The myth of sisterhood

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By these lights, to be a woman is to belong to a wonderful club, a sorority whose solidarity is born of having ovaries, a sharing of gender that unites us in peace and harmony such that we spend our man-free time sitting around singing Kumbaya My Lord and plaiting each other’s hair.

The truth is women are complete bitches to each other and the "sisterhood" is a myth. Women make Harvey Weinstein look like the Easter Bunny with a grooming problem. Chris Rock put it best when he said: "Women should rule the world, but they do not. Why? Because women hate other women."

It starts early. Anyone who has girl children knows two is a playdate, three is a nightmare. Any time there are three girls gathered together, one will be crying. Three boys, and you have an earth-moving team that could dam the Waitaki River. From childhood, women are raised in casual bitchiness designed to pull down the recipient and to raise the self-esteem of the perpetrator. Fashion (because women don’t dress for men, they dress to inspire the envy of other women) may as well be a sewing pattern for a ghillie suit to sniper the ill-coordinated.

"A world ruled by women would be just and fair with no wars," the feminists say, yet if it were really true that women selflessly cooperate while men spend their time jostling for power and banging their dicks on the conference table, then women would be the personification of democracy, not creatures who say, "interesting dress".

Whether or not women’s withering judgementalism about other women is sparked by cruel Darwinism (the curse of our biological imperative, society’s fixation on nubilism and not enough straight men to go around), it’s a fact that women hold grudges and are hyper-tuned to slights. They’ll turn on you in a heartbeat. Get temporarily thin for whatever reason: amoebic dysentery, divorce-orexia (when you’re too sad to eat) and you’re "a piece of fluff" — as if only well-upholstered women have brains; although beautiful women do seem to be a tad neurotic, don’t they? High-strung with the effort required to remain that way, or maybe it’s just hanger. Date someone younger, they’ll call you "mutton chop". Pitilessly hierarchical, they run in cliques ruled with grinding tyranny, cannibalistic with a competitive spirit manifesting itself in ruthless scrutiny. To be a woman is to float in a sea of faux compliments and hidden barbs. To be a woman is to belong to a collective organism that eats itself, like a snake swallowing its tail.

Of course, these women aren’t your friends. These are the other women (which is, I know, a lot like saying, "Oh not those Nazis, the other Nazis, the bad ones"). For all that women are backstabbing bathplugs who’ll do you in the eye with a spork if you take their spot in yoga — and perhaps because of this — female friends are absolutely the best. You don’t need a therapist or a Rottweiler if you have some female friends. Don’t get me wrong, I like men.

Men are my spirit animals, you always know where you are with a man, especially a thick one, but a man is likely to say, upon observing you woefully contemplating the mirror: "You’ll never be ugly, you’ll just get wrinklier, like a grape. One day you’ll just wake up a raisin, all leathery."

A woman will say, "You are and always will be a Goddess."

If a woman has your back, she’ll take on three MPs and a werewolf to fight for you. A man will build you a new bathroom and a shelf for your surfboards.

Men are kind and sweetly philosophical, a bit like Pooh. Women are vicious creatures, pack animals with lacerating wit who should be leashed, but I know who I’d rather have go into bat for me.