If men can make complete asses of themselves, it is argued, then women should also have the right to make she-asses of their good selves if they so desire.
Although men are supposed to be from Mars, the Mars Exploration Rover Mission that has been looking under rocks on the surface of the Red Planet these past months has found no traces of members of the male species hiding there.
Perhaps, if the staffing of the NASA space program was more gender balanced and there were more female scientists calling the shots, the quest for intelligent life in the inner planets would have centred instead on Venus, where there would have been a higher probability of finding women. (The good news is that a Nepali space scientist has found proof that there is water on Mars, although no traces of it have yet been discovered in Mangal Bazar.)
As we get ready to mark another Intergalactic Women’s Day back here on Planet Earth next week, it is time once more to pay tribute to the longstanding struggle of women from all walks of life for equal rights with men. If men can make complete asses of themselves, it is argued, then women should also have the right to make she-asses of their good selves if they so desire. This is what gender equality means in practice in the real world. Over the ages, in the arena of behaving like idiots, it was the men who enjoyed a monopoly. But it is not pre-ordained which sex should have more oxymorons, and if women too want to be as idiomatic as us men, then where is the harm?
Having had a headstart, maledom has always had an unfair advantage in the race to be the most-asinine sex. Women have a lot of catching up to do, but given perseverance, commitment and determinism they can be as (if not more) idiosyncratic than those with both X and Y chromosomes. Some men are asses, and have their egos slightly dented when they see women overtaking them in this march towards mediocrity, but they should take solace in the fact that imitation is the best form of flattery. What would be more delightful than to see women civil servants mimicking men as they squeeze zits in public while sunning themselves in the balmy spring sunshine on the balcony of the Department of Women and Labour.
Ever since cave men dragged cave women by the hair and chewed mastodon entrails with their mouths open, right down to the modern industrial age where men still haven’t learnt to stow their toilet seats in an upright position during takeoff and landing, us boys have been rightly called the ‘stronger’ sex. Speaking of which, a recent survey has found that men, on average, think about sex 23 hours a day and the remaining one hour they spend in extracurricular activities such as taking sun-baths on the balcony of the Ministry of Manpower during which period they don’t think about anything in particular.
So, if women want to play catch-up with us chaps, they will have to take up some manlike hobbies, like:
- Not just complain that we have a headache, but become headaches ourselves
- Let our eyes rove all over the member of the opposite sex we are talking to, taking time to kick the tyres and closely inspect the fenders and boot
- Use the upcoming Holi days to go on a no-holds-barred, all-out offensive against the opposite sex
- Treat anyone who has the nerve to overtake you on the Rabi Bhavan uphill as a personal affront to maledom and accelerate swiftly to keep ahead even if it means colliding with the road divider
- When lost in a strange city, never consult a map, never ask for directions and show we’d rather be lost than found
These simple ideas will allow even the most feminine woman to be as macho as the hairiest of us testesterone-filled numbskulls who are proud to call ourselves men.