Monthly Archive for October, 2005

The alert reader will have observed that I am lately enamored of studies. Or more precisely, of newspaper reports on studies illuminating the errant deviating weirdness of women.

Some mornings, as I gaze beyond the crema on my espresso to contemplate another dusty cobweb on the ceiling, I imagine that I will one day conduct a groundbreaking study of my very own. The study will focus on studies. No dearth of raw material would impede my mission. Two or three chicks-are-freaks-of-nature studies pop up in my mailbox every day. Chinese women are more fatigued than men. UK women are more unhappy than men. Indian women feel more pain than men. Saudi women are more totally fucked in every way than men.

It boggles the mind to consider all the resources and time and effort put into proving that women are odd.

All studies have a hidden agenda, and my study of studies would be no exception. My hidden agenda would be to expose a great truth: that studies purporting to expose great truths either (a) merely validate the widely-held beliefs of the mainstream or (b) advance the nefarious purposes of the studier.

Since my study study would probably not validate very many widely-held beliefs of the mainstream, it would necessarily advance the nefarious purposes of the studier–in this case, me. So I would give a free pass to reports like this one, which reveals that women retirees in the UK are four times more likely to die in poverty than men because they were absent from the work force for 20 years while, without compensation, they raised the kids and cleaned the toilets.

But I would be fairly relentless with "studies" such as this glittering gem from the Hindustan Times, headlined "Women Are Bigger Fibbers Than Men!" The survey on which this story reports shows that 73% of Britons in general lie at least once day, but the "fact" that most captivates is the one suggesting that a whopping 75% of women prevaricate daily, as opposed to a paltry 68% of men.

Or how about "WOW (The Wonders of Women)"? This survey was, according to the Malaysia Star, conducted to reveal "what makes Asian women tick," but it actually does nothing but track the spending habits of affluent female Malaysians. Who, it turns out, enjoy manicures and expensive bags and, though they "acknowledge that aging is inevitable, they wish to look forever young and beautiful" and so will cough up for cosmetics and beauty treatments and boob jobs and labiaplasties.

The things that makes poor Asian women tick–fear, loathing, hunger, disease, violence–don’t sell well in malls.

Lee Ok-Sun, left

From an October 28 Amnesty International press release chastizing the Japanese government for its failure to take responsibility for the brutalities perpetrated against enslaved "comfort women" during WW II:

"I was taken to China when I was 16 years old," says South Korean national Lee Ok-sun, now aged 79. She was abducted and taken to Yanbian, north-eastern China — where she was forced into sexual slavery in a "comfort station".

"The age range of the girls was from 14 to 17 and they forced us to serve 40 to 50 soldiers a day," she says. "It was impossible to serve that many men, so I refused and was beaten. If a woman refused they cut her body with a knife; some girls were stabbed. Some girls got diseases and died… It was a painful experience — there was not enough food, not enough sleep and I couldn’t even kill myself. I desperately wanted to escape." Lee Ok-sun was in China for 58 years before she was able to return to South Korea.

A day without one of these stupid studies that show how women are somehow deficient or funky or odd, especially when it comes to sex, is like a day without pork mole tacos. So you can imagine how I flew into transports (a phrase I picked up in a fantasy novel) upon discovering this Canadian study, which finds that women with university educations, women who are married, and women who cut a robust figure all have lower sex drives than skinny, single, high school dropouts.

As the female "sex drive" is of paramount importance to a male-dominated society in which women are the sex class, studies revealing to a grateful nation which babes are most likely to put out after dancing the naked lambada on the table at Applebee’s are always popular.