After the making argument that women have won the war of the sexes, let me continue my good work by pointing out that men are no longer the enemy and it’s time we stopped vilifying everything male in order to make being female ok.

The reason this means so much to me? I am the mother of a son who I hope will one day be a good man, and of a daughter I hope will have good men as friends and lovers. But how do they do that if they are told that affection from men should be treated with suspicion, leadership from men is oppression and physical appreciation from men is objectification.

Men are very different to women (you may have noticed) not just physically, but emotionally and psychologically too. It’s not a matter of upbringing, you can’t just give a boy a couple of barbies and a pink dress and raise him to be a flat chested woman; he’s a boy, certain things are hard wired into him and this is not a bad thing! It does not mean that he is inherently evil or violent; it does not make him stupid, helpless or incompetent. It means he is male, not female; different to us but not inferior, pointless or anachronistic and, as a woman who wants to live in a world where there are more, not less, good men, I think we should stop saying that it does.

I understand the whole pendulum swinging thing, I know this is over correction from years of women being told they were second class non-citizens, but it’s time to push the pendulum back to the centre and let it rest.

This does not at all mean that we should all down tools and head back to the kitchen. Hell no! We can be wives and mothers, but we can also be soldiers, priests, doctors and ministers. We can be governors-general, ignorant redneck American vice presidents, astronauts and truck drivers, and we can do it well.

What we don’t need to do is waste time and energy vilifying men to get them out of our way.

Take, for example, all the noise in the media these days about child abuse and the risks posed to our children by pedophiles. Rightly so, “whoever shall offend one of these little ones, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the sea”, Mathew 18:6. Couldn’t have put it better myself. There is no excuse and should be no mercy for people who willfully damage children, and I know that most sexual crimes against children are committed by men. What I do not understand is how this translates into the idea that all men are a danger to children. Why do we think the actions of a few sickos speak for every man? Most men have an instinctive need to protect the smaller and weaker members of their community. It’s an evolutionary imperative, one of those hard wired, atavistic things they do that makes the world a safer place for all of us. But, by casting men as the villains of the piece we take away their responsibility and capacity to protect children who need it. Wouldn’t that make our children safer than just telling men to stay out of the way because they are responsible for the problem and have no part in the solution?

I’m not at all exaggerating the case here. Suggest to any man that you know that a small child is in danger and watch the instinctive response of anger and readiness to fight. Ask that same man what he would do if he saw a small girl lost in a park, most of them would tell you that they can’t stop and ask her if she is ok, they can’t offer to help her or take her somewhere safe because by doing so they immediately open themselves up to accusations of being child molesters.

It goes much further than the most drastic cases too. A single male friend of mine used to live in a flat above a single mother and her 3 year old daughter. My friend was a keen gardener and the little girl used to spend hours following him around the gardens in their block. He built a swing for her, helped her plant her very own flowers next to her front door and answered all her questions with patience and affection. She adored him, but he wouldn’t hug her or let her touch him, he wouldn’t let her sit on his knee or come inside his flat without her mother because he was scared of being accused of “inappropriate contact” with her.

As any woman or child who is cared for by an affectionate man knows, there is nothing so comforting as the warmth and strength you get with a good solid hug from a loving man, it’s unique and endlessly reassuring, but how is that little girl ever going to know that? All she knows is that you can’t hug men because they are dangerous. It’s not a lesson I want my daughter to learn.

Anther topic that’s getting a lot of noise is all the unrealistic images of female beauty in the media. Somehow this got tangled up with men and they became responsible for it, but I don’t really understand why, because something else that men are really good at is appreciating female beauty, in all it’s forms.

Yes, I know, we’re all supposed to scoff and roll our eyes about the mans and their constantly wandering eyes. And we are also supposed to claim indifference to male responses to our physical appearance. We are all independent women and we don’t need to be validated by asking men to think we are pretty. Too true and if I could carry it off I’d slam a fist into the air and yell ‘hell yeah, you go girl’ to that. But I’m not talking about being validated by men here, I’m talking about learning from them.

Ask every woman you know if she would like to lose 5 kilos and 99% of them are going to say yes. Ask every man you know if he thinks that whatever woman he’s gazing at at the time needs to lose 5 kilos and he is quite likely to just look at you blankly and say something along the lines of “I dunno, I thought she looked pretty good…”

Men actually prefer women to look like women, not anorexic boys. It took me years to work that one out and it took me even longer to understand that most men also prefer a real woman to a photo of one, be she ever so sexy. They like the rounded bits and the soft bits, they don’t notice or care about stretch marks or laugh lines and very few men will look at their very own naked chick with anything other than pleasure and pride. There may be some women out there who can look at their own bodies with pleasure and pride, but I don’t know any of them. I’m not saying that we should all feel better about ourselves just because men like us, but that perhaps we could learn some acceptance and joy in our own bodies from the men who love us and the way we look?

We can also say, without losing any of our hard won freedoms, that men are not the enemy, we do not need to have them lose so that we can win. We can like, admire and respect them without losing any respect for ourselves. We can learn from them, depend on them, allow them to depend on us and share a world with them without losing an inch of the independence we cherish. And we can still wake up and sing along to Destiny’s child with a clear conscience.

Tell me how you feel about this

Who would I want if I would wanna live

I worked hard and sacrificed to get what I get

Ladies, it ain't easy bein' independent

All the women who are independent

Throw your hands up at me

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