Item: A guy and his girlfriend/wife in a retro-styled burger joint, both enjoying old-style milkshakes. She's sipping hers, he's stabbing at the cherry with the straw. He's trying to pick up the cherry with the straw, and has so far tried using suction (works but then no way to eat the cherry without catching it in his hand), lifting (cherry falls off straw) and other methods. She watches with bemusement for some time, then rolls her eyes and hands him his own spoon. The look on her face says it all: "Stupid man. Why don't you just use the spoon?"
Item: A TV commercial for feminine pads. Two women speeding down the highway in an older model convertible. They pass a sign that says, "Next rest area 263km." They look at each other and laugh, as the voiceover says, "The highway system, obviously designed by men."
Both items illustrate a feminine contempt for men. The first is about women's frustration with men's constant fiddling and mucking about. Why don't men just use what's in front of them? Why don't they ask for directions? Why don't men read the instruction booklet? Women think that men who fiddle about with things are idiots, and often have a hearty laugh at their expense.
However, women are wrong on this score. Let's take another look at this couple in the diner. He's not fiddling with his straw; he's inventing. He's trying to do something he's done a dozen times before, but in a new way. Faced with even a familiar situation, he wonders, "I wonder if there's another way to do this? I wonder if I can do it this way?" He's not doing it purposely. He fiddles and creates because it's in his blood. Esther Vilar made the point in her book The Manipulated Man that men faced with a new piece of equipment will gather and discuss theories about how it works, and what are its advantages. Women will not. Men are restlessly inventive. They can't help it.
The girlfriend/wife thought that she was clever for handing him the spoon, but she wasn't. The spoon, after all, was created by someone else, probably a man. All she managed to do was use something that was given to her for its intended purpose. Her boyfriend/husband, on the other hand, is trying to invent a whole new way to do something. Mind you, it's a trivial task: eating a cherry submerged in a milkshake, but he's still being clever by creating. She, on the other hand, would be lost if no one had invented the spoon, given her one, and trained her to use it.
The second item that started this piece is about women's complaint that men never get it right. Remember the old complaint, "If they can put a man on the moon, why can't they...?" Women often complain that men don't take women's problems seriously, and so "get it wrong." Women base this opinion on the fact that the problems in question haven't been solved yet. If men really cared, they think, men would solve these problems tomorrow.
I've mentioned elsewhere that this complaint is particularly irksome considering that women don't do it themselves. Men are attracted to science and engineering like flies to honey because of their irrepressible urge to invent and experiment. Women are not so drawn to these fields because it is their tendency to use what is given them and then complain about it, rather than following some inner call to create new tools.
So, in the end, the two women speeding down the highway in their convertible shouldn't be laughing at the highway system "clearly designed by men" because, in fact, everything around them was designed by men. The convertible that's getting them where they're going was designed by men. The sunglasses they're wearing, the process of refining the metal in their earrings and their bracelets was designed by men. They dental work they've had, the watches they're wearing, seat belts, air bags, brakes, weaving machines that make cloth for the clothes they're wearing, cellular phones, modern makeup, the system of modern taxation that allowed for the highway system in the first place ... in all probability, there is almost nothing in that convertible, hurtling down the freeway, that was not designed by men.
The girls don't care about that, though. They take it all for granted. What rankles them is that there aren't enough rest stops. Men are jerks, they think. You would think that what with all of the planning and technology that went into building this freeway, they would at least have thought of women's need for more rest stops. What idiots men are.
Well, sisters: men, for all of their faults, are clever enough and restless enough to have created almost every modern convenience. You, on the other hand, are only clever enough to use what has been given you.
