Tuesday, August 14, 2007

Norah Vincent is a lesbian journalist. I say this not because “lesbian” is the only thing one might need to know about her, but to bring to mind the cliché that most lesbians, to some extent, dislike men.

From 2004-2006, Vincent went undercover disguised as a man named "Ned," in order to find out how the lives of men and women differ. She chronicled her experiences in the book, A Self-Made Man. While one could guess at most of her findings without all the effort involved in cross-dressing (incidentally, men are less vocal about emotions than women), one particular finding is especially interesting:

As “Ned” went to clubs to hang out with “his” male friends, Vincent would occasionally talk to women while still in the guise of being a man – not necessarily to hit on them, but as a means of gauging reactions to certain conversational topics when the conversation is initiated by a man.

After a few months of this, Vincent evidently began to despise women; no matter what she wanted to talk about, and no matter what her intentions were, nearly all of the women she talked to either blew her off, or were insanely rude and/or condescending to her. Without even stopping to hear what “Ned” had to say, the women in the nightclubs “Ned” visited immediately assumed he was a lecherous jerk looking only for sex, and treated him like dirt as a result.

To summarize: regular women were such assholes to a lesbian when she was dressed like a man, that she began to sympathize with men and actually dislike women. If that isn’t proof-positive that heterosexual women tend to despise and generally act like jerks to men more than men despise and generally act like jerks to women, I don’t know what is. Sexists and assholes are obviously abound in both genders, but we're talking about immediate reactions from one member of a sex to one member of another. Men may act like jerks to women, but they usually don't tend to do it just because a woman wanted to talk to them.

Women tend to despise men because of all the aforementioned reasons, many of which are beyond our control. Despite the fact that we have shitty orgasms and that sex for us can be a stressful experience, our genes still perpetually, forcefully, unfairly push us along in pursuit of sex.

As a result of these things, men tend to be more desperate than women when it comes to finding a girlfriend and/or mate. Finding a woman without a boyfriend is usually a sign of pickiness or personal choice; now matter how ugly a woman might be, odds are she can still find at least one mate. However, finding a guy without a girlfriend is usually a sign of a lack of options.

Thanks to the human male’s biologically-imposed desperation and urges, women have far more choice in choosing men, and far less pressure in doing so.