Hell hath no fury like a man in a boring suit

I’d like to thank Julia Gillard for appointing me to be head of Australia’s first Office for the Status of Men. Her own elevation was trailblazing in gender terms and so, I believe, is mine. Here are some of the disparities and stark prejudices against men I’d like to confront in my first year in the role.

Why are young Australian women now so tall? Consider the situation of young Australian men, forced to run around town with women who are uniformly tall and thin. How did they come to be this tall? Is it the hormones in the chicken? Are they stretching themselves on racks? That is beyond the purview of my office but place a group of Australian girls in a row and they now form a trellis on which you could grow sugar snaps. My proposal: government grants for platform shoes so Australia’s men can finally look them in the eye.

Why are the covers of women’s magazines so incomprehensible? Jennifer and Brad are getting married; Sophie and Nicole are both expecting babies; Monique is having weight loss problems. Every time a man walks past a newsagency, he’s made to feel ignorant, foolish, out of touch. He doesn’t know who any of these people are.

Not a single one. Can we include surnames so we at least have a fighting chance?

What’s the thing about Aussie men never crying? Frankly, we never stop. Ever since Bob Hawke showed the way, Australian men have been weeping with neither restraint nor pause. We cry over politics and sport. We cry over relationships and children. We cry copiously over that burnt prawn risotto for which we had such high hopes. Damn it, some of us have even wept over The Notebook, which doesn’t make us proud. Yet still we endure a whole lot of baloney prejudice about how we can’t express our feelings. In fact, it makes me a bit teary just thinking about it. Pass the tissues please.

Why should women be offered cheaper car insurance? Some companies are now offering cheaper rates for women drivers on the basis that they have fewer accidents. Well, der. That’s because they drive less. Even when they do drive, women can spend several hours trying to complete a single reverse park – time during which they are unlikely to have a major, speed-related collision. It’s also hard for them to cover any real distance since they have to keep turning the map wrong-way-up to work out which way they are going. My office will take a dim view of what is, frankly, prejudicial

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