Читать книгу Feminism: The Ugly Truth - Mike J.D. Buchanan - Страница 15

Women complain about premenstrual syndrome, but I think of it as the only time of the month that I can be myself.

Roseanne Barr 1952- American actress, comedienne, writer, television producer, director

As a business executive I started managing staff in the early 1980s. I well remember one female member of staff, Mary, who had time off every month so she might better cope with ‘women’s problems’. Ironically Mary was quite contrary, in accordance with the English nursery rhyme. How her garden grew, I have no idea. I digress.

Mary was a Leftie; you’d probably have predicted that. Her absences from work would last two or three consecutive days, the days invariably adjoining a weekend or a bank holiday.

She wasn’t one of life’s sunniest characters. During the days leading up to her monthly mini-breaks she was even more difficult than usual, and the other members of staff would whisper to each other when Mary’s ‘time’ came around again.

An acquaintance who knows a number of feminists tells me that in his experience feminists have their ‘time’ 365 days a year, and 366 days in a leap year. So is feminism simply a result of hormonal imbalances? We need some research on this. In a later chapter we shall consider a book by a psychologist of the female persuasion, Professor Louann Brizendine’s The Female Brain (2006). A short extract is appropriate here:

‘One day it struck me that male versus female depression rates didn’t start to diverge until females turned 12 or 13 – the age girls began menstruating. It appeared that the chemical changes at puberty did something in the brain to trigger more depression in women…

When I started taking a woman’s hormonal state into account as I evaluated her psychiatrically, I discovered the massive neurological effects her hormones have during different stages in life in shaping her desires, her values, and the very way she perceives reality [Author’s italics]…

Of the fluctuations that begin as early as three months old and last until after menopause, a woman’s neurological reality is not as constant as a man’s. His is like a mountain that is worn away imperceptibly over the millennia by glaciers, weather, and the deep tectonic movements of the earth. Hers is more like the weather itself – constantly changing and hard to predict.’

Here’s an idea. Maybe we could rid the world of feminism by regularly measuring feminists’ hormone levels, then adjusting the levels until they started to think and act like normal women. Think how much happier they’d be and, by extension, how much happier the other 95% of the population would be. I’m sure feminists would look favourably on the idea if I and other right-minded men just explained it to them slowly…