I like to think of myself as a decent and reasonable
person. Now I know I’m no Mother
Theresa, but I try and do the odd bit for charity and to be there for my
friends and family if they need me.
Y’know, just to generally try and be nice and occasionally practical,
accepting that not everyone in the universe has the same views as me but is
entitled to said opinion nevertheless?
Yeah, that’s me. Little Miss
Tries-To-Get-On-With-Everyone.
Except there are times, Blogverse, when even my
equilibrium is disturbed by the sheer moronic mass of humanity and the
creatures that dwell therein, to the point where there can only be two
solutions: bash my head repeatedly against the nearest available wall or go on
a killing spree. Thus far I’ve avoided
Holloway but have a lot of headaches…
Take today. I spent
an hour and a half of my precious time arguing with someone today, which I knew
was completely pointless because arguments with this guy are always the
personification of “head. Desk!” and I
know this because he and I have previous history. In this hour and a half I could have been
doing something constructive with my time, like learning Japanese
flower-arranging or conversational Mandarin or something; instead, I decided to
test the theory that even ill-informed idiots can be worth debating with. My mistake.
You would think I’d have learnt, after knowing said
individual for the number of years I have, that trying to bring his prehistoric
and Neanderthal views of women kicking and screaming into the 21st
century would be at best a futile exercise.
Apparently not. Somewhere in the
deepest, darkest, most cavernous recesses of my brain there still flickers a
little ray of hope which says even Captain Caveman over there can be brought
round to the sensible and generally-held consensus that the fairer sex are, in
fact, perfectly able to function as productive and useful members of the modern
world. I don’t wish to alarm anyone, but
we can even fix things!!! I
know!! Shocking, isn’t it? I do hope none of you suffered an apoplexy
reading that sentence; I should hate to have mass heart attacks on my
conscience…
But I digress.
Which is, apparently, something I’m prone to doing because I’m a woman;
apparently the female brain is unable to concentrate on anything for long
periods of time, preferring instead to flit like a metaphorical butterfly from
one topic to the next without taxing its little ole’ cells too much. What I’d always thought of as a useful
ability to multitask is in fact nothing more than a failure on the part of my
gender to concentrate, thus rendering me unsuitable for anything other than
staying at home, rearing a small flock of children, and ‘looking nice’. This and various other disparaging remarks
were the basis of the argument; basically I spent an hour and a half being told
that women will never amount to anything as a result of this inbuilt
‘dysfunction’ and that I should just accept it rather than pretending I could
play with the ‘Big Boys’ in the world of work/politics/scientific
discovery/anything that isn’t staying at home and getting the dinner on. Well thank you, Captain Caveman, for clearing
that one up for me. You’ve saved me from
a lifetime of labouring under the misapprehension that I could actually make a
useful contribution to society, when clearly I’m fit for nothing better than
staying home to darn socks and knit tea cosies.
Thank God for you, else we’d have women all over the shop, thinking they
could be helpful when really they’d just be getting in the way. [/sarcasm]
What really, really gets to me about the whole
useless argument, though, isn’t his prehistoric beliefs and the way he
expresses them (loudly, obnoxiously and so everyone within a ten-mile radius
gets to know about them). I accept that
there are still people in the world who think a woman’s place is in
the home and that they are generally inferior to men – whether because of
biological, religious, social or other factors – and I also accept that these
people are likely to sound off about these opinions, particularly if you
attempt to challenge them on it. No,
what really aggravated me was the fact that I let myself be baited and fell
hook, line and sinker for the whole pointless discussion; I’ve known this guy
for a long time and I know I’m never going to convince him
he’s wrong, or at least get him to consider the other side of the coin. The sensible thing to do would have been to
either laugh out loud at how ridiculous he was being or else inhabit my duck
persona and let it roll off my back; instead, I wasted ninety minutes of my
vague and imprecise span of human existence to try and argue with him. It doesn’t even matter that I was coming up
with well-thought-out and reasoned ripostes instead of just shrieking at him
like some horribly-demented harpy, or that I was able to evidence my argument
with examples of extremely intelligent and articulate women who are/were at the
top of their field and hailed as great by men and women alike – letting myself
get dragged into the thing in the first place was stupid and I’m still kicking
myself for it.
No doubt Captain Caveman would say it was only to be
expected; I am, after all, only a silly female.
To which my response would be: get back to your cave, you twat; this
isn’t the Stone Age and the moron quota for the New Millennium has already been
filled.
Except I think the irony would be lost on him…
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