Editorial: Display a slap in face for Kiwi male

Mark Dawson, Editor of Wanganui Chronicle

Tell your life story in six words ...

Wow, there's a challenge from Gonville's celebrated librarian Kelly Scarrow - and one that any right-thinking hack could not resist.

I mentally bounced around a few succinct lines from Dylan to see what I could translate to my own circumstances with a view to a possible minor spot in the exhibition of scrawled summings-up that Ms Scarrow is staging at Gallery On Guyton.

Hmm, a six-word story that says it all ... and then I read the small print. The display of in-a-nutshell ruminations is for women only. It forms part of the La Fiesta festival, a celebration of women.

The art of precis is biologically neutral, so I felt a bit miffed at this genderist agenda.

Nothing against the worthy Ms Scarrow, or La Fiesta which, I believe, includes males in a number of its activities, but still cause to ponder.

How would a similar men-only enterprise go down? Would the Human Rights Commissioner be called upon to deliver a rap across the hairy, masculine knuckles? It would almost certainly be seen as sexist.

Of course, men are unlikely to organise such an exhibition ... perhaps satisfied to sum up their lives in six grunts over a beer. And maybe we must also accept that we are paying a small price for years of patriarchal domination of society - the men ruled the roost for so long, now the women have their turn, albeit in a rather different way.

Still, in the nation that first gave women the vote (surely New Zealand's proudest moment - just ahead of those back-to-back Rugby World Cup triumphs) one also hopes for equality and inclusiveness to prevail.

-The exhibition of six-and-out memoirs starts today at the gallery. Every man should check it out.