The other day, I was playing Magic: the Gathering online, like one of the cool kids. I like to play it in the evenings, because I find it relaxing to scream ‘Fuck off with your TWATTY DRAGONS’ at the telly while glugging wine. After half an hour or so of being repeatedly beaten by a bunch of cheating nobheads, I realised that I’d been horribly sexist.

“Oh look,” I’d exclaim when my opponent brought out a ridiculously overpowered beast which which to savage me. “I imagine his bastard ogre will decimate my teeny elf in a manner of seconds.”

And it did. But that’s not the point. The point is I was playing against someone with a generic, genderless username, and yet I’d repeatedly referred to them as ‘he’. In fact, almost every Magic opponent online is a ‘he’ in my mind, despite the fact that I would rage against anyone who told me any given game was for boys or girls.

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“Oh actually I think women should run the world. There’d be fewer wars, for sure!”

Oh do you? Thanks. I’ll get cracking then, shall I? You pop over there and sit in a corner and I’ll roll my sleeves up and apply my tidying skills to the world’s problems. For I am woman: meek and mild and gentle and peaceful yet also great at multitasking and international diplomacy.

When you think about it, it’s weird that women haven’t been running the world all along, isn’t it? When so many men in power think we’d do such a bang-up job. After all, they’re really keen for us to take over the world, so why on Earth have we not yet stepped into the powerful jobs that they have no doubt left, because they genuinely believe that a woman would be better at it?

Oh, right.

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A man is sad because he wants his children to have his surname. He wants it so much that he wrote an article in the Telegraph about it. I’m not sure this is the traditional way to solve an argument with a loved one, but if that’s what we’re doing now then I’d love a column in which I can explain to my Mum why she’s wrong about which way the knives go up in the dishwasher.

Anyway. He is sad because traditionally kids take the name of the guy in a relationship (and because traditionally of course relationships consist of one man, one woman, some kids and a dog called ‘Bunty’), yet because of the rapid erosion of patriarchy, and the towering inferno of feminist rage that is currently decimating our society, he has NOTHING LEFT TO CALL HIS OWN NOW. All he’s asking is to give his kids his surname. Please will we just let him have this one little thing that’s really important? Is it too much to ask? IS IT?

Let’s explore.

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Imagine a club in which all the doors are five foot six. You’re six foot tall, so you have to duck to enter. On your way to the club, you had to get out at the train station and hop onto a crowded shuttle bus. There was a person standing with a sign directing you to it:

“Shuttle bus for people below five foot six this way!”

When you walked past them to step onto the bus, they didn’t exactly tell you to leave, but a fair few people gave you weird looks.

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What’s your commute to work like? Is it one of those normal ones where you get on a bus or train or into a fancy-pants car? Or is it a female commute? Do you eat breakfast, or female breakfast? When you take a piss, is it just, like, a regular piss or do you partake in female urination?

Today someone tweeted me a link to an article ‘what do you call female masturbation?‘ As you might be able to tell I have some Thoughts On This Topic.

In answer to the question: wanking. I call it wanking. Sometimes I will try to mix it up by talking about a hand-shandy or rubbing one out. If I’m feeling particularly coy, then I may refer to it as ‘alone time’ or taking a ‘freelancer’s nap.’ But in general, I rarely refer to what I do on my own with a sleazy fantasy and a fistful of glass dildo as ‘female masturbation.’

The article was about the new word ‘klittra’ – an invented word, being promoted by the Swedish Association for Sexual Education, because “If we don’t have a word in the language, how can we even talk about it?”

Hmm…

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