Wednesday 11 June 2008

Why all Western women are total rubbish...

Ooh - got your attention there!

I write in a rare state of suppressed fury and burning indignation, hence my willfully provocative massive overstatement of a title. In my defence, I have been provoked:

Last week in one of the papers there was an article by some Canadian bint complaining that all British men are rubbish. Today it's the Daily Telegraph saying all men are boring:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/portal/main.jhtml?xml=/portal/2008/06/11/ftmen111.xml

Now the Canadian woman I understand and almost sympathise with; she had evidently come to London having built a fictional London in her mind based on Jane Austen's books and Hugh Grant's films, expecting to be swept off her feet by some Darcy-esque man, only to discover that fictional characters are, well, fictional. But having said that, it's still her fault that she had unrealistic expectations. She probably was also labouring under the common misconception that the mere exoticism of her being Canadian was going to count as a big plus. Now while I like Canadians as a general rule, including some of my own relatives who live there, her hopes were probably a bit on the high side.

The Telegraph article is, however, a piece of blatant sexist fundamentalism. And I do realise it's meant as a provocative opinion piece to generate discussion, incidentally. This woman starts from the arguably true but trivial notion that men and women communicate differently, and instantly leaps to the conclusion that therefore men are wrong and inadequate for, umm, being men.

Why is it always us who are deemed to be wrong, automatically and without right of appeal?

Now personally, I have opted out of the whole morass of social crappiness that this woman describes by marrying an Asian woman. This means several things:
1) I can be appreciated for my few adequate qualities as a husband and father without an endless list of unmeetable demands being laid on me;
2) My social life revolves largely around Indonesian and Anglo-Indonesian families, who don't go for the 'boy-girl-boy-girl' seating plan interminable dinner party. Instead, we have large free-form buffets with tribes of kids charging around, and the women chatting in one room while the men chat in another. Try it some time - it's a far pleasanter experience than having to chat to a crashing bore that a well meaning hostess has plonked next to you. And yes, prattling women are as boring to us as we are to them.
3) I don't have to listen to some wretched Bridget Jones-ish British woman whingeing on me endlessly as a fixture of my home life.

There used to be a certain stigma attached to white men with Asian wives. Perhaps there still is and I've just given up noticing. Anyway, it used to be a commonly held belief that white men acquired "mail-order brides" (which, incidentally is not a true description in our case or any of the mixed couples we know, but there you have it...) because there was something wrong with the men concerned, rendering them incapable of having a functional relationship with a western woman. I am increasingly drawn to the conclusion that this is not the case; it's the general inadequacy and over-demandingness of western women that lead the men to 'opt out' of being continually told how crap they are by marrying a foreign woman who actually appreciates the good qualities of British men (and we do have some, after all).

Discuss. :oD

6 comments:

Gadjo Dilo said...

Hurrah, well said Gyppo! Men and women are different but that doesn't mean that one of them (i.e. men) are inherently crappier. It's a fine semantic distinction, but it seems worth making. Conversations about cars/football/Jethro Tull can be as boring as shite, but so can conversations about fashion/diets/fitted kitchens.

My (East European) wife and I did meet on the Internet, but I went to live with her, so maybe that makes me a mail-order husband :-)

No Good Boyo said...

An interesting point Gyppo, all the more so for being true.

As for the mail-order phenomenon, I've noticed far more British man/Asian woman couples about who look like happy equals in terms of age, education and attitude, rather than the received image of an ageing sad-sack trailing a bewildered up-country teen.

British women may be annoyed that their getting ginned and boffed by ratfaced predators on the beaches of the Med is now balanced by our finding agreeable spouses from further afield. It's good for the gene pool, linguistic ability and overall aesthetics of Britain.

Our homegrown shrills may decide to improve their act in the face of competition, although I doubt it. Conversion to Islam and inflicting themselves on some hapless Muslim seems to be a defeatist trend on their part.

As for meeting on the Internet, Mrs Boyo acquired me through some elaborate swap involving one of her late Uncle Volodovolk's Carpathian villages on a property site.

Gadjo Dilo said...

I think I know that site, Boyo; is it:

www.luxery_reel_estate_on carpathian_riviera_like_you_see_in_
film_of_the_mr_borat.com
?

I think it's run from the same chicken shed as the one through which my wife and I met:

www.sexy_british_men_are_gagging
_to_share_their_western_wages_with
_you_and_your_extended_family_,
_svetlana.com

No Good Boyo said...

I gather it is something altogether more Dostoyevskian, based in Baden Baden.

Gyppo Byard said...

One is reminded of Messrs Mitchell and Webb's take on the phenomenon:

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=2zdQn3X2KVo

No Good Boyo said...

I love M&W, although they are nothing without the lovely Olivia Coleman.