Continued Procrastination

Instead of the studying I should be doing, I let myself get distracted by the wonderful Amptoons and his link farm. I was directed to a great essay about why "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, to put it bluntly, sucks. It reminded me of a time when I was growing up.

My mother, who I adore, takes advice from the worst people ever. Cross-country car trips (and there were many) were the worst torture that any living soul devised, because at that strip of interstate, way out in the boonies, after your batteries had long since died, one could still get Dr. Laura on the radio. Dr. Laura, who my mother admired and raptly listened to, would make the already intermibly boring drive an exercise in agony. This lady is a great example of a sucking- up stoge for the patriarchy; a self-righteous radio adviser, who would berate her clients for "shacking up" (her term for people who were living together but not married, which was delightfully beligerent and classist) and chastize teenage girls for acting/dressing/being whores.

This waste of human life once recommended to all of her listeners who were having some difficulty relating to their spouse to buy the book "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus" by the great charlatan, John Gray. My mother, easily persuaded and suffering under a "tense" relationship, went out and bought the audio book.

If I thought that being trapped in a car listening to Dr. Laura was bad, this had nothing on helping with spring cleaning listening to John Gray condescendingly explain to women that men just "need sex". Dr. Laura, at least, had commercials to stop the insanity, I instead had to live for "turn tape over to side B" and pray that the cassette was eaten by the player. I must have been 9 at this time, and had never heard of feminism, and I still knew this guy was full of crap. From his very first paragraph, when he talks about the Men-Martians seeing the Women-Venusians and then building and flying over to sweep them off their feet, my very first thought was "why would girls be waiting for some smelly boys to come get them?"

Reading the book now, after I figured out what feminism was all about, this book is just chock-full of stupid generalizations, sexist stereotypes, and pseudo-psychiatry. Men need to go to their "cave"? Women need to "talk about their feelings"? Puh-lease? Who believes this bullshit? Women should just give guys "quickies" because men "need sex"? This is stupidity that a child could point out. Now that I have education I can say that the use of men being active, and women being the passive decorative object is a harmful duality to set up (which, ironically enough means "why would girls wait around for smelly boys to come get them?").

Yet, my mom thought it was smart, and judging from the sales, she wasn't the only one.