the first word
by julie savage parker

Men and women:
Vive la difference!

I love men. I love a man as a friend, as a sexual partner,
even as eye candy, but dang if I understand a man’s brain! A man’s take on the world is a total puzzle to me. Where DO they get their ideas, anyway?

I have had some encounters with male friends that are
totally incomprehensible to me. I wonder if there is a Y
Chromosome Dictionary and an X Chromosome Dictionary: they have all the same words but the meanings are totally scrambled. I hear a language that SOUNDS like mine coming out of their mouths, but it turns out the meaning we assign to the words has little in common. What gives? The whole thing calls to mind sociolinguist Deborah Tannen’s book: You Just Don’t Understand, about the differing communication styles of men and women—and that “never the twain shall meet”. As a dyed-in-the-wool heterosexual, I sometimes feel it might be a good idea to keep a male partner in one wing of the house for sexual pleasure and a female partner in another wing as a kindred spirit. I wonder about all the women I have come across who were once married to men and later in life prefer women. Could it be that once their sexual drive is not as primary as in their youth, they decide men are simply not worth the hassle? Have they perhaps spent too many years scratching their heads and wondering what planet their husbands were from? (Mars?
Neptune?)

As I went about the task of looking for quotes for this issue, the emphasis was on “la difference” and it was rarely flattering to both parties. A few I agreed with, a few I found really funny, if hardly politically correct. A few require substantial musing: is this really true? Is it nature or nuture?

Each month we look for quotes that shine the best light on the topic at hand, that inspire and uplift. This month the quotations are as much “fightin’ words” as anything. I include them without comment. You can chew on them at your leisure. [Find more throughout this issue.]

“I would rather trust a woman’s instinct than a man’s reason.”
Stanley Baldwin

“You see, dear, it is not true that woman was made from man’s rib; she was really made from his funny bone."
James Matthew Barrie

“Adam knew Eve his wife and she conceived. It is a pity that this is still the only knowledge of their wives at which some men seem to arrive.”
Francis H Bradley

“Men don’t know much about women. We do know when they’re happy. We know when they’re crying, and we know when they’re pissed off. We just don’t know in what order these are gonna come at us.”
Evan Davis

“The only thing worse than a man you can’t control is a man you can.”
Jean Kerr