Everybody wants to tax somebody else: Tax the rich, tax the fat, tax the bald, tax pet owners, gum chewers and those who like manicures. I would like to offer a different solution: Let's tax men. In fact, let's tax men a lot, more than they're already being taxed, and let's not tax women at all.

Sound fair to you? Good. Me too.

After all, women are not the ones wrecking the nation's infrastructure. We're not the ones shooting at the "No U-turn" signs on rural highways. It's not women who are trying to make our names as graffiti artists. You'll rarely find a bunch of broads gathered together attempting to create weapons of mass destruction or figuring out how to really get ahead in next year's arms race.

We're not the ones running Fortune 500 companies into the ground or manipulating the stock market. As many people have noted, had the firm been called Lehman's Sisters it might not have gone down the fiscal toilet, taking Wall Street's profits with it.

There's really no female equivalent of Bernie Madoff. (Don't talk to me about Madoff's wife, either; she couldn't have swindled $2 out of Martha Stewart at a fundraiser for abandoned Labradoodles).

I think it's time for women to stop going Dutch when it comes to taxes. It's been a bad date.

And the bad date has gone on for quite some time, too. Since 1778, when Hannah Lee Corbin wrote indignantly to her brother — a member of the Continental Congress — complaining that independent women suffered from taxation without representation, women have been exploited, manipulated, ignored, mocked, abused and fleeced by moron politicians and profiteering businessmen. Women have been duped and hoodwinked into believing that men act in their best interests. Even worse, women were betrayed into believing that they could not handle financial or political matters. Therefore they had no option — stock or otherwise — but to put their trust and trust funds into the hands of those sporting top hats and coattails.

It's time for that to stop. Women should no longer feel obliged to dump the contents of our purses into the great financial mess made by men. Let's think about what we as a nation spend most of our taxes on: developing new and improved weaponry, paying off the soaring national debt, rebuilding our public schools, and replacing manhole covers that were stolen and sold for scrap.

How many of these debacles have women really participated in? Perhaps some women run up debt. But it's usually on our Visa or Discover cards and we can redeem points for a spatula. And to be perfectly honest, we do a very good job at keeping debt on those to a minimum — unless it's a card that gives 5 percent back on our purchases like T.J. Maxx. It's just easier to pay in cash. Let the federal government try to pay in cash. Let it try to get 5 percent back. Hell, let the government try extreme couponing. Let it get those weapons at a two-for-one discount.

Rebuilding our public schools? If we need to rebuild our public schools, it's not because of what little girls have done. Put it this way: Do we spend $12,846 per school district per annum erasing drawings of male anatomy on desks, walls and bathroom stalls because of little girls? No. Girls just don't do this. You rarely see little girls drawing pictures of their reproductive organs while, for example, in the elevator. It isn't how we mark our territory.

Virginia Woolf once wrote, "As a woman, I have no country … as a woman, my country is the whole world." Unlike Woolf, I do have a country. One of which I am very proud. One that I now feel represents me and treats me like a citizen, something I think that a lot of women — and a lot of men for that matter — were not given the privilege of feeling. It's as if the whole package has finally arrived, and for those who have waited the longest.

But men and women alike will tell you that, yes, parts were damaged in shipping. If we're returning anything to sender, the guy should pay the postage.

Gina Barreca is an English professor at the University of Connecticut and a feminist scholar who has written eight books. She can be reached through her website at http://www.ginabarreca.com.

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