Whilst I’m on the subject of prevailing theories about men, if you heard anything about the University of Sheffield study, which, as The Mirror puts it, proves that “men’s brains simply aren’t designed to listen to women’s voices”, you must read this post from feminist blogger Pandagon. (Feministing also comments on this here.) Pandagon writes:

“In the past, male dominance was asserted as a natural fact because women were considered stupid, lustful, and generally inferior. Now in an effort to obtain female tolerance for lousy behavior, the official line is that men have to be indulged because their bodies make them mean, lustful, and incapable of interacting with their partners. I can’t imagine that men are going to tolerate being told that they are stupid, mean, shallow assholes by nature much longer.”

Hungry for more feminist crtiques of the male “stupidity myth[*]”? Check out One Good Thing’s hilarious post on a recent issue of Oprah’s magazine O which claimed to “forever change the way you look at men.”

As the post explains, one of the lovely comments in the mag about men included the statement: “A male human being is closer to a male chimpanzee than he is to a female human being.” Blogger flea writes:

Actual verbatim quote, page 326, by Russell Banks. A man. A man wrote that, and everybody gets their panties in a twist over Andrea Dworkin? Fifty bucks says you’ll never see this pull quote added to any anti-feminist lists that float around the internet full of statements from feminists “proving” their hatred of men.

Any bloke who’s feeling full of righteous feminist fury should check out XY Online immediately.

[*I think F Word writer Holly Combe coined this phrase. Credit where credit’s due.]

Posted by Catherine Redfern on 8 August 2005, at 10:59 PM