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James Chapman-Kelly - June 12 2008

12/ 6/2008

DOES size matter? Or is it simply the way it is used that counts? Certain things are different for women than they are for the male of the species. Isn’t that right ladies?

Men are obsessed with size. They admire the biggest cars, the largest TV set, the major computer games systems, the fastest jet aeroplanes, and the most enormous aircraft carriers. The modern male would erect a bust to womanly attributes at the drop of a bra. But the question still remains: Is the largest the best?

It’s a fact that most men are bigger than most women. Taller, more muscular, fitter, more agile, stronger. The physical attributes of man cannot be refuted. The majority of men are stronger than the majority of women.

(Now I realise that to the likes of Earth Mother Fiona and her motley crew the above statement is like a red rag to a bull, or a semi-turgid procreational fleshy thing dangling in the waters of the Amazon River is to a shoal of piranhas. But I don’t want to hear about women in the third world and the inhabitants of Birmingham and Liverpool nipping behind hedges alongside the M6, having their babies, then after a quick rubdown with dock-leaves and dandelions going straight back to work after nipping home and making their fellas tea, and shouting out to the world at large that a bloke couldn’t do that!)

Fiona darling, us guys have other things to occupy our minds.

Another thing that men have which is larger than a woman’s is a brain. (I can feel the witches gathering again!) Please note that I haven’t, as yet, said that women don’t have a brain. I am merely pointing out that men have bigger brains than women (ask a man).

The reason men have larger brains than women is because men have bigger heads, and a large head contains a large brain.

Neuroscientists know a lot more nowadays about our human brain. Yet the things they do know are but the size of a speck of dust on the underarm of a mite that is feeding on a bug in the nether regions of an elephant’s bottom. Yes folks that’s how small our knowledge is about the workings of our very own bundle of grey matter. A bundle of grey matter, electronics and synaptic flashings that, believe it or not, cannot feel pain. True, our brains, by reason of thoughts and decisions made, have undoubtedly caused pain in our lives and in the life of our world but the perpetrator itself, the font and repository of all our knowledge is a mere calculating hard-hearted 3lb lump of cells that knows no pain.

Many people, mostly men, are on record as saying that as men have larger brains than women, then men must be more intelligent (get down Fiona!) Look around the bars on quiz night; you’ll see there are more men playing than women. Why is this I asked one guy in the bar? "Because we are more intelligent than women," he dribbled at me through beery breath and unfocused eye, "and anyway it’s my night out, and we scored 18 points. Brilliant."

"Eighteen out of how many?" I asked as I picked up the pint he’d just knocked over the table.

"Out of how many? How many?" He slurred. "There’s four of us in the team. Ask one of them."

Sadly, my research stopped right there and then as my newfound intellectual friend slumped across the table dead drunk, yet happy. He had a look on his face reminiscent of a dung beetle that had just found a new cow-pat to live in. Echoes of Ken Dodd singing ‘Happiness’ came to my mind and I left Quiz Night Nathan to his slumber.

Most, if not all, of our world famous chess masters are men, and let’s face it; the word on the streets is that women can’t read maps. Yet there is a thing called female intuition and female intuition has long suspected that brain size and brain usage have nothing in common. FYI - Albert Einstein had a smaller than average brain and Albert wasn’t slow about coming up with ideas was he? Relatively speaking that is!

In conclusion, brain size and matter don’t count. It’s not how much matter you’ve got; it’s what you do with it that counts! Isn’t that right girls?