Some men

Generally speaking man-bashing really gives me the shits. You know what I mean by man-bashing: women (because it's nearly always women) who take an All Men Are Liars/Bastards/Rapists/Generally Pathetic kind of approach, blackening an entire sex because they had a couple of dickhead boyfriends or their father walked out on them when they were a kid.

Most women have probably encountered a few women who see nothing strange or rude about indulging in this kind of ranting and it's always super uncomfortable and - above all - excruciatingly dull. The weirdest thing is hearing these women talk about men as though they were an entirely different race, as opposed to just being, um, people. (Needless to say it goes the other way: cynical men who think all women are psychos/hysterics/gold-diggers are just as boring and stupid as their female counterparts.)

So I feel a trifle guilty for reprinting this corker from Dorothy Parker, which is not exactly PRO-men, and yet I can't resist. For all that I love boys/men and hold individual boys/men responsible for some of the best things that have happened to me in my life, lately it seems hard to argue that I have spent much of that life waiting around for some damn man.

CHANT FOR DARK HOURS
(Dorothy Parker)

Some men, some men
Cannot pass a
Book shop.
(Lady, make your mind up, and wait your life away.)

Some men, some men
Cannot pass a
Crap game.
(He said he’d come at moonrise, and here’s another day!)

Some men, some men
Cannot pass a
Bar-room.
(Wait about, and hang about, and that’s the way it goes.)

Some men, some men
Cannot pass a
Woman.
(Heaven never send me another one of those!)

Some men, some men
Cannot pass a
Golf course.
(Read a book, and sew a seam, and slumber if you can.)

Some men, some men
Cannot pass a
Haberdasher’s.
(All your life you wait around for some damn man!)

Of course sometimes the waiting turns out to be the best part. But it never bloody seems so at the time.