Features - Irish Independent newspaper
Farmer wants a wife, but only if the devious cow signs a cast-iron prenup
Self-help shelves are buckling under the weight of books telling men how to outwit the bitch, writes Eilis O'Hanlon
Sunday October 07 2007
One of Brenda Power's guests on Newstalk last week was the co-author of a book entitled That Bitch: Protect Yourself Against Women With Malicious Intent.
Essentially a collection of horror stories about innocent men being beaten, abused, taken to the cleaners and otherwise misused by ruthless and manipulative women, the book's blurb promises to reveal all : "Why she picked on YOU, how she weaves her web of deceit . . . discover what makes her different from normal women." Subtle, it ain't.
Many of the callers, though, were more upset by the use of the word "bitch", rather than by the book's central thesis, believing the term to be misogynistic and offensive to women. Which is odd, because it's a word which has been appropriated by many women as a badge of honour, in the same way that African-Americans reclaimed the word "nigger" and turned it from a racist insult into a proud declaration of identity.
Check out the bookshops, where you can find such additions to intellectual scholarship as How To Be A Bitch With Style and Elizabeth Wurtzel's Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women, whilst Lindsay Lohan recently stepped out in a T-shirt with the slogan "Skinny Bitch" on the front.
Besides, some women just are bitches, and to deny their victims the right to call them that is crazy. As Brenda Power herself pointed out, feminists had no objection to the slogan "All Men Are Bastards". Why should the other B word, bitch, get special treatment?
The row over That Bitch is interesting, because what we can clearly see emerging here is an echo of the same impulse which motivated many in the feminist movement of the Sixties and Seventies, when they took the questionable behaviour of a group of men and turned it into all-encompassing world view of oppression, only now it is men who are making all sorts of grandiose but unsupported conclusions from the actions of a few women.
Radical feminists thought all men were rapists. The prophets of the new men's movement think all women are money-grabbing, manipulative bunny boilers. Same old, same old.
In truth, there are probably not very many true "bitches" out there any more than there were that many "bastards". It all depends what circles you move in and what company you keep. But many men are undoubtedly latching on to the notion as a defence mechanism after decades of being tarnished by feminists. It's a way of saying : "Oh yeah? Well, you're just as bad". It's empowering, sure, but it can go too far and spill over into a kind of rampant victimhood and this has definitely happened with the men's movement, as with feminism, with every slight and injustice suffered by men being taken as proof of a grand conspiracy.
Quite how prevalent the idea of the manipulative female has become was evidenced even at the Ploughing Championships, where a survey carried out by the Farming Independent found that two-thirds believe farmers should insist on pre-nuptial agreements before marrying, in order to protect the farm from greedy ex-wives.
Why farmers should feel the need to protect their assets any more than the rest of us was not explained. Anyone with a redbrick period semi-detached in South Dublin, where housebuyers are lucky to get change from a couple of million euro, surely has as much to lose as a farmer in the country.
But then farmers have always felt themselves to be a special case, so it's not surprising they should see themselves as being uniquely put upon in this way.
Farming is different only in this regard. A husband and wife who get hitched in town usually buy a place together, so when a split occurs some sort of equivalent split of the house is to be expected. A farmer's wife generally comes onto land which has been owned and farmed by her husband's family for generations, so those who have been there longest inevitably feel any attempt to divide those resources as a terrible affront to natural justice.
But does that, or should that, lessen her rights under the law?
Many of those surveyed by the Farming Independent seemed to think so, which goes to show how deeply grained the veneration of heritage and inheritance is in Ireland still.
Farmers are no different from any other husband in the middle of a divorce. Once a financial settlement has been agreed upon, the money has to be found somewhere. And generally that means selling something.
Selling your land is no different from selling your home. The only difference, in fact, is that, even if the farmer sells a parcel of land, he usually still has a substantial quantity left over. Townies in similar situations are often left with nothing but a grotty bedsit in Finglas. They'd be more than happy to swap places.
The startling omission in this whole debate was any mention of children.
If a man has children with a woman, even if she is a manipulative, deceitful, farm-stealing harridan, then he has a responsibility to look after them. Just because he has a farm, it doesn't mean his responsibilities vanish. And if he has to sell some of his ancestral holdings to meet his obligations, then tough. Children's welfare is more important than land.
Such complications make the touching faith of so many people in pre-nuptial arrangements all the more naive. Little pieces of paper cannot always be relied upon to sort out the messes into which we get ourselves. That's why lawyers are rich.
At least one comfort for farmers is that, with the huge increase in the value of their land, they are in a far better position to fund a marriage break-up than many of their fellow citizens who aren't sitting on a couple of hundred acres of real estate. But the more money they have, the more they seem obsessed with the idea that somebody is trying to take it away from them. Maybe that's human nature for you. Their apparent belief that there are hordes of ruthless women pursuing them in order to get their female fingers on the family farm is certainly in stark contrast to the complaints farmers have always made that they can't find a wife for love nor money. Now they want us to think they're batting them away like flies.
Dream on, fellas. Most women nowadays have a far better chance of finding their fortune in the city, by their own efforts, rather than pursuing random culchies back to a farm five miles from the nearest shop and with only a herd of cows for company half the time.