October 2, 2002

E.T. Phones Home.. and says "What's For Dinner?"

It has come to my attention, as a woman, that men's minds are completely alien to me. I have about as much chance of understanding how a man thinks as I do of understanding rocket science. Less, actually, because there are books that explain rocket science. I can read "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus" til the cows come home, but I don't think it will help. Why? Because the author is a man, duh!

Don't get me wrong. I have nothing against men. And to be fair I guess women's minds are as alien to them as theirs are to us. I just get annoyed when I hear guys talk about how unreasonable their wife/girlfriend/mother/daughter is, and proceed to attribute something to them that is indeed quite unreasonable. For instance, a friend said his girlfriend doesn't appreciate it when he spends hours cleaning the apartment, and tells him there's more work to be done. That doesn't sound very nice of her. Unfortunately I'm only getting the male input. It is quite likely that the girlfriend said something totally different, and this is how the guy interpreted it. I can give more extreme examples, but this is a good illustration of how something simple can get out of hand because of fundamental problems of communication between the sexes.

Then there are those women who truly are unreasonable, but I can't claim they are alien to me. Sometimes I feel myself doing something very "womanly" but I stop it because I know it's not going to get me anywhere with whatever man it pertains to. However, I want to give a big slobbery PFFT! to every guy who ever accused a woman of being unreasonable because of hormones. That is such an offensive thing to say, but guys just don't seem to get it. (They'll probably all attribute this particular PFFT article to hormones, the weasels.)

I think the real problem is that for millennia women have let men get away with being in charge because their communication style is somehow superior to ours. Even now there are women out there who'll say "I don't think a woman should be President because women are too emotional." Well, baloney. Besides, men, who are oh-so-unemotional, don't seem to make great Presidents. Maybe it's time to give something else a shot.

Published: October 2, 2002
Editor: stacy