The long and short of sexes

Don’t even try to understand women. I’m one and I truly can’t. Maybe that’s why I can count my female friends on one hand.

I seem to just trust men more. Men don’t play games, but shoot from the hip. An irritation won’t get a flutter of lashes and an “I’m fine, you’re not”, under their breath. Men tell you straight: “You need a haircut, darling”; “I’m not in the mood”; “Leave that to me, I know better.” Maybe because they really do know better – like never ever saying the cliched: “You look a bit fat in that.”

And men don’t sigh out loud – ever. Or roll their eyes – well, openly at least… Few men made me cry in my life.

The same cannot be said for women – present company excluded, of course. Women hit you where it hurts. Instinctively they sniff out your soft spot and then turn the knife. We are from Venus, after all, and not rising Botticelli-like in a pearl covering our “shame”. Because we have no shame.

If we can cut you under the knees, be my willing victim. But to really understand us, as Brian Adams so poignantly sings, have you ever wondered that our bitchiness is simply part of our ever-so-exhausting inequality?

ALSO READ: Men and women cannot sit around the same table and be equal in income

We get the short end of the stick every single day: we’re valued, but not part of the “boys’ club” at work; we’re opinionated, but ignored; we’re loud, our male counterparts silently accepted; we have a “valued” contribution, but no value.

But here’s the crunch: we’re winners, but, like Banyana, don’t get paid our male counterparts’ thousands. Thank you for throwing in the R650,000 each of our brilliant (female – why do I even have to specify?) players will, all of sudden, get. Can we just call it the Africa Cup of Nations without the women prefix? Of course not. Because men get excited over women. Just not outside the bedroom.

The long and short? Us women just don’t measure you at all, because you will fall far short. So, ladies, we may not be sisters in arms. You will probably drive me to tears and we will hate on each other. But I half understand where we all come from. It is a man’s world. Still.