It’s Not You, It’s Her
February 8, 2009
by The Stiletto
|A man’s wife or POSSLQ gets pissed off at him for leaving his dirty dishes in the sink instead of putting them in the dishwasher or washing them himself, or shoving a week’s worth of dirty socks under the bed so she is forced to crawl underneath on all fours to retrieve them on laundry day, or watching TV instead of getting dinner started when she had to stay late at the office and has come home bone tired. That can only mean one thing: She’s on the rag.
So “self-preservation” demands that the man anticipate when he’s most likely to encounter a hormone-related mood swing by tracking the monthly cycles of the woman in his life. And he can choose amongst several iPhone apps to do the job, including: PMS Buddy, PMSTracker and MyMate, CNET News reports.
The premise behind such calendars is that one can chart the monthly surge of female hormones that could make some – not all – women hyperirritable. Since men have a consistent level of male hormones in their systems, it’s impossible to figure out what sets them off, and when they’re likely to become petulant, sarcastic or nasty.
It’s wonderful to see my friend The Stilletto on this blog. Welcome!!! Sorry you have to write about such a sorry topic….
you have got to be freakin kidding me. Is that for real?
Does anyone else have an xbox in their house? Have you paid attention to how women are portrayed in games? No matter WHAT the game or the reason for the woman being in it, she will have about a size 40EEE chest.
In the game Ultimate Alliance, where you choose which superhero you wish to be, the female superheroes complain constantly while they are fighting, and nag (nag- old female horse, harp- evil female mythological harpie, what other words could I use?) at everyone else. The female heroes are constantly also yelling “I need a little help over here!” on top of the nagging.
How is this allowed? Where are the women who work in these companies?
Do any of you ever order or get emails from The Teaching Company? Great DVDs and CDS about every subject taught by some of the country’s leading professors. Have you noticed how few women they have teaching? And THIS is one profession where it is safe to say the gender representation of women is fairly high. Why don’t they have more women professors doing their lectures?
Most of the video games are made in Japan or where inspired by Japanese via cultural diffusion. Japan remains highly patriarchal in nature, and there is a great split between men and women. The majority of wives over there are housewives, but the majority of women in Japan don’t want to be stuck in the house, so… you have quite a lot of unmarried women and men.
It’s a good thing I didn’t read this article while I had PMS, the death toll could have been very high.
What a crock!
Lisa, I’ve seen that game. Every time the women with the huge breasts swing a sword it messes up the graphics because their arms have to pass through the chest. They literally can’t even make it work graphically, it’s that ridiculous.
Bleh!
Karen’s right about the Japanese influence, so I looked up Activision- which is the company that makes Ultimate Alliance. It is made right here in the US. It is a US company headquartered in CA with a parent company (Vivendi) in France.
Another XBOX program that we own that I find extremely annoying is Sid Meier’s Civilization. It has all these “world leaders” throughout history, and all the women have grotesquely huge breasts. These are supposed to be real women through history! Abe Lincoln looks like himself- but Cleopatra, Queen Elisabeth, etc. are all grotesque imitations of porn stars. This game is made by 2K, which is a US company out of New York.
MyMate actually doesn’t seem that objectionable — I don’t have a problem with an iPhone app that helps a man be aware of when his wife is ovulating, menstruating, etc. This can be quite useful if a couple is trying to get pregnant; the man will know that tonight is a good night to try to conceive and that he should be prepared. Similarly, I think it’s reasonable to have this information for “Planning a special vacation or night out.” Are the other women here with male partners really opposed to his knowing this info?
The PMS-oriented ones, however, are horrible. The New Agenda should look into filing a complaint with Apple about this. Apple strictly controls what apps are available in the iTunes store (and thus capable of working properly with the iPhone — putting non-approved apps on the device can void your warranty). So if these PMS apps are available in the iTunes store, Apple approved them, and Apple needs to hear that this isn’t OK.
How about one for P(issy) M(ale) S(yndrome)? It could track project due dates, the night the trash needs to go out, extended family obligation dinners, nights that his spouse or girlfriend is going out without him, etc. Most men are pretty predictable in their moods. Live with them for a month and one probably doesn’t need an iPhone app to predict them, though.
I am not sure how many of these “menstrual trackers” are iPhone apps, but in researching this item I came across several others I did not include that were several orders of magnitude beyond offensive – like “track your bitch.” It’s the 21st century and instead of sexist stereotypes going the way of the dinosaur, technology is enabling them to morph into new forms.
The sad thing is that with the rise of rap music, I doubt the younger generations view the word “bitch” as sexist. To them, it is a cool and hip synonym for woman. I cannot imagine a man from the 1910s or 1950s using that word casually to refer to a wife or girlfriend, and especially publicizing it as they do now. I have always been more aware of the cultural side to sexism than the political side, and I think women have traded in one sexist stereotype for another sexist stereotype.
Leave your Response Want an avatar? Get a gravatar!
Community Room
February 6, 2012 at 4:25 pm
January 30, 2012 at 2:36 pm
January 26, 2012 at 4:38 pm
January 23, 2012 at 1:04 pm
January 15, 2012 at 11:37 am
January 9, 2012 at 6:36 pm
January 7, 2012 at 10:10 pm
January 5, 2012 at 9:31 am
BUILD your NETWORK
Our Network of College Women
Protecting our Teenage Girls
We’re in the Media »
Click to see our latest stories in the media
More Stories »Recent Comments
The Latest from our Blog
Archives
Pioneer Mentors
Blogroll
Find us Online
Subscribe Entries (RSS) | Comments (RSS)
The New Agenda is a 501(c)(4) organization dedicated to improving the lives of women and girls by bringing about systemic change in the media, at the workplace, at school and at home. More...