THE OPPOSITE SEX: Maggie Gallagher

I am always being credited with good lines that belong to someone else (most notably Mona Charen's smashing response to Andrew Sullivan in a debate in the 90s, "Andrew it's not marriage that civilizes men, it's women!"

The phrase "Reconciling the opposite sexes" I heard for the first time in Ray Hammond's Senate Testimony, but Dan Cere and the other Canadians developed a similar idea, that one purpose of marriage is to help men and women "bridge the gender divide."

Speaking of which, did you see today's NYT with its new section on "Men and Health"? It is quite unexpectedly amusing. The topic was pain, who has more, who complains more. Men it seems actually do tolerate pain more in experiments, esp. when the experimenter in male. But when they do complain, they complain to their wives. One of the ironies of sex is that men puff themselves up to appear manly to attract a woman, and then, once they have her. . .Their game faces are for other men, not their wives.

Jim Dwyer reports that, if you are a middle-aged reporter with numerous small aches and pains, the best cure might be, going to war. Natalie Angier conducted an informal survey of married folk. Here is one man's explanation for why he does NOT complain to his wife when he is feeling ill: "I don't like admitting I'm feeling sick," he said, "because then I think [my wife] won't want to have sex."




posted by maggie at 9:24 AM | link

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