I feel very sorry for British men. In their very vast majority they are perpetually confused, embarrassed, emotionally resistant and spiritually constipated. This sad fact gives rife ground for much indignant (and frequently undignified, not to call names!) ponderings by female columnists in the papers, very handsome research grants bestowed upon university departments studying modern gender relations, and brings quite embarrassing riches to frequently overweight American ladies selling online e-books titled “How to Get Any Man To Open Up and Love You in 10 Days. Guaranteed”. Six years of force feeding myself feminist theory in uni, many years of carefully applied field study and sporadic but not entirely unsuccessful experiments trying to establish the origins of this epidemic of emasculation led me to think that the reason British men are the way they are is because we, British women, do not love them. Yes, you heard me right – We, British women, do not love Men. In fact, I am not entirely convinced that we ever did.  If we cast an idle glance in the mirror of world history and relevant literature, a rather uncomfortably impassionate image stares back. And that image is enough to give the rest of the world a right to label British women as largely frigid. Yes, according to statistics, British teenage girls have more sex that any other teenage females in the rest of the world – but lets just agree that it is not the most desirable, or indeed accurately appropriate indicator of how marvellously passionate, tender, innately sensuous and erotically adept connoisseurs of men British women are.   So back to our little historic promenade, we have raven Spanish senioritas piercing themselves with daggers whilst clutching roses in their teeth, French madams taking poison to their white throats, Egyptian queens engaging in rather erotic albeit lethal acts with snakes and furry Russians throwing themselves under trains. And even Americans in their eternal lack of sophistication are at least boiling bunnies. All in the name of love and passion they feel for their men.   And what do the British feminas get up to? Well, mostly we see them sitting around with china tea cups calmly dissecting the advantages of having a wealthy naval officer who is always absent against the disadvantage of equally wealthy society lion who is always present. And there is that pale ginger monarch, who despite her unquestionable aptitude for head chopping and state running decided in a truly hysterical PMS like fashion that if she was not getting sex from the one she wanted, she was not going to have sex with anyone at all ever again!   In fact, we do not even need to look as far back as the at latest run of The Times or last week’s issue of Hello, Bella, Elle or any other such Vogue. Humongous quotes by Posh –“Truth About how hard it is to be married to David”, some other actress/model/singer pouring her heart out about how she is finally at the stage in her life when she doesn’t need a man, and all these extensively photoshopped, immaculately coiffured and enviably rich women all the rest of us find so fascinating for some reason, moaning and groaning about the general inconvenience of having to tolerate men around them.  I have lost the count of times when my girlfriends /beauticians/ hairdressers/female work colleagues said in no uncertain terms that: 

  1. All men are bastards.
  2. They would prefer a curry/wine /bar of chocolate anytime over a good man and a descent night of passionate sex
  3. That as long as they are things like Manolo Blahniks/handbags/Eastenders the world would be simply a fabulous place, thank you very much, if it wasn’t for all these pesky creatures called men all over the place.

 All of the above intolerance is very interestingly combined with a fascinating fact that as long as any male, even if he has sexual appeal of a rotten potato appears on their horizon, they immediately start lapping up the vino and making incessant phone calls to his mobile/work/best friend/mother, start compulsively buying issues of the Bride magazine and invent elaborate public relations ploys to get him down to Ikea to buy a tea pot/wardrobe/watering can for their “future home”. As soon as the rotten potato runs away it is all back to the usual “all men are bastards” regime, and so it goes on. Before you start throwing eggs at me, let’s agree that Bridget Jones and associated paraphernalia would not be so ridiculously successful if I was wrong. Also lets not rush with accusations that I am some kind of gold digger who scrubs floors in stockings and suspenders to make men love me (although it would be very nice, my fiancé hastily adds). I am actually reasonably solvent and even though I do possess a rich bouquet of insecurities, they do not lie in the vein of issues covered in this article.