Feminism, baby. Reading Martin Amis, I came across a history of Man.

“From 100,000 BC until, let’s say, 1792…there was, simply, the Man, whose chief characteristic was that he got away with everything. From 1792 until about 1970, there was, in theory anyway, the Enlightened Man, who, while continuing to get away with everything, agreed to meet women for talks about talks which would lead to political concessions. Post-1970, the Enlightened Man became the New Man, who isn’t interested in getting away with anything—who believes, indeed, that the female is not merely equal to the male but is his plain superior…Well, the New Man is becoming an old man, perhaps prematurely, what with all the washing-up he’s done; there he stands in the kitchen, a nappy in one hand, a pack of tarot cards in the other, with his sympathetic pregnancies, his hot flushes and contact pre-menstrual tensions, and with a duped frown on his ageing face.” (Amis, Martin. The War Against Cliché. Toronto: Vintage, 2002. 4)

It is the getting away with everything that rings true, although I’m equally appalled by the Tocquevillian vision of the Man who does not get away with everything, because there is Woman to formulate and enforce mores. I think the two come together insofar as in neither scenario is Woman allowed to get away with Anything. I attribute a good 60% of all my reckless impulses to a suspicion that I am supposed to be a member of the responsible gender and an extreme revulsion towards the role. A man asks a woman for directions. The woman apologizes, smiles. She doesn’t know. A man asks a man for directions. No apology, no smile. The world would be a horrible place if there were no women, we conclude.

But, apropos Iago, I assert: there is something profoundly life-affirming and unslavish in self-centred sinning. Not just teenagers and villains find it fun and pleasurable to get away with things.