GENUINE feminists must be feeling mightily uncomfortable in their dungarees over the ugly way equality of the sexes has turned out in reality.
What's happened is a terrible coarsening of young women's behaviour.
There is a graceless swagger about some women these days when they are drunk, which is often.
Now, no-one wants a return to those boring days, within living memory in my case, where women were barred from entering certain bars.
And no-one wants women to be meek and submissive - that is tedious too.
It is good that women can do banter - even traditional, saucy British sex banter - on an equal gutter level with men. Fnnnaar, fnnnarrr etc!
But the 'ladette' culture has gone way too far. Aggressive sexual posturing, swaggering, and swearing by large numbers of young women when they are trolleyed (and troll-eyed) can ruin the atmosphere in a pub.
So can their loud, screechy voices.
That sort of behaviour, now fairly common (in more senses than one), is not big, not clever and it is certainly not attractive.
Such a scene occurred recently in my local, Hell's Waiting Room, when a group of youngish women came into the music room.
They weren't local to New Brighton - not that that is any guarantee of ladylike behaviour.
There was some debate as to whether these Birds Behaving Badly came from North Birkenhead (North Baghdad as the local bizzies have nick-named it) or Noctorum (which makes Baghdad look as sedate as Thornton Hough).
Wherever these lairy lasses came from, I was not impressed by total their lack of restraint and elegance.
It's a shame, really, because they were quite a good looking bunch of women, or would have been if they weren't so hog-wimperingly drunk.
I write this with a certain compassion. Because these women, though behaving like oafs, had the potential to be interesting, and in some cases very alluring.
Women who behave crudely are not only putting their physical, mental and sexual health at risk, they are letting themselves down.
They are also letting down other women.
Because as every intelligent person knows, the female sex is the superior one.
There is no need for women to show off with noise and crudity and drunkenness.
We men do that sort of stuff much better ... as befits our lowly status.
SATURDAY night saw me and some of the New Brighton Massive venture over to Liverpool.
We did the pubs, including Coopers, Rigby's, the Midland and about four other ones, but, I dunno, I just wasn't in a Liverpool sort of mood.
I think what killed it for me was the heat and sweat of Slater's bar, and people bumping into me all the time.
So I stood and waited outside that particular cheap ale bar while my pals Lofty and Slutty supped up inside.
Then, under pressure from me (sorry, lads!) at about 10.45pm we got the train home to Wirral.
It was ages to wait for a New Brighton train, so we got one that went as far as North Baghdad and then jumped a cab to Madford-on-Sea in time for the last hour in Hell's Waiting Room.
Later Lofty and Slutty went off to The Lost Weekend, but I had no energy for dancing etc so I stayed sipping a Southern Comfort in the Waiting Room, old lady-style, till chucking out time.
Then I went home and read a couple of chapters of Michel Houllebecq's disturbing novel 'The Possibility of an Island'. Hey, I know how to live.
SUNDAY was a slow-to-get-up day. I had only just cleared away the breakfast stuff when it was time to watch the England match.
The result lifted my spirits and then it was time for evening Mass in Seacombe to give thanks for the victory in Stuttgart (and other stuff).
Had a chat with the priest afterwards. He's that rare thing, a Catholic priest who doesn't bore you rigid with tedious left-wing homilies full of reference to gormless articles in The Guardian.
On Sunday evening I went for a run along the New Brighton Promenade (for the first time in months), which lifted my spirits further.
Then it was off to Hell's Waiting Room, where there was a lively scene in the music room, with Popstar Paul and Duncan Kindlyface providing the entertainment.
I gave Paul a cassette I'd recorded of Steve Forbert albums. I think he might like it, but I don't know...
Sometimes it feels I am the only Steve Forbert fan left in Britain. He's a brilliantly poetic singer songwriter from the USA, but no-one seems to remember him these days.
Paul's voice gave out at one point so I had to lend him my asthma inhaler, which seemed to do some good.
Then halfway through another number one of his guitar strings broke, though he covered it and reckoned no-one noticed.
Mini-Marvin (BSc in Sarcasm) noticed, however, and told him: "It sounded like you'd disembowelled a cat, strangled it with its own entrails then made it eat the results."
Well, I know there is no logic in that statement, but it was made at about ten to midnight and, as the Irish say, "drink had been taken".
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Kay ~ wrote...
"I was not impressed by total their lack of restraint and elegance . . .
Women who behave crudely are not only putting their physical, mental and sexual health at risk, they are letting themselves down.
They are also letting down other women."
Awwww, Stephen, in any group there are lots of different personalities...we should never try and generalise the entire group ~ or even an individual person. People sometimes hide behind masks, and maybe a "lack of restraint and elegance" was just how they were feeling at that particular time.
If you walked in and saw my fingers twitching on
arms outstretched like a penguin, while simultaneously
making a long guttural cry, you would perhaps assume me to be in the throes of an epileptic fit induced by having been shot in the arse with an airgun pellet. Yet I may simply be singing along to Joe Cocker's "With a Little Help from my Friends". This is why I tend to tread very carefully and try not to judge people too quickly ~ especially youngsters.
Because sometimes ~ just sometimes, cigarette packets on a pavement may not be empty, and the contents are crushed if one stamps too hard ...
REGAN REPLIES: Ever thoughtful, Kay.
Posted by: Kay ~ | June 27, 2006 10:41 AM