How is it that a simple case of the common cold can be diagnosed by men as double pneumonia or an in growing toe nail as the onset of gangrene? Not only do they over react at the first manifestation of illness, they feel that they must compete with everyone (especially women) over ailments. To such an extent that they will invent infirmity so they are not left feeling isolated and deprived of attention. To most people a general feeling of health and well being is a blessing and to be ill is not a state that is anticipated with relish. However, the male will take every opportunity to monopolize sickness and contrive to surpass his female contemporaries.
It has always been portrayed that females have little or no resistance to pain or discomfort and the image of the swooning female, overcome by an attack of the vapours, has frequently been perceived as the typical representation of the fairer sex. Men on the other hand are seen to be bearing agonies of monumental proportions with a smile on their face. Laughing at adversity while limbs are amputated, sacrificing their lives so that others might be saved. We have all seen the movie ‘Scott of the Antarctic’ when Oates walks forth into the blizzard knowing that he will never return. Anyone reading this could get the impression I’m a heartless bitch and in my defence its just that I don’t subscribe to the particular media portrayal of man’s overwhelming ability to ensure hardship with fortitude and heroism.
It could only be a man stupid enough to laugh while body parts are hacked off and only a man with the brain of a gnat who would piss off into a blizzard to save his friends and have it interpreted as bravery. What a load of tripe, who but a complete masochist or raving lunatic would be caught doing either of those? I rest my case pass it off as mere conjecture but we know a different story out here in the real world - do we not ladies?
What pain compares with that of childbirth or that monthly blessing the period? Yet according to men this is nature and not real pain. Oh that is so refreshing to know - after all the agonies of having one’s lower parts stretched to the size of Wembley Football Stadium, we can console ourselves with the knowledge that this was not pain - just nature. What a crock and only a man could try and explain this painful torment as a miracle of nature.
My biggest fantasy has to be the one where I’m a midwife attending the first male to deliver and then ask him what it was like to experience nature, right after he has passed a baby the size of a rugby ball through the eye of his penis. I wonder if he would feel so blasé then - I think not.
I don’t know who is worse, those men amongst of us who have no idea at all or those who those who think they do. The first group at least bear a little honesty when they admit not to having a clue and they don’t care but get the guy who feels he is part of the entire experience and that’s another story entirely.
There he is right by your side as you lie there, legs akimbo, pushing this monstrosity out of your smallest orifice, until everyone of the blood vessels in your eyes have popped and the veins are standing to attention on your forehead. Where is he while you’re doing all of this right there at the busy end filming your indignity or up at the safe end trying to force you to suck a sponge or making you chant ‘Ten Green Bottles’ in rhythm with your contractions and he even has the audacity to inform you of potential contractions as if you didn’t know. Then he is hurt when you promise him with the threat of violent , public castration. My partner actually told me to get a grip and work harder when my screaming became too embarrassing for him to bear. ‘I’ll show you grip big boy if your crotch comes within grabbing distance’, and with a voice resembling the demon out of the ‘Exorcist’ I snarl,
“Fuck off worm and get this bloody thing out - NOW”
All of this is seemingly forgotten once you have been delivered of your little bundle of joy - yeah right, through tears of rapture he utters,
“Didn’t WE do well”?
Now did I miss something in the translation here, are we using the Royal WE? Throughout this exquisite agony I cannot recall the pair of us screaming and pushing. Let me tell you he owes a huge debt of gratitude to that bundle of joy because if I hadn’t been holding him at the time, Daddy’s jewels would have been mine -oh yes indeed.
Women I agree are complex works of nature but odds really are not in our favour are they? The very make up of their complexity, say hormones for example are just too difficult for men to comprehend. Come on be fair we do have more than the one hormone to contend with whereas men only have the one - the one that makes beards grow and floppy bits perform. Having got to that stage in my life when my moods are dictated by hot flushes and severe swings in temperament I do have to admit to a modicum of sympathy for my soul mate.
On more than one occasion he has had to face the furore of a hot, sweaty and extremely menopausal woman brandishing a sharp instrument because he looked at her the wrong way. It got to such a stage that to protect his physical well being he would throw his hat through the door first and if I grabbed it and scurry rat like into a corner to tear it to pieces, he would refrain from venturing further. He thought he’d capped it for a short while but I soon caught onto his little scheme and my paranoia developed to such a level that I was able to lull him into a false sense of security with a smile and a few consoling gestures - simpleton. Once trapped I was able to complete his punishment at my leisure and I reached new heights of implementing torture with an egg whisk and a wooden spoon before I was prescribed HRT. Not a moment too soon as far as he was concerned and he was very relieved when Lucretia Borgia left and his loving (subservient) wife returned. I really felt very fit (for want of a better word) once the drug took hold and for a while he walked in a stiff and stilted manner and for those cynics (female and male) who hold no truck for the effects of HRT on the menopausally insane listen to this.
I recall a situation during a particularly hot and steamy passion session when somehow in the moistness of the moment my adhesive HRT patch transferred itself from me to him (unnoticed) and for a few days he really got in touch with his feminine side. I have to say he looked rather fetching wearing nothing but my apron and a smile as he cooked tea but all good things come to an end and after a while (10 days) I had to peel off the offending little devil - oh well anyway be warned ye disbelievers of the goddess - HRT.
Men in general are, I have learnt, very perplexed by the very mention of female bits such as hormones, periods, water retention just about anything remotely associated with female genitalia. I cannot quite grasp why it is that most men are titillated by the sight of a woman’s naught bits spread to the far corners of the globe and yet they are totally horrified and appalled by, let us say, an advertisement for sanitary garments. May be it is the unknown that disturbs and confuses them, as it has until recently, been a taboo subject and its secrets only known to female members of society. This enigma of the menstrual cycle has not been helped by the media who have not quite discovered the fine line of advertising that educates without embarrassment and the present advertising leaves a lot to be desired in my opinion.
My experiences of menstruation did not leave me with an overwhelming compulsion to jump on a horse or bicycle (wearing the mandatory white jeans) as soon as the ‘painters arrived’ nor did I have any desire to suddenly take off for a mad trip around Europe as the latest advertising campaign suggests. Far from it, I discovered that any activity that required my legs being apart for more than a couple of minutes was quite out of the question, for all of the obvious gory reasons and to this day I have not understood how it was that one became an Olympic athlete or proficient at playing the piano under water once a tampon had been inserted. There you have it, may be we need a fresh approach to this problem before menstruation is regard as after dinner conversation.
Another anomaly that I came across when working in the care sector was that men are for the most part quite reluctant to discuss or take part in any medical treatment that concerns their own private parts and by private I mean as in below the waist, the area pertaining to their ‘todger’ or bottom. This is very strange because as a rule this area commands 90% of their daily activities and a little known fact is that this is where the brain is situated for the male of the species only. Take a baby boy or adolescent male for instance, from infancy once the discovery of that elastic band between their legs has been made, they will at any given opportunity stretch it to immense proportions, in public or private it really doesn’t matter. Thankfully they do reach an age when they realise that it is not acceptable behaviour to tug in public without being arrested (ask George Michael) and it is at this time when they become almost obsessively cautious about their most precious organ. Never more so is this caution challenged than when they have to undergo some form of medical treatment or another whether it be a rudimentary inoculation or an examination for haemorrhoids.
Men find it quite acceptable for women to have to suffer the indignities of having the whole world and its Mother looking up her nether regions but as soon as the phrase, ‘Drop your pants’ is uttered in their direction its, ‘Head for the hills with your bum cheeks tightly clasped, boys’ I have witnessed big strong rugby types being chased around a treatment room by some petite little nurse (syringe in hand) and I have witnessed the dreadful injuries on those same nurses after being bitten by some hysterical male who had to have 2 butterfly clips inserted in an nondescript cut albeit in a delicate area. What is it with men and their dangly bits? Is it embarrassment that explains their attitude in situations such as these with an attempt at humour and the occasional ribald and lewd comment,
“ Bet you’ve never seen anything like this before, have you nurse”?
“Well, no I haven’t Mr Jones I wasn’t aware that cocktail sausages came that small”; or
“So that’s 6 inches is it, explains why I can’t park my car.”
Men I have discovered are also apprehensive about other male nurses and are absolutely convinced that anyone of their own gender in such a profession has to be homosexual (stands to reason) and to add insult to injury, are out to seduce them. My own husband who served in that male bastion, the Army, would not allow a male medic to inoculate him in the bum region and after 4 falls and a submission the injection was finally administered through his trousers after all other attempts at restraint had failed. Yet, and here’s the mystery, after a game of rugby or some other grunting and equally male orientated sport, they would not think twice about disrobing and jumping into a communal bath, all 15 of them and play ‘hunt the soap’, strange that.......
This strange and often conflicting dilemma can also be applied to what comes out of those parts, they strive so hard to hide inside their trousers. Ask a man to supply a specimen of urine or take medication for constipation and all Hell breaks loose. My husband after one spell of agonizing constipation finally had to relent and use the glycerine suppositories he had been prescribed to relive his predicament for the want of a better word. It was getting to that stage when I thought a call to ‘Dynorod’ would be his only redemption. After some persuasion (and the promise of sweeties) he locked himself in the bathroom and three hours later when I asked him if he was all right I discovered that he had just finished washing his hands and was still mentally preparing to insert the damn things. He absolutely refused any offers of assistance from myself asserting that his bum was a one way passage and there was no way on Gods earth that I would be allowed to participate in this barbaric ritual.
Well, daylight turned to dusk and eventually relief was forthcoming and after he had washed his hands, bum and other affected parts in bleach for the 46th time, he emerged from the bathroom, somewhat ashen. Sympathy was in short supply from me I can tell you, all of this commotion surrounding the insertion of one tiny nay minuscule capsule up his ‘jacksy’ I ask you. No I’m not heartless just a witness to the many regular farting competitions and the ensuing, lively discussions on their length, sound, and smell and yet this tiny slippery little object had made a grown man whimper like a pup. Anyway, once the mist had cleared and the canary had been respectfully interred, I bravely ventured into the loo. All seemed in order but curiosity did get the better of me and I inspected the package of said suppositories discarded in the litter bin, purely out of professional consideration I hasten to add (and I because I didn’t trust the sneaky varmint). After all he had endured that day I did not have the hearts to inform him that he had overlooked the removal of the cellophane wrapper but it did go a long way in explaining the screams of anguish, the John Wayne gait, and the blood on the walls and carpet.
Have you noticed the complete and utter change of disposition once a man has undergone some medical procedure? Gone is the whimpering puppy who had to be whipped into submission (not a recognised medical ethic, I just liked the whipping bit) or the heavy sedation before an elastoplast was removed, to be replaced by this swaggering icon of monumental bravery,
“Piece of piss mate, had all of my internal organs removed without anaesthetic ;or
“Pain, pain, don’t know the meaning of the word, I laugh in the face of pain, me”.
Oh really, macho man then it must have been someone else’s husband crying for his mummy and wearing a ‘I was brave for the doctor’ badge.
Not only do they come out of the whole affair with what I can only describe as convenient amnesia but they then proceed to discuss their surgery or treatment at great length or Technicolor detail at every given opportunity to whoever will listen. One male relative of mine went for most of his adult life without the need for medical intervention and he was a paragon of all of the strange virtues I have just related to you. However, unfortunately for him (or should I say his wife) he had within a very short space of time 2 operations for, would you credit it, a hernia and a circumcision, unlucky. Once this nightmare was over and the surgery behind him he became overnight an expert on these 2 medical procedures and to this day will, without prompting, discuss his parts or lack of parts at the drop of a hat, usually during a meal. Which funnily enough does have an adverse effect on the rest of the diners (especially if you’re serving liver or sausage) and I eagerly await for further developments in his repertoire which I anticipate will involve the removal of his underpants to display to the rest of us mere mortals, his war wounds. Kind of casts a new light on after dinner conversation or the need of a cheese board. Oh happy, happy day..................
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