A little tea, a little chat

After I read this today, I was asked which boxes I ticked? Maybe I'm just a boy at heart. I kept saying um...I do that. And that. Oh dear. Yep. That one too. I'm not saying that's the only reason I didn't think it was funny, but. I think I'd label this sexist if you asked me.

Wanting to be fair, wondering if I was misjudging this, I took a look around and…

Thought bubble Hey. Now why doesn’t this surprise me. The girl, the one who did all the important work, the words. Completely disappeared off the face of the earth, while the boy who did the pictures, not even pictures I liked, became a famous syndicated cartoonist. Now, isn’t that the way? Isn’t that what happens, the girl does the work and the boy gets the credit? I mean, that is the thought that comes to mind, isn’t it? Even in the third wave of feminism (or whichever number we are up to).

Still, I found an interview with the author, amongst other gems containing this:

• Then the real turning point came when I was 14, and discovered that during the simple act of drawing, regardless of the subject matter, I was becoming sexually aroused. Maybe it was the hormones. It didn't care. All I know is that I really, really, wanted to continue doing this forever.
• What exactly were you drawing that lead to such sexual arousal? The margins of my school notebooks were crammed with drawings, mainly women with very large breasts. They gave me a full page in my high school newspaper, and I did a serial strip, similar to Apartment 3-G or Mary Worth – except it was a sleazy parody, and all the girls looked like Little Annie Fannie. You might expect such a salacious strip to encounter some opposition in a Jesuit prep school, but all the students were male, and so the only complaints came from a few of the mothers.

Is it starting to dawn on you, dear reader? Why it is that Genevieve has disappeared whilst Ricky is hard at it?

Uh huh. Genevieve has a dick that likes drawing tits.

In an LA Times article of the late 1980s, discussing Warren Farrell’s work on the marginalisation of men in US society, comes the bit where Hercule Poirot starts smiling:

In Chicago, cartoonist Nicole Hollander, whose drawings have also graced a successful line of greeting cards, said she found it hard to be sympathetic with the point of view of Farrell and others who complain about the new sexism…. "Women have been portrayed negatively for years in jokes and things, and I think it's their turn for a while. Be patient, guys," Hollander advised. "Just relax. Loosen up and take it lightly."

This was roughly the same view offered by the author of "No Good Men," a volume Farrell hails as the very personification of the new sexism. Reached at home in Venice author Genevieve Richardson turned out to be a man named Rick Detorie. The book, he said, about women's pet peeves about men, was never intended to be taken seriously, not for a moment.

"It was something designed to give people, women especially, a laugh," Detorie said.

Then he added, "It was a joke, Warren. It's a joke, lighten up!"

Because the vast majority of greeting-card-style humor books are bought by women, Detorie acknowledged he quickly abandoned thoughts of a companion volume called "No Good Women."

And there, in that last sentence, maybe I understand why I didn’t like this book. I can’t begin to comprehend the notion of ‘books written for women.’

Afterthought: I wonder if this book had been honest, and been attributed as having a male author at the time, if anybody would have read it and if the author would have gone on to the career that got its start, as far as I can tell, with this.

I'm sorry, Manny. I'm afraid I've got more bad news for you. It's about the Easter Bunny. It isn't really...oh. How to tell you this....