Thursday was International Women's Day, and like always, there was some guy saying, "Why isn't there an International Men's Day? Yuk, yuk." And while the usual response is, "Every day is a men's day, you asshole," maybe it's time to agree.

After all, if you really believe in equality in everything, why not push for equal salaries for men? The poor things have been suffering for years with all that excess income. Give me a petition. I'd be happy to support a 25-percent reduction in pay across the board.

And as to equal representation in all our governing bodies, or editorial boards, or corporations, I'd be happy to get behind a movement to slash the number of seats they have by 90 percent or so and devote the redundant salaries to researching the implantation of fetuses in men.

And for all those guys envious of the probes and procedures that Virginia's women are going to be subjected to before they can get a simple abortion, why not pass laws requiring prostate exams whenever they demand a refill of Viagra or a package of condoms?

We also have to grapple with a terrible inequality when it comes to culture. Just two weeks ago I heard about a group of anarcho-feminists in Marseille, France, who have begun to drop by their local libraries to inquire why there's no separate section for heterosexual literature. After persisting for several months, they were told that it was impossible, because it would take up nearly the whole library. I think in the U.S. we should begin a movement requiring libraries to offer men's sections. To compress their volumes into just a couple of stacks, we could turn to that old favorite, a bonfire.

And when it comes to violence, men should have their own shelters for domestic abuse, given that there is in fact a small number of males who are battered. Once we get the shelters built, in the spirit of equality, we should probably aim to fill them with a similar number of victims. In fact, to be strictly accurate, we should batter so many men that they overflow the new shelters and have to live in the streets or their cars. Or in their relatives' houses.

We could send out gangs of women to harass young males and grab their asses on the subway or bus. And if they don't like it, respond, "That was a compliment. What's your problem? What are you, a fucking homo?" Or these gangs of women could go out with machetes or bottles and really get their hate on. Just for the sake of equality.

And why not arrange for men to get little chunks of their penises chopped off wherever women face genital mutilation? After all, they get a party afterwards, celebrating their enforced chastity, painful pissing, and fear and loathing of sex. And if men manage, nevertheless, to get themselves accused of adultery or having sex before marriage, we could beat them to death, or stone them, just like women.

It's clear that I've been thinking about equality all wrong. Up until now I've imagine that most minorities, of whatever kind, aspired to have lives like the powerful -- lives lived in freedom with a certain degree of safety, and health, and prosperity, participating as citizens in their own countries, or worshiping their god with a modicum of dignity.

In fact, it's far easier to take it the other way and literally level the playing field. Cut the legs off the Titans and watch them crawl. Unleash poverty and chaos and violence and degradation for all. Yeah, why not equality?