Tag Archives: gender

Boys Will Be Boys: A Few Words on Gender Roles

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Me doing my bit to reverse gender stereotypes.

When I was little, blue was for boys and pink was for girls. In the playground we merry band of little men grabbed sticks in lieu of real guns and played ‘Japs and Commandos’, a game that would probably see us dragged before The Hague if we tried to play it today (especially as we’re now adults). We stood at the top of the grassy hill while our peers fired imaginary weapons at us, and we had to die down that hill in a manner befitting the destructive consequences of the arbitrarily appointed weapon. ‘Rocket launcher!’ they’d shout. ‘Grenade!’ they’d scream. ‘Radioactive llamas with anger issues!’

Boys will be boys, right?

We played football. Well, I didn’t play football all that often, on account of being absolutely crap at it. I possessed all the silky footwork and balance of a newly born calf. The rest of the boys usually stuck me in goals, where I functioned both as failed goalkeeper and lightning rod for their fury after we lost 26 – 0 for perhaps the twenty-sixth time. It was the defence’s fault, naturally.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the playground the girls were busy playing hopscotch, making bracelets from daisies, and manufacturing 3D paper hexagons with the power to reveal which of us they’d be marrying in the future. We feared them. The girls had their own team sports, too; their favourite was excluding one or more of the other girls until they cried.

Naturally, there were a few outliers on both sides, but in the main our behaviour fell along traditional gender lines. Everybody knew exactly what sorts of activities they could or could not participate in relative to the type of genitalia they possessed. Girls couldn’t play football; guys couldn’t braid each other’s hair. Girls couldn’t play British Bulldogs (a no-holds-barred ‘sport’ where the boys thundered across the playground, while an ever-growing number of boys in the middle tried to yank them off their feet and throw them onto the ground); boys couldn’t use a skipping rope – even if they chanted the nursery rhyme from Nightmare on Elm Street as they did it. Breaches of the unwritten gender conventions were policed rather harshly, with punishment usually being meted out in nicknames, the corrosive stain of which might never wash out.

And, yet, when I look back on my youth it occurs to me that – contrary to the idea of the eons-old, iron-fisted rule of the patriarchy – the world in which I lived was very much a woman’s world. My parents divorced when I was five, and although I had a step-dad it was my mother who called the shots. My older sister, with whom I’m still incredibly close despite the geographical distance between us, was like a second mother to me. All of my teachers were female. Not just the ones who taught me, but every teacher in my primary school. On a national scale, for better or worse – and the answer is definitely worse – the good ship United Kingdom was steered by the claws of the indefatigable, and defiantly milk-snatching, Margaret Thatcher. Everywhere I looked, whether I acknowledged it or not, women were in charge. And yet somehow it appeared to be unthinkable that women should play football, drive buses or sit at the helm of Fortune 500 companies.

Nowadays, most westernised countries – with the exception of The Nightmare States of America (and I think we all know which states within that blessed union are the nightmares) – have had, or currently have, a woman as their head of state, including right here in Bonnie Scotland. Women can be – and both can and do excel at being – CEOs, scientists, professors, soldiers, surgeons, boxers, managers, entrepreneurs, presidents, drug dealers, contract killers, Ghostbusters… well, okay, maybe not that last one, but you get what I mean. Nobody bats an eyelid about women in the workforce these days, whatever their role or standing, and neither should they (nor ever should they have).

While it’s true that seismic progress has been made in the advancement of women’s rights and gender equality here in the secular west over the last hundred or so years, these victories are somewhat over-shadowed by the precarious position women in other cultures and countries still occupy, some of them existing so far down the societal ladder that they’re practically slaves or hostages.  Some of the poor wretches have even been – heaven forfend – married to Donald Trump.

Men, too, have seen their position in society altered. It’s now perfectly acceptable and widely accepted for men to be nurses, mid-wives, carers, flight attendants and stay-at-home parents. I still remember my initial shock upon discovering that my first-born’s key nursery worker was a man. Never underestimate the power of your early programming to spark up a few bolts of discordance in defiance of your intellectual outlook, but, equally, never underestimate the power of your learned and ever-learning mind to have a quiet word – and perchance a few pints – with your inherited preconceptions in some back-bar of your subconscious, resulting in either an amicable accord or your ever-learning mind kicking the ever-loving shit out of your preconceptions. Sometimes in life it’s as important to unlearn as it is to learn.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not some gender militant. Neither am I, in some respects, what you would call excessively progressive. I’m not out to ban gender reveal parties, argue for the removal of ‘mankind’ from the English lexicon, or insist that my sons become proficient at scissoring once they enter adulthood – you know, just in case. While I concede that many of the gender stereotypes my generation was forced to internalise are harmful, retrograde nonsense, I also believe that there are manifold physiological and psychological differences between men and women which should be discussed, understood and accommodated rather than denied, destroyed or suppressed.

And while I wrote this piece here in praise of the first two seasons of Amazon’s quirky yet powerful drama Transparent, I still have a great many questions about transgenderism, and exactly how the many issues it touches upon should be absorbed into and reflected by law.

I think the impulse to welcome babies into the world without gender assignations comes from a good and noble place. As well as being a means to side-step outdated notions, it could also go some way towards removing shame, anguish and hardships from the lives of transgender or intersex people. However, like most things in these polarised times, a heady cocktail of mutated goodwill and an almost fascistic instinct to stifle debate and cudgel dissent (on both sides of the political divide, I may add) tends to transform any discussion of, or attempt to grapple with and understand, these issues into a full-on, balls-out (or indeed balls–off) political knife-fight.

I don’t see why men and women as categories should cease to exist because there are people in the world who don’t fit comfortably into those slots, or who identify with a different gender, or no genders, or have both sets of genitalia. There should be room for all of us in this big old crazy world, whatever we’ve got between our legs.  But that’s a discussion for another day; one I couldn’t do full, fair and proper justice to here (if at all).

Let’s round things off with a tale of a trip I took to some charity shops with my youngest boy, Christopher, a few months ago now, before the Coronavirus was little more than a twinkle in a Chinese bat’s eye.  We were at the toy shelves, and Christopher picked up a pink plastic briefcase. An old woman materialised at my shoulder, looked down at Christopher and said, ‘Ooooh, that’s not fur you, son, that’s fur wee girls, you’re no’ a wee girl.’

‘It’s just pink,’ I said, to an empty, glassy stare from the old woman, who had doubtless found Christmas a cinch when her family were younger, thinking no more deeply about her gift choices than ‘dollies for girls and soldiers for boys’. I’ve got two boys at home. We read just as many bedtime stories about princesses as we do about monsters. They’ve got a toy kitchen. They wear pink T-shirts. They help with the housework. They’re encouraged to talk about their feelings, taught to be gentle and kind (which doesn’t always work, because they routinely batter each other). Welcome to the 21st century. You know what Christopher eventually picked? A toy horse, four Barbie Dolls and a gun. Fuck you, old woman.

And, yes, I admit it, as cool as I am with the breaking down of gender barriers, I was secretly relieved when he rounded out his selection of ‘girly’ toys with a firearm. I guess some of the old programming still holds firm.

If either of my sons ask to wear a dress one day, I’ll have to make sure it’s emblazoned with a picture of a skull, or a dead cat or something. You know. Yin and yang, and all that. Or whatever pronouns you’d prefer instead.

Toast tae the Lassies

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This is the full text of a ‘To the Lassies’ speech I wrote and read out for a Burns’ Night my friend held at his house two years ago. Most of the assembled laughed, and understood it was all in the name of tomfoolery; one middle-aged woman sat and stared at me in the hope that she could make me die with the power of her mind. 

Toast Tae the Lassies

Women. Pffttt…

That’s all I’ve got. 

‘Does my thought-pattern look fat in this?’

That certainly won’t shock you, because traditionally men are more taciturn than women. That’s a polite way of saying that they never fucking shut up. A woman can talk for three days without getting a dry throat, without threat of an empty mouth, and on subjects as diverse as ‘blah blah blah’ and ‘shoes’.

Women don’t transmit on our frequency. That’s when they bother to speak in our language in the first place. Science has proved this. A study was done comparing communication and language between the sexes, looking at what we say, how we say it and how we are received and perceived, and it found that what a woman says, the content of their speech, isn’t NEARLY as important… as the size of her tits.

‘Do you know how hard it is to get four comfortable pairs of Jimmy Choos?’

Women project their voices like missiles. Let’s put it this way: if the female black widow could talk, it wouldn’t need to murder its mate after sex. In fact the human female’s recourse to conversation appears, to the black widow, an unspeakably savage act. A woman won’t so much argue that black is white, but that both of these are wrong, and who do they think they’re talking to?

It wasn’t always like this. We never used to have to listen to women speak. It used to be legal to hit them with a frying pan, or water-board them in a vat of warm piss. We miss those days.

For some enlightenment on the subject we have to journey back to pre-Enlightenment times, and to a man named Institoris who wrote a medieval guide to identifying and prosecuting witches. I’ll quote the preface in the Malleus Maleficarum, which reads:

Wooooooooooooooo Bo-dy Fo-horm, Body Form for yoooooooooooooo!

“Why is the treachery which leads to the practice of harmful magic and all that entails found more frequently in women than in men? Institoris lists women’s usual weaknesses – they are backbiting, vengeful, lascivious, impressionable and intellectually inferior (those are the GOOD ones) – before saying that wicked women (the qualification is important) are particularly ruled by three moral failings (just three?): infidelitas (defined as a lack of adherence to the probable truth of the reality of things invisible – you know, like men’s faults) ostentation and lust.” 

I don’t think there are many here tonight who would disagree with those sentiments. Most of this can probably be attributed to hormones, with the emphasis on moans. Yes, hormones, and the dreaded ‘P’ word, that only five men in the history of the planet have been brave enough to utter. 

Periods are like the Kaiser Soze of biological processes. The greatest trick that women ever pulled was in trying to convince the male world that periods didn’t exist. So when a woman, light and electric from blood loss and mood imbalance has stabbed you through the heart, ripped it out and fed it to you – recognise this, men: it’s your fault. 

‘Flesh, chocolate. It’s all the same to me! Nomnomnomnom!’

Anyone who’s ever worked with a group of women knows that, as a group, they’re a deadly force to be reckoned with. Throw a puppy into their midst, and get ready to make dog soup with the bones. Women working in packs are like piranhas, but with better shoes.

And then there’s the connected danger and mystical horror that is cycle synchronisation. Like when the planets align and some evil wizard uses the formation to open a Gateway to Hell. Cycle synchronisation is like a Mexican wave of hatred.

‘All this fuss over a few fucking shepherds?’

Western culture has fooled us about women. We’re raised with the image of the nurturing, peaceful mother. The kind with big loving bingo wings that would make a flying squirrel grey with envy, and a pendulous, blobby bosom that could double as a wrecking ball. A lot of people, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, believe that if women were to rule the world it would be a happy, fluffy, lovey-dovey place with no war, struggle or strife. Then along came Margaret Thatcher. Lacking a heart, Thatcher was all cunt, and the monthly blood flow was suitably redirected. The Belgrano was torpedoed, in a metaphorical sense of course, by Thatcher’s tampon. 

Women cry. This has also fooled men, who equate crying with caring, and also see crying as a last resort, like suicide, or films starring Renee Zellwegger. But crying does not equal caring, because women, rather alarmingly, cry when they’re confused, startled, hopeful, ambivalent, guilty, ticked off, jealous, happy, furious, clumsy, dopey, sneezy and horny. Maybe that last one’s just me. They never actually cry when they’re sad. No, that’s what shouting’s for.

So how did women become so powerful? What went wrong? Women’s faces not being as soft as the hands that do their dishes? Women NOT doing the Shake and Vac to put the freshness back? 

John McCririck’s favourite wanking picture.

We can trace alot of it back to the suffragette movement. Back at the turn of the twentieth century, one woman’s desire to be heard was so strong that she hurled herself under a horse. If only more women would follow this example.

They burned their bras. Why? Didn’t they realise that their resulting bad back would have to be treated by a male chiropractor?

They started to play sports! The cheek. A little tip: stick to gymnastics, or naked jelly wrestling, or we’re not fucking interested.

And now there are women in the military. Great. Whose smart idea was it to teach them how to kill? And will somebody please ask Gordon Brown much it costs to produce Kevlar vests that can accommodate pairs of breasts? Not to mention the expense of military-issue tampons. No wonder they can’t afford any fucking helicopters over there. 

‘Want to see my big vessel, Punk Space Whore?’

They’ve been in space, too. How long before we see a fatal accident due to a woman shuttle-pilot trying to reverse park behind the Mir space station? Women have no business being in space, unless it’s to get shagged by Captain Kirk.

A lot of people say that women are just good for cooking, cleaning, shagging and gestating young. This isn’t true. They’re quite good with curtains, too. But it is true that the new power that women hold, especially in employment, is dangerous.

Allow me to expand.

  • A chick Doctor in Harrogate lost a false fingernail in a man’s lower intestine, causing his bowel to fall out.
  • A female bus driver in Darlington caused a twelve-car pile-up reading Woman’s Own while negotiating a roundabout. The drivers of the twelve cars hadn’t the time to react, as they were all doing their make-up at the time.
  • A female pilot lost control of a Boeing 747 because she was crying about a hungry cat she’d seen in her garden that morning.
  • A female soldier shot half of her own battalion as she stumbled across hostile terrain wearing stilettos.
  • In France, a bint can kill you if she can prove to the court she was on her dabs.

Sobering stuff.

I hope you don’t think I’ve been chauvinist or misogynistic tonight. This is not misogyny. It’s self-defence. Because although we love women – those deliciously mad, sexually-sociopathic Hell-dogs with tits – we must handle them carefully – like bombs, or rabid ferrets. We must love them like blow-up dolls filled with sixty per cent cotton wool to forty per cent sharp but rusty potato peelers.

Let’s raise a glass to the fairer sex.

Here’s tae ye!