our underwear watching NFL football.
Yet there's still a place in the world for men. Women want to be a lot of things traditionally considered masculine: doctors, rock stars, body builders, presidents of the United States. But there are plenty of masculine things women have, so far, shown no desire to be: pipe smokers, first-rate spincasters, wise old drunks, quiet. And there is one thing women can never take away from men. We die sooner.
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Posted by witnit at June 24, 2005 8:27 AM
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