Laura and I were moping across various TV channels last week when we came across a programme about community gardens, allotments and the like hosted by “celebrity chef” Richard Corrigan. He was doing a bit about keeping your own chickens and was talking to a nervous Corkwoman about killing them. He described wringing their necks and said sopmething along the lines of:

“If you are having any trouble just imagine it is your husband”

Cue laughs all round. But can you imaging the outcry if he had suggested to a man that he imagine he was strangling his wife? Corrigan would have been condemned and RTE would have to make a grovelling apology. But of course it is fine to suggest violence towards men. Just like it is fine to show them in ads as intellectually challenged, beer swilling, neanderthals who are incapable of handling even basic house hold tasks.

Which would all be fine, and just a bit of a laugh, until something like the Michael Hannon case happens. It pains me to admit I am with Kevin Myers on this one, but he didn’t get much sympathy when his decade old conviction for sexual assault was overturned (the single witness, a 10 year old girl at the time admitted 2 years ago she made the whole thing up). But then it has been shown that a woman convicted of the same crime as a man will be treated more leniently.

Something surprising I saw this morning was a story about men getting involved in housework and parenting. Traditionally they are regarded as the laggards and the woman is expected to take up the slack. It turns out that part of the problem may be that mothers take too much control and that impedes the father.

A remember a (male) commedian taking about this once. He was commenting on the fact that men do less hosuework. He was arguing the position that the problem wasn’t with the men not cleaning or cooking, the problem was that women tended to set all the standards on what was acceptable.

Is it too much to ask that we can go for the middle ground instead?