STUPID PHRASES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 236, 5 October 1935, Page 3 (Supplement)

STUPID PHRASES.

“ JUST LIKE A WOMAN.” A LAZY EXPRESSION. (By C.C.) If there is one thing more than another that infuriates me it is for a man to raise his eyebrows and say: “Isn’t that just like a woman?” If they made up their minds exactly what was so like a woman it wouldn’t be so bad. But whereas one man will say: “Thafs women, all over; cold and cynical and calculating,” another will sneer, “You women are all alike — all born romanties.” And yet another will smile at. you pityingly and remark: “But women never know what they really want from life.” Now, the merest child can see the stupidity of such a generalisation. Most of the things that are “just like a woman” we have all seen done and heard said by dozens of men of all classes. And it is remarkable how all the qualities that are “just like a woman” are the silly, hysterical, neurotic, weak qualities, and never the strong, brilliant

or balanced ones. Yet every day we smile ourselves at the impulsiveness of man. It was Juliet who took definite steps to bring her romance to a successful climax, and Romeo who ruined it all by his hysterical rashness. A man 1 apparently sees nothing insulting in such statements as “Women can’t understand the principle of investment. If they had money they would only hide it under the clock.” If a woman is really worried about the financial affairs of herself or her family, men don’t take any notice. It’s only a womanish tan, trum —making a mountain out of a molehill. But a man merely need be preoccupied and gloomy — probably because he has spent the income tax or because his wife is suspicious about the typist—and his male friends say: “Poor old Blankett does look down-in-the-mouth. I believe he’s been pretty hard hit lately.” If she is more interested in her career than anything else a woman is cold and unsexed, and if she aspires to a platonic friendship with a man she has designs on his affections. Some time ago I remarked that there seemed small sense in capital punishment. Said the man immediately: “Oh, you women would be useless on a Bench. You’d let all the criminals off.” Yet the same man had said on another occasion when I had expressed stern ideas about people guilty of robbery with violence: “You don’t tell me women aren’t harder than men!”. I once heard a man make an assertion almost identical to one which, made by a woman some time previously, he had greeted with “Isn’t that just what a woman would say!” You don’t hear women say, “How .ike a man!” anything like as often as men say “Just like a woman!” And in reality there is no vice or virtue of which either sex can claim a monopoly. Half the successful men in the world have been egged on by some woman. And at least half of these again have been actively assisted by their wives. Yer when the applause comes how many of them admit the debt?. There are as many hysterical men in the world as hysterical women, as many selfish, bigoted men, as many ignorant and gossipy and impulsive men. And to balance these, there are as many tender, unselfish; sensitive men. “Just like a woman” is nothing but a handy tag for people who are either too lazy or too badmannered to bother whether it is absurd or a just slight. Certainly it is never intended as a compliment.