Men are the new women?

I’m hearing that men are the new women. I heard that red is the new black though. I think this means we have to heave out our black jerseys and shoes and coats and underpants and buy red ones instead. Red gumboots? Those haute couture people don’t know much. Red trousers are fine if you’re the Little Riding Hood girl but not for the rest of us.

And what? Men are the new women? Does that mean blokes are expected to whine and tut-tut in the staffroom about having to teach teenage boys? Surely not. I quite like teaching the boys. They usually smell bad but apart from that, they’re usually honest and straightforward and say what they mean, when they mean it. As opposed to two weeks later, cryptically and sarcastically. You know what I mean.

And if men are the new women, do we have to eat daintily, minding that our manicured nails aren’t messed up with peanut butter and blackcurrant jam?

And does it mean that the bloke teachers now have to clutter the staffroom with gigantic handbags filled with smaller bags that contain pretty little phone cases and glasses cases and bags that contain bags of daffodil and cucumber-seed teabags?

And eat half a small muffin and declare that we simply can’t eat another thing? And worry about whether this season’s outfits will make our bottoms look big?

And will we now require our students to spend a week of homework time creating cover pages decorated with feathers and dried leaves and wood shavings? (Who invented decoupage and who decided scrapbook could be made into a verb and an art activity?)

No. Men are not the new women. Let’s let women be the new women. Or perhaps we could say women are the new men, because that’s what schools need. Feminazis should understand that I’m not saying schools need less women. Jeez Louise, I’m not that stupid! Schools need more men.

Schools need more men who will speak plain language, who’ll speak for the boys, who’ll speak up for footy and scrag and no-rules hockey and corridor cricket on the rainy days because these are all excellent for boys at school. Broken windows can be fixed; broken spirits can’t.

Schools need more men who’ll show boys that it’s OK to read literature (Shackleton and Hillary literature I mean, not Bronte literature, obviously). And schools need more men who will show that it’s OK to want to do well in school and go to university.

To get more men, schools need to be more men-friendly.

More about that next week.

— Peter Giddens