Wood, Wellington, UK
Oh my, some people are odd...
Sara Rickard, Newry, Ireland
Vestigiality – one of the strongest evidences for the Theory of Evolution. Creationism can never explain nipples in men, wisdom teeth, vermiform appendix etc.
Steve Martin, New York USA
The male nipple is an erogenous zone; manipulation of it during sexual interaction greatly increases the pleasure. I am an older male posing naked for art classes; never mind erections... my nipples (enlarged over the years from being handled) have been found more of a sexual turn-on during these sessions.
Edo Deweert, Rimbey, Canada’
[Author’s note: Edo, have you never heard of the expression ‘too much information’?]
Needless to say, someone then had to spoil it all with the correct answer:
‘All humans begin life in the womb as females. If no Y chromosome is present in the foetus, then the embryo will continue to develop as and be born as a female. If there is a Y chromosome present in the embryo, the male sex hormone testosterone restricts the full development of breasts to just nipples, the labia fuse to become the scrotum and clitoris develops fully to become a penis. If the Y chromosome prevails in producing a male, this is not done without a fight. Male babies are weaker as a result than female ones, accounting for the slightly higher death rate in male babies.
Terence Hollingworth, Blagnac, France ’
Terence Hollingworth: a fine French name. So let me get the details of my sex change right. In the womb I started off being of the female persuasion, but having a Y chromosome meant I converted to the male persuasion. Phew. That was a close shave. I have a contrary nature – as my ex-wives might possibly confirm – and without a Y chromosome I might have been called Michaela and become a feminist and a firm supporter of Harriet Harman. It’s the stuff of nightmares.
7| ARE FEMINISTS LESS INTELLIGENT THAN NORMAL WOMEN?
I happen to feel that the degree of a person’s intelligence is directly reflected by the number of conflicting attitudes she can bring to bear on the same topic.
Lisa Alther 1944- American authoress: Kinflicks (1975)
Ms Alther makes a very good point, and by her criterion feminists – who studiously avoid challenges to their faith positions – aren’t the sharpest knives in the block. We’ve already seen the appeal of dualism to people seeking a simple explanation for the ills of a complex world.
From my communications with feminists I’ve concluded that they’re markedly less intelligent than normal women. Not one of them was willing to engage in a serious exchange of views, and almost all of them rapidly brought out what they evidently considered a winning argument – to call anyone challenging them, including myself, a sexist or a misogynist.
But maybe there’s a sampling issue here. Maybe it’s only the less intelligent ones who are willing to communicate with me. Maybe the more intelligent ones avoid me. Maybe they look like supermodels, and play beach volleyball in their spare time. It’s possible.
There’s an obvious and simple way to discover whether or not feminists are indeed less intelligent than normal women, which is to have prominent feminists take an IQ test and compare the results with the average IQ of normal women. I plan to write to the feminist politicians Harriet Harman, Yvette Cooper and Angela Eagle and ask if they’ll take IQ tests to provide the necessary data. I’ll offer to pay for the tests, so I’m not anticipating any objections.
8| WHY ARE FAT WOMEN FAT?
It’s a mystery,
Oh, it’s a mystery.
Toyah Willcox 1958- English actress and singer: ‘It’s a Mystery’ (song, 1981)
As an overweight man I accepted for many years the relationship between my 200-pound weight and my fondness for good food, beer and wine. Other fat men of my acquaintance were equally accepting of the relationship. Last year at the age of 52, on my doctor’s advice, I embarked on a programme to lose weight and reduce my blood pressure. I cut down my calorie intake and undertook more exercise: two games of pool a week, nothing too onerous. Over six months I lost over 50 pounds. My blood pressure fell to target levels.
Women’s weight problems appear to be different to men’s weight problems. I never cease to be amazed at how many fat women believe there isn’t a direct relationship between the calories they consume, and their weight. A fat woman recently declared to me, ‘I only have to look at a chip to put on weight!’ The next day I saw her in a local carvery, where customers can eat as much as they like. With a plate heaving with high-calorie food items she should have changed her plea to, ‘I only have to eat ten roast potatoes to put on weight!’ Half an hour later I was at the bar when she ordered a drink: Diet Coke.
With impeccable man logic I’ve sometimes pointed out to overweight ladies that every atom in their bodies was either present when they were born, or had been ingested. With peccable lady logic they always beg to differ, but to date none has yet come up with a working hypothesis on womanly weight gain. Some years ago a woman told me, ‘I’m overweight because of my hormones.’ Quick as a flash I replied, ‘Oh yes, the hormones that make you eat family-size pies!’ I woke up in hospital two days later.
So it falls to me to introduce a theory which I confidently expect to land me the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. A simple observation was the key to understanding the riddle of why fat women are fat. Fat women often have fat children, and their fatness generally stays with them into adult life. The fat sons obviously eat and drink too much and exercise too little, but what of the fat daughters? Might there be a genetic dimension to their weight problem?
I haven’t ironed out all the details of the theory yet, but it appears that some women are genetically predisposed to putting on weight regardless of what they eat and drink. The most obvious scientific explanation for this phenomenon is that the women are photosynthesising. Photosynthesis is the process which occurs in plants, algae, and many species of bacteria, and results from the action of light upon the green pigment chlorophyll, which enables organisms to put on mass by converting carbon dioxide from the atmosphere into organic compounds, especially sugars.
The first woman to have this genetic mutation would have been green, and we must assume that not even the most desperate men wanted green offspring. A later genetic mutation resulted in a pigment which mimics the action of chlorophyll but is colourless, so photosynthesising women are no longer green. Although it might be that the pigment isn’t colourless after all, but orange. A surprising proportion of fat women – in England at least – are orange.
In September 2011 a feminist emailed me about the cover of The Glass Ceiling Delusion, complaining that it played to the stereotype of feminists being unattractive.
In an effort to ‘disprove’ the stereotype she then bizarrely emailed me a photograph of herself, but being conscious that in the photograph she was very overweight she informed me of a book which ‘proved’ that for many women obesity was the result of neither excess calorie intake nor inadequate exercise. We then had the following email exchange:
‘Self: Every atom which is present in obese people, as in non-obese people, was either present at birth or was ingested later.
Feminist: You’re wrong. You need to read the three books by this author which TOTALLY discredit the calories in/out model of weight gain.
Self: I lost over 50 pounds over six months simply by reducing my calorie intake and taking a little exercise.
Feminist: As a man you don’t have the hormonal problems women have with respect to weight control.
Self: It can have nothing to do with hormones, unless they induce you to eat and drink too much, or exercise too little. The claim of there being no link between calories in/out and weight control is an absurd denial of two fundamental laws of nature, the Laws of Conservation of Energy and Mass.