Feminine Angles On Life

Life isn't just sexist in the myriad ways we all talk about - there are hidden examples too...

.. or to be more precise it's a masculine world! (Oh you knew that?)

We can tick off the forms in which the English language is hopelessly sexist ('he' taking precedence over 'she', even if there's only one man among 100 people; all of our past life is 'his'tory), etc.

Or there's the unnoticed ways in which everything is set out for the masculine 'norm', which we then have to contort ourselves to fit into.

Because men 'invented' most things (while their women were at home raising a dozen kids) , they designed them with themselves in mind.

So, for example, cars needed brute strength to move phallic gear (or stick) shifts - it's only recently that they have become easier to 'man'oeuvre - and weights and measures were made to fit into a man's hand or appetite. (If a woman had decided on the measurement for beers, would it have been a pint?)

And why are men always favoured when it comes to public toilets? There's no reason why we shouldn't have, by law if necessary, as many pots as they have urinals. It's only because women's needs were thought secondary when gender-defined toilets were invented.

I know that, yet again with one of my articles, you're thinking "how petty" given the world's problems - but it's a base to work on, and if we took exams in Herstory to become Herstorians, and men were convicted of womanslaughter, then maybe more important misogyny and sexism MIGHT be less likely to automatically exist.