Tuesday, December 09, 2008

The Battle of the Sexes



A funny term, is it not? It's often used in those popularizations of gender research and similar juicy topics. The first time I saw it I immediately thought how very inappropriate it is. If we take the term seriously then men appear to have won that battle in Saudi Arabia.

But we are not supposed to take the term seriously, nooo. It's shorthand for funny-ha-ha type of articles on the topic of common quarrels between men and women or on some pseudo-biological crap about the sperm fighting the ova for supremacy. At the same time, the basic setup (battle, like in a war) is supposed to make us think of the two sides as equally well-equipped and equally aggressive armies in this war. Never mind that the "enemy" is in your family and includes one of your biological parents!

And never mind that women commit fewer violent acts than men and mostly don't have weapons training at all or that women are not allowed to fight in some countries on this planet. It's still a funny way of describing arguments about who should do the dishes, I guess, as long as you don't get that Saudi Arabia connotation from it.