This Just In: Men and Women? Totally Different.

Ah those wacky gender biologists continue to issue forth new and exciting proclamations from betwixt their butt cheeks. Gems like this:

“Men need to take as good care of their bodies as they do of their cars and trucks, and they don’t.”

Got that, boys? Gotta get your sparkplugs jostled by your meat-cage technician once in a while. Open ‘er up, take a look under the hood. See if she needs a lighter-grade motor oil. That kinda thing.

According to the twelve thousandth NYTimes article on this topic, there's a big crisis now in men’s health. It's being ignored, you see. Cuz women are getting all the attention. Stoopid attention-stealing women.

That’s right: the mean fembot gender biologistas don’t want you to focus on men. NO. Don’t look over there. Don’t gaze at that male embryo and wonder why it’s much more likely to be miscarried. Eyes forward now. Stay focused on the pink ribbon.

And so the heroic men’s health researchers plod away in their secret laboratories, trying desperately to understand male health within the greater context of the overarching ‘norm’: women’s health.

Wait.

WTF?

Wasn’t it only 20 years ago that women’s health was a nonexistent research discipline? That women were diagnosed as an offshoot of exclusively male health research? And now we’ve gone so far over to the girl side that we can’t afford to care for the boys?

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I don’t understand what the ‘issue’ is here. Is the NYTimes just obsessed with pitting the genders against each other, or is there a real problem?

More importantly, does this mean the future holds novels with titles like “How Archie Got His Moves Back” and “Grimey Secrets of the Ya-Ya Brotherhood”? I need to know: will this new matriarchy lead to phenomena like ‘dick lit?’ I need to know right now.

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Of course we need to understand how to keep men alive longer. I mean, sometimes they give off odd odours, but we still love them after all.

But to understand how to keep them around, we need to understand why they die sooner and more easily:

“Even when men and women have the same disease, we often find that men are more likely to die..”

Now, what could be the reason that men die sooner? What. Ever. Could. It. Be? Could it be that they scoff when their wives try to get them to eat better? Drink their faces off with their playoff buddies? Throw themselves from airplanes for fun? Become stressed so easily that they’ve never put together a single IKEA item fully clothed?

“Behavior plays a role in some of the extra deaths and illnesses among men: they tend to be more aggressive than women and to take more risks. Men smoke at higher rates than women, drink more alcohol and are less likely to wear seat belts or use sunscreen. Men also suffer more accidental deaths and serious injuries and are more likely to die of injuries and car accidents. They are three times as likely to be victims of murder, four times as likely to commit suicide and, as teenagers, 11 times as likely to drown.”

Still…if only there was some way to figure out why men die earlier…

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One of the things this new men’s health movement is focusing on is getting more men in the doctor’s office.

You men hate seeing doctors, don’t you? Which is why the secret men’s health researchers developed a Trojan horse of sorts:

“New drugs for erectile dysfunction have helped bring men into doctors’ offices in recent years, experts say…”

…But sadly, that hasn’t been enough. What could be the solution? A shift in perspective wherein men don’t favour their erections over, say, the pump that circulates blood through their body and brain so that they can continue to exist?

Nah. That’ll never work.

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I don’t know what the solution is. Clearly, the psychologists aren’t going to be much help:

“Many psychologists think the problems are rooted in how boys are raised.”

Yawn. Call me when you are no longer a parody of yourself, psychological profession.

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So what do you think the problem is? Why do men die earlier? Is it biology? Is it risk-taking?

Let me pre-empt one guaranteed response: We die earlier cuz we have to live with women. Guffaw guffaw.