“Are Men Boring?”

Arts & Letters led me to an essay titled “Are Men Boring?”, where I expected to find some breakthrough study that proved the obvious, beyond a doubt.

Instead, it was the usual anecdotal findings of irritated wives and girlfriends whose male companions had nothing to talk about. Not “nothing” exactly, just nothing that they cared to share in conversation with a woman. I did like this quote from neuropsychiatrist Louann Brizendine:

“Connecting through talking”, she wrote in her book The Female Brain (2006), “activates the pleasure centres in a girl’s brain. We’re not talking about a small amount of pleasure. This is huge. It’s a major dopamine and oxytocin rush, which is the biggest, fattest neurological reward you can get outside of an orgasm.”

Yes,  Louann, DUH, we love to talk. We are starved for conversation if we live with men. We will make conversation with practically anyone after being home all week with kids who only know how to yell, “BUT WHY? JUST TELL ME WHY!” when you don’t cave in to some demand. We crave conversation so much that we’ll talk to anybody who’s wiling to venture an opinion or relate some experience, however mundane.

Are Men Boring? Is the Pope a former Nazi? Of course men are boring, because they talk only to achieve a goal. The process is just too girly for them and makes them uncomfortable. Sometimes you can put two obsessive men together and they’ll talk about drill bits or blues singers or even sports, but it’s not talk as females experience talking. It’s a dry exchange of information, or else a competition.

Lately, I see there’s a breed of men who talk endlessly about their game with women, but it has the same quality of men talking about business strategy, only more paranoid.

Men must know deep down how boring they are. And I guess they’re proud to be indifferent to conversation. They’re not pussies, dammit!

One thing men don’t like even more than talking is a woman with armpit hair. Every so often, I like to seperate the men from the boys by lifting up my arms. I’m not trying to be obnoxious! I’m just letting them know who they’re dealing with.