women – Me on the net

No one likes being ignored, with the exception of a few individuals who prefer to remain in the background. This applies to both halves of the human race, male and female. With the exception, again, of a smallish number of individuals, males are attracted by females and vice versa.

Whenever a female wants to attract a male she will dress attractively and behave in a way that indicates that she finds the male attractive. And vice versa of course. Males do dress up when they want to attract women. They shave, they use “aftershave” and “deodorants”, they dress smartly.

Females do all that, or the equivalent, but while males tend to favour paler more muted colours, and plain fabrics, females tend to go for brighter colours, and clothes tend to be more revealing of the female’s body, with low cut tops and short skirts. Women also tend to use more make up than men almost to the point of caricature. Eyes are enhanced by eyeliners, skin is smoothed and rendered apparently blemish free with foundation and lips are enhanced with bright red lipsticks.

Everything about the look of a female who is trying to look attractive says “come and get me”, but it would be a stupid male who took that literally. Unfortunately there are many stupid males out there.

The male psyche seems to expect instant gratification, while the female psyche seems to want a slower and steady build up. Of course this could all be due to the effects of societal gender stereotyping, but I don’t think so. This inevitably leads to conflict, as males get impatient with the slower pace, which females just want things to build steadily.

What complicates things even further is that females are trying to impress other women by their appearance, at the same time that they are trying to attract males, while males are largely uninterested in the appearance of other males. Males are more interested in linking up with a female than in whether or not one of their pals is using a new hair gel. More stereotyping? Maybe, but that is the way that it seems to work at present.

When you add alcohol into the mix, things become more explosive. It removes or reduces any inhibitions. A male may try harder than he otherwise would, because, after all, most males would want the female he is interested in to be happy with his approaches, and alcohol dulls his perception of how his approach is going, or makes him less aware of any negative signals that the female is putting out.

The female on the other hand, if she is drinking alcohol is less likely to be choosy when interacting with a male and is less likely to put out the negative signals. If excess alcohol is involved, it is likely that all inhibitions are removed, and the female may well be incapable of making reasonable decisions. This is a real danger.

If the female is incapable of making reasonable decisions, the responsibility devolves to the male. However, in situations involving alcohol the male may be rendered as incapable as the female. If the male is intoxicated and the female is not, then the situation is even worse.

People indulge in alcohol to be relaxed and to make social interactions, which can be fraught, a little easier. Unfortunately, with alcohol being relatively cheap, it can be easy to overindulge, with dire consequences. There is no easy solution to this issue. Alcohol could be banned, or made much more expensive, but that would just push the alcohol trade underground. There could be more education about the risks of drinking alcohol to excess, but such campaigns rarely seem to work.

Suppose though, to get back on track, a female and a male find themselves mutually attracted, without the benefit of alcohol or other drugs. Or maybe a reasonable amount. What then? Ultimately this is a mating game. The male is likely to have short term goals while the female is going to have longer term goals, at least in the current milieu.

The female presumably is looking for a long term relationship, while the male may not. He may just want sex. One problem is that it is difficult, not to mention a little weird, to discuss such matters when you have just met. Some modern couples seem to defer such discussion for a comparatively long time, and will enjoy sex well before they are established as a couple.

These days some females seem to have sex on the same casual basis as males, which seems to me to be a bit odd, and seems related to the current trend to loosen gender stereotyping. The consequences of this more relaxed behaviour may increase the number of females who don’t get married and those who end up as “single mothers”.

That is offset to some extent by long term unmarried partnerships, but not, I think completely. There are also more females who seem to move from partner to partner, with the kids tagging along.

The old-fashioned idea that females and males get married, and the female looks after the kids while the male provides for them all seems to be fading away. That’s not necessarily bad in itself, but there are advantages in being married. It’s a commitment usually for life, and it should be a partnership. Somehow, though the idea that the female looks after the children does not seem to be fading away.

Regardless, a single female who is out for a good time should not be potentially in danger, even if she dresses in an “attractive” manner. She may or may not be trying to attract males and could perhaps be only trying to impress her girl friends. If she does attract a male and finds him attractive, she should not be pressured into doing anything that she wouldn’t want to do, if she were completely sober.

Ideally men, especially young men who have been drinking, should learn that when a female says “No”, she really means “No”. It doesn’t mean “Maybe” which also means “No” and it especially doesn’t mean “Yes”. “Stop” means just that, no matter how far the couple have progressed in their physical relationship.

It is also true that “Yes” probably means “No” too. If it is early in the relationship, for example, on the night that the female and male meet, then any answer should be taken to mean “No”. There’s a lot of reasons for the “Yes” answer to really mean “No”. It could mean that she is scared of the male’s reactions should she say “No”, or she is too drunk to be rational, or simply that she is afraid of missing out or she is subject to peer pressure.

It would be a good idea for all males to treat all “Yeses” as “Nos” and to try to pick up on all the minute clues that females give out. The problem is that the male is likely to be at least as liquored up as the female and incapable of recognising the signals.

My daughter and I were discussing innovation and inventiveness. Well, actually we weren’t but the subject got mentioned in the context of “what if….”. What if our caveman ancestor had not banged together two rocks and invented fire starting? My opinion was that it was probably our cavewoman ancestor who did it. Our caveman ancestor would probably have banged his thumbs together between the two rocks.

This started me thinking. Inventors are usually man. Rarely, in recent times anyway, is a great inventor a woman. Why is this? Is there really a gender gap in inventiveness?

Thinking back to the caveman and cavewoman days, it is likely that the woman was responsible for the invention of clothing. The caveman was probably happy to chase pigs through the scrub with his dangly bits flopping in the wind, while the cavewoman would be inventing the loin cloth, which the caveman would likely adopt with glee, as it prevented his said dangly bits coming in contact with the gorse and other spiky plants. For the cavewoman there was an advantage that it hid the dangly bits from her view.

Then when the woman in the next cave over, the blonde one with the big … assets, starting wearing that fitting badger skin outfit, cavewomen had invented fashion. Hmm. The charcoal from the newly invented fire really enhanced the under eyes, and the lighter ash really made the cheekbones stand out. Your move, blondie!

And cooking too. Caveman probably dropped his slice of bear loin in the fire and discovered that it tasted great, after you brushed the burnt bits and the ash off. Cavewoman then got a stone, put it on the fire and sizzled her steak on that. With a few grilled veges on the side, for the healthy touch.

Of course when caveman was unsuccessful in bringing home any meat, the family had to subsist on berries and seeds. Crushing the seeds between two rocks probably made them easier to eat and that a short step from grinding them up, which is a small step from mixing them with water and then dropping them on the hot stone. Somehow I don’t imagine the caveman doing that. He’d be too busy describing the ones that got away.

Then when the caveman invited next door over for tea, then something special was required. So wrap the grilled meat pieces in the flat bread, add a few herbs and spices, and hey presto! Instant cuisine. I bet blondie couldn’t even boil an egg. Oh, wait a minute, we haven’t invented boiling things yet.

What if we take that coconut shell and fill it with water and balance it on the fire? Add a few leaves from that bush over there, and we’ve invented tea. A few ground beans from that other bush and we have coffee. Hmm, let’s domesticate a goat, so that we have an assured source of meat, and hey, we can put some of the goat’s milk in the tea.

My semi-serious point is that all these things that were developed in the dim and distant past were likely invented by the women. While the men were out chasing pigs, goats, and badgers and developing weapons and warfare, and all those men things, women stayed in or around the cave inventing, well, home.

When the men came home with pig-on-a-stick, the woman would break down the animal, with a stone knife probably invented by a woman to make it easier, remove the tubes and other gruesome bits, and set it on the fire to cook. She probably accidentally domesticated the dog by feeding it the bits she didn’t want. The cat was always there.

Of course, when you spend your days, sitting on the ground, keeping the fire going, accidentally inventing smoking of meat by hanging it over the fire, the ground begins to get a bit, well, hard. Animals skins help somewhat, but animal skins with dried grass under them were even better! But to keep the grass from leaking out from under the skins, woman had to invent sewing.

Of course, sewing helped the skins look a lot better. Take that blonde girl. What? You bought yours! You invented shopping? Go, girl!!

I’d bet it was a woman who invented agriculture. While man was out chasing deer and tripping over rocks, while he was gathering a paleo diet on the side from bushes and shrubs, woman was at home noticing that some of the seeds gathered last year were sprouting. What if she were to scratch some shallow lines in the ground and plant those sprouting seeds? What is she were to water and weed them and, well, let’s invent a word, cultivate them? Then they wouldn’t have to go so far to find seeds when that idiot man couldn’t find any prey! And if they did grow, she’d save some seed for next year rather than just eat it all.

Then when the cave gets too small for a growing family, it’s the woman who looks around, finds a bigger, better cave, and pays the occupants half an antelope for it. It’s the woman who invents real estate.

It’s the woman who sticks a few palm fronds in cracks in the rock to give them shade from the sun in summer, and who piles up some rocks to block the wind in winter, it’s the woman who diverts the stream away from the living area. Yes, this cave has running water! No need to go down to the stream to drink! It’s the woman who invents home improvement.

Of course, my hypothesis above, that from fire to home improvement, these things were invented by women. The women were, in general, left behind while the men went hunting. The men didn’t have time to invent things, but the women were able to put their minds to work on improving things around the cave, but people give them little credit for it. But when push comes to shove it seems to me that civilisation is the greatest achievement of womankind.

Tag: women

“Yes” means “No!!!”

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