Sideswipe: October 22: Friday's good thanks

Friday's good thanks.

Downsides of being a bloke

Author and columnist Caitlin Moran (@caitlinmoran) puts this to the Men of Twitter: We discuss the downsides of being a woman very frequently but what's making men's lives difficult right now?

1. Men aren't conditioned to talk to each other about our lives. We meet up, have a four-hour conversation about who would win in a fight between Inspector Gadget and RoboCop, but never get our worries off our chests. (Reply: "Inspector Gadget v Robocop ... Why would they fight? They're both in law enforcement.")

2. I suffer from kitchen-cupboard blindness. My wife asks me to pass the cayenne pepper. I open the cupboard door, check every jar and it's not there. She then looks and its right in the front; staring at me, sneering ...

3. I am deeply jealous of the ladies' toilet. Occasionally the door swings open on the opposite corridor, and the sweet smell of a scented candle wafts across to the uncannily accurate recreation of a WWI trench in which I have to ablute.

4. I'm terrified of mansplaining. I don't know when I'm doing it. I might even be doing it now. I don't want to drone on or drown out better voices, I just want to participate.

5. There's a sense of community within female-land (real place). A sense of belonging and support. Men don't have that. When things are tough or difficult, we often feel isolated.

6. In Australia there's this whole culture of "mateship" which I find very surface-level and not a substitute for friendship. Mates will help you take your mind off a problem, not deal with it or talk about it.

7. The expectation (from the media) of being a sexual powerhouse available to operate 24 hours a day.

8. Trying to walk in a quiet street behind a woman whilst overthinking how you can reassure her you're not an attacker ... (Reply: "Buy the tiniest dog you can find, put it in a glittery collar and take it with you everywhere. Rapists don't own chihuahuas.")

9. Never getting to be pregnant. Although I'm not desperate about the actual giving birth bit I think (parts of) having another human being grow inside you must be pretty amazing.

10. Once had a child follow me down the street in the dark, crying out "Daddy, Daddy". I turned and said "I'm not your Daddy", then raced home to tell my wife what had happened so she could go find and take the child to whichever house they wandered out of. That was s***.