Aside from my own rocky seas at the moment, I heard something the other day that really wound me up. Well okay, it made me silently indignant, but indignant all the same…
I was curled up aboard the sleepy morning train to work from Nebfleet, half dozing myself to a muted clicketty-clack clicketty-clack lullaby, when two women got on, sat next to me and began catching up on their latest news. To be honest most of it was fairly innocuous, and none of it was any of my business. However, as they started discussing a mutual friend’s forthcoming x-tieth birthday, one then asked if anything was being planned by their husband/boyfriend/partner whatever, to which the other dismissively replied, “Probably not, he’s just a bloke.”
I mean that’s just typical! You know I really am so, so bored of gender stereotyping. And we’re all guilty of it, even yours truly at times. Indeed to be fair, as inwardly arsey as I got with the two of them (although like I say it really wasn’t anything to do with me), it did make me reflect on some of my own sweeping statements. Like how most women under thirty so aren’t worth the effort, consumed as they supposedly are with all things Heat Magazine, X Factor, bottled water and fake tans instead. Oh how cutting! And oh how so not (entirely) true. But it’s just so easy to say so isn’t it.
In much the same way it’s just as easy to categorise us chaps. If we’re older we’re patronising and past it, if we’re younger we’re sex obsessed and immature; although that’s by far the preferable of the two ‘evils’ in some cases eh. But again it’s not (entirely) true. Not really. Yet we love to do this don’t we, feel comforted through generalising I mean, because that’s how we’d rather see the world. The sun always rises in the east and sets in the west, and men and women come from Mars and Venus respectively.
Really?
Well if that’s the case who the f*** are all this lot down here on Earth then?
Consider the arena where I share most of my tales (although it’s not the only arena, there is a wider world to bore after all). Have you ever noticed that in striking out to say, “Hey we count too,” we ourselves will sometimes unwittingly marginalise those who don’t fit our own parameters through trying to defend our position? Thus as I said before, the older man and the younger woman will simply become an irrelevance because they don’t cut whatever mustard we prefer to make our own sandwiches with; and so are instead tarred with that good old brush of generalisation.
Here’s a thing. This might sound quite controversial, but it appears some older women are quite prepared to admit that much younger guys are okay for a shag but when it comes to having an actual ‘relationship’, someone closer (even if still younger) in age is probably more preferable. In other words is a much younger capable of having a serious relationship? Probably not because he’s just a (much younger) bloke, right? Now okay I fully accept there might be the merest grain of truth in all this, because plenty of younger men DON’T want a serious relationship yet so yes, they’re probably perpetuating said theory with their amorous bedhopping ways. But does that mean it’s fair to label them all the same way, or is it more that by simply bundling a collective of personal experiences together it turns this view into some kind of iron law nobody actually voted for.
Look at the whole cougar dating argument for instance. While this predatory epithet has been supposedly legitimised through the perceived ‘sexually aggressive’ behaviour of some older women and has now permeated into popular culture too, is it true of ‘every’ thirty plus woman seeking the affections of a younger man that sex is their main agenda. Whenever such accusations are hurled (sometimes by the jealous older man, sometimes by the ‘cougarphile’ younger man himself it has to be said), such opinions are usually shot down with both barrels. And quite rightly – as I’ve often alluded to, we’ve moved on from the whole Mrs. Robinson thing haven’t we.
I guess in this recent era of a new politics, a third alternative and fresher thinking, can’t we just say that not all men are bastards, not all women are bitches, not all younger men are all enthusiasm and no technique, not all older men are some technique but no enthusiasm, not all younger women are desperate to be WAGS, not all older women are just desperate, not all men drive well, not all women don’t, not all women can multi-task, not all men can’t, not all men lack intuition, not all women possess it, not all younger men have no idea, not all older women come with baggage, not all men can barbeque, not all women can iron, not all women prefer cats, not all men prefer dogs, not all younger women are vacuous, not all older men are vague… in other words, whatever your personal experiences, and however much some of these might even ring true, biological and a few behavioural differences aside are we really as polarised as eons of social hoodwinking and writers of many an exploitative moneyspinner would have you, me and the rest of us non Martians or non Venusians believe?
Probably not, we’re just people…
By Bastian Dash, read more of his musings on TBWXtra on your personal home page
