HomeLifeThe problem with Women

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The problem with Women — 6 Comments

  1. No this does not make you a misogynist. I too am nearly 60 and was educated at a Boys Grammar School, and was taught the same values.  Incidentally, men walked on the outside so that ladies would not get covered in slops/scraps when tossed out of upper storey windows in Elizabethan times. Now it's just plain good manners.

    • Paul,

      Yeah! and it all sounds just so quaint, old-fashioned and out of touch now, doesn’t it?

      However, I don’t suppose you or I will change our ways now and I suspect it is because we wouldn’t want to. There is something alomost too casual and offhand happening all around and I personally find it distasteful.

  2. "I had always loved women as the most obvious opposite to myself"

    At the risk of sounding tied to a thesaurus, I'd have changed "opposite" to compliment, completion, even catalyst.

    I'm with you on the approach to the modern woman. They want to be independant and seen to be "the same" as men, so that's the way I have also learnt to treat them. I don't do anything for a woman (such as holding a door open, or giing up a seat) that I wouldn't do for the equivalent man. Everyone is simply a person and gender is irrelevant.

    I have had conversations about this with a couple of independant women, neither a rabid feminist. Both were left by their husbands, one of them to raise two small children. They take the same sort of approach, that men are not really worth the trouble.

    However, when I have the same conversation with women or men who are currently in a relationship, they tell me that I'm missing out by my attitude and that it's a bad idea. This is not a conversation I'd have with my partner as she's likely to misinterpret it!

    I have also noticed how many of my peers have not bothered to marry or to have children.

    So perhaps both single men and women have the same issue with relating to the opposite sex; it's just expressing the same frustration in different ways. Which leaves the question – if men and women who are unattached are avoiding each other, how does anybody ever meet and marry. Perhaps nature is stronger than nurture after all?

    • Good points Mick!

      Civics taught me that the family is the core unit of the State, presupposing man and wife responsible for their offspring. This, I think, has been diluted to the point that the individual now is a unit of the State. In turn, the nature or justification for the State itself has changed from a society to an economy. Combine the two and the individual becomes merely a monetary unit of the State. The relationship between the sexes goes way down the list of priorities in this context and instead, earning potential and spending power becomes more important. 

      It suggests to me that somehow we have lost our way and there is a need now to ask ourselves, “Who are we really and what is it we truly aspire to?” If this weighty question is ignored then life becomes about a series of short-term gratifications to suit the pocket

  3. "Combine the two and the individual becomes merely a monetary unit of the State. The relationship between the sexes goes way down the list of priorities in this context…."

    The same is also true of the relationship between the generations. When I was growing up, my parents looked out for an older couple who lived two doors down. Without that relationship they would have found it far harder to live in their own home. In return my sister and I were parked there if my parents wanted to go out for the evening.

    Now the State expects the elderly couple to borrow against the value of their house to pay for their care, and the modern day equivalent of my Mother to have a job and pay taxes to facilitate that. Want a child minder for the evening? Pay through the nose for a state-approved "professional". Money has replaced community, and the State has been at the forefront of making it happen.

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