A recent UN Report, "Living Together, Worlds Apart: Men and Women in a Time of Change", lists the various forms of victimhood which women must endure. Although many of these oppressions are perfectly terrible, it is odd to see sexual mutilation being presented as a purely female affair, when male circumcision, done often without anaesthetic, even in adolescence, is more prevalent; and abominable though female forced labour is, it is surely no worse than the male equivalent.
The report doesn't mention - because it would not, now, would it? - military conscription. Over the past century, most large armies have depended on soldier-slavery as the primary instrument for recruiting able-bodied males. Even today, the most savage war in Europe, in Chechnya, is being prosecuted using tens of thousands of unwilling, impressed teenagers. Many thousands have died, and many more will follow them.
Legally dragooned
Virtually all wars in recent times have involved the mass slaughter of unwilling males, legally dragooned into uniform and sent to their deaths: all sides in the Arab-Israeli wars; all sides in Vietnam; the Argentinians in the Falklands War; the Iraqis and some of the allies in the Gulf War; and of course both sides in the atrocious carnage of the Iran-Iraq war.
We know why only men are conscripted to be front-line soldiers: because women are perfectly useless at taking a machine-gun nest or advancing in skirmishing order under fire. But that doesn't increase the morality of young men being compelled to do those murderous duties in their stead, any more than men's inability to be, for the most part, successful prostitutes excuses women being turned into slave sex-workers.
But I'm sure that the UN has some good excuse for not dealing with a discrimination against men which has cost tens of millions of young men their lives in the past hundred years; no doubt I'm wrong to mention it. But aside from the ability to soldier, in what others areas are women so very different from men? Well, there are obvious things, like throwing objects and running for a bus and silently spending all day on a river bank trying to catch a fish and then return it whence it came: for good reasons or bad, women are not particularly good at any of them.
But what about shopping? Is this not a major female recreation which men abominate? Is the shop not where women come into their own? If this is so, how is it that so many women can patiently queue at the supermarket check-out, see all their goods scanned and bagged, be told the price, and then, and only then, start searching for their purses at the bottom of a bag which appears to contain most of the belongings they have accumulated since childhood? It is as if the request for payment has never before been made: "What? You actually want money for all this? You're not going to give it to me free, as you normally do? Well bless my soul, what is this world coming to?"
Little pocket
And down she goes, rummaging through bed linen, make-up, pottery, bottle-openers, a garden spade, a blanket or two, and ah yes, a complete tea service, in the hunt for her purse. Finally it is retrieved like a fallen climber from beneath an avalanche. She then meticulously goes through a little pocket containing coins, determined to give the shop-assistant precisely the right amount of money, in copper and silver only.
Look at her, her tongue between her teeth as she delicately separates different categories of specie before she loses count, but then does so and - what joy! - has to start counting again. Take your time, dear, we've got all day.
Now, the really riveting thing about this is not that it happens at all, but that the following women in the queue, having observed this performance, will then repeat it, faithfully to the last detail, even including counting out the coins, pennies here, and twopences there - oh, and look, a little deutschmark, now how did that get there? Oh, but isn't it sweet, and look, three five pences there, no I tell a lie, four, and how much more do I owe you?
And the next one will do the same, the same puzzled expression of shock when she hears that money is expected in exchange for this huge wheeled container of food and household goods. Money, eh? Well, do you know, that the strangest thing, what a coincidence, I do believe I've got some here, at the bottom of this bag full of tent-pegs, and Hoover parts, and deodorants, and spare tights, and shoes, bear with me now, won't be a minute. Look, I can manage it exactly, look at all these tiny little coins!
Entire line
How is it possible that an entire line of women can unfailingly behave in the same fashion? Does that not say remarkable things about the female brain? Yes, yes, I know the female mind is more versatile than the male's - anybody watching a woman reverse a car knows full well that, whatever she's thinking of, it's certainly not the tiny business of making a car go backwards in a straight line. But given the multi-tasking potential of the female mind, how is it possible that an entire queue of women cannot prepare for the moment when they have to pay, yes pay, after their goods have been checked and bagged in a supermarket?
And why did the UN not have anything to say on this mighty subject?