The Way Men See It

Why I Wrote This: 

News Flash: Men do resent women on the volumetric amounts of complaints and whining that they are allowed....it's bloody annoying, particularly as it's not manly to whine about anything short of losing a bet and having to donate a Kidney to the local Taliban Charity.

Men and Women think differently, that's a fact. But I think we need to shed some more light on how different we really are. Some things just need to be said.

Face Value: When a guy is on facebook and see's a girl whose profile picture is a cartoon, he doesn't think how cute that is, he assume that she's fat, ugly or a mutation of both. He is very likely to laud her ‘wonderful’ personality. Which is why Women see diets as a way to improve their health and look more appealing, men see diets as punishments for future crimes (that we are likely to commit, such as noticing ‘hot friends’).

Men will tell Women they look awesome in high heels (which they do). Women take that to mean we enjoy causing them pain and making it harder for them to run away from their oppressed lives. Women reciprocate by telling guys they look great in the most uncomfortable shoes available...no reason...just unadulterated revenge.

Food Tactics: The easiest way into a man's heart is his stomach, we are emotionally susceptible to fall in love with good cooks, infact food is our defacto tie breaker. Horrible but true, but since women use the size of men’s bank accounts as their rishta tie breakers, men find food to be both fair and prudent. Note: There has been no proof that women have hearts. It is thought that they develop them once they bear children…Until then, bank accounts it is.

Transportation: Men will rush to change a woman's flat tire for the very simple reason that it's shameful to let her do it on her own. A feminist views this as part of mans strategy to continually oppress women, after all a women is less likely to escape their horrible lives by car if they don't know how to change a tire. A minority of Women also cite the inflationary high cost of manicures.

Legal Standards: Women keep a wary eye on the laws passed in parliaments as a way to subjugate women. Men don't notice what laws are passed in parliament...because they don't really matter. Did anyone know that Smoking Indoors is actually illegal?...certainly not the restaurants that sell them off the menu. 

Guys are practical with regards to corruption, we do the math on how much it costs to bribe a policeman and pay the fee. Women are never in a situation to bribe policemen because all they have to do is roll their eyes and refer to the 'distinguished' Police wala as 'Bhai'. Because obviously, it’s only corruption when money is changing hands.

Work Place Environment: Men don't harass women at the work place, we appreciate them. Particularly when there is a good chance that they'll feed us. Women don't harass men at the work place unless there is a good chance it could result in all paid for shopping spree with an option for a life time commitment; Men work late to avoid going home to their wives. Women work late because their trying to get a guy to make them their wife.

Women can leave work early to go home and tend to the kids, men have to stay as long as it takes to get the job done. And yes, we resent you for it, though we try to be understanding about it. If a guy leaves work early, it's because he's a kaam chor or 'lazy', if a women leaves work early its because she has 'pressing family matters' to attend to.

The Home Life: Guy's see the home as a place to unwind after work. Women see their jobs as a place to unwind and the household where they have to do real work. Women see running, cleaning and caring for the household as a major responsibility, pity, as men couldn't care less as long as we are fed and we can find our stuff.

It’s not that we don’t provide feed back. Men are excellent at feedback, if we don't appreciate something that's done for us, it's not because we didn't notice, it is because we never cared enough about it in the first place. If the lady of the house puts more vegetables on the table, we might eat them and say nothing, but if she programs our TV to record late night T-20 matches, a guy is almost guaranteed to worship the ground she walks on. Try it…

Men Never Get to be Right: A man will tell a women that she's right, even when she's not, for nothing else than our piece of mind. Women, as far as recorded history can tell have never been wrong, and if they on occasion do admit they are wrong, they do it in the most condescending method possible. We don’t want to be right, if it makes you pissed and our lives a living hell till you forget our transgression (for proving you wrong)…which might take a few years.

Women see romantic ads, sigh and then yell at their guys for being so boorish in comparison, Guys look at that same ad, silently curse the male ‘model’, and wonder why the onus is on them to be romantic…was it in the Nikah Nama? And then (a smart) guy will turn to his partner, smile and tell her that she's right.

There is also a very practical reason why a guy will never fight with a woman in public. For starters, because every guy in hearing distance will flip out and smack that boy’s head so hard, that it’ll look positively cartoonish (and quite rightly so). Women yell at men in public so that every guy in hearing distance will rush to her ‘aid’ and beat that boy to a shiny messy pulp. Thank you Patriarchal Protectionism.

The Big Idea:

Men are hardly perfect in their own right, but we live with our faults and silently bear our imperfections, for no other reason that we want to be better than we really are, which is deserving of the ‘perfect girl’. But we are faced with female hypocrisy at every turn and it makes us wonder if perfect is just the veil of love. Do men oppress women or do women oppress men?

The sad reality is that Men tell women horrible things because they are largely the truth, women say awful things to men to hurt them. It’s already a messy unfair world, but the question is that do we have to be as well? Or can we rise above it and hold ourselves to a higher standard. We are different, but indeed equal in every possibly measurable way.

A PC (Pakistanily Correct) version of this article was reluctantly published on Dawn.com