Lie to me. I promise, I’ll believe. Cheryl Crow

Every man knows that when answering the question posed in the title that he does so at his own risk.

It’s a typical non question, designed more for adulation on demand than an honest answer.

And you have seen it before, or one of a thousand variations of it, because it’s a universal part of the male experience in dealing with women in relationships.

The general rule is, women ask a question and men search for the “right” answer, or at least for one that will result in as little trouble as possible.

Perhaps illustrating further with a joke will help.

A man and woman are leaving a movie. The woman asks, “Do you think Sigourney Weaver is pretty?”

The guy knows this is potential trouble, but he also knows he has to answer.

“Well, yeah, I guess,” he says, trying not to sound at all enthusiastic. Nothing else is said and the guy feels relieved.

Two weeks later they are in a restaurant having dinner.

“How’s the meatloaf?” she asks.

“A little dry,” he says.

“Well, then,” she says, her tone snide and suddenly hostile, “Maybe you should have had Sigourney Weaver make it for you!”

It’s a funny joke, and might be best left to the realm of humor until you consider that this is how many, many men live their lives; trying their best to not say the wrong thing, even if they have to lie, and constantly being set up with a series of questions for which there is no right answer.

What does it say, one might ask, about a human being when they not only insist on being told what they want to hear, regardless of its truthfulness, but will also, in fact, deal out retribution when given the wrong answers to impossible questions?

I have three words for it.

Complete moral bankruptcy.

Actually, I have three more words that are more accurate.

Spoiled rotten child. That is actually more fitting because we don’t expect children to have the moral development that we would an adult. And nowhere but in modern western culture are we satisfied when women measure up to the moral development of a five year old.

It’s a state of affairs that affects both men and women. But there is a major difference in how and when and why it happens between the two.

First, for a man to have the world around him lying to him for the sake of his over inflated sense of self importance, he has to have a lot of money. You can bet that Donald Trump and Bill Gates have a slew of people around them that would point to a blue sky and call it green if they thought that is what those guys wanted to hear.

But The Donald and Gates represent a very decided minority of men- and they have to pay, literally, for the privilege of being surrounded by obsequious Yes Men.

Any of the rest of men that expect automatic deference, that become childish and punishing when denied agreement or coddling, are rightfully regarded as immature pricks and written off, by men and women alike.

It has to be mentioned though, that there is some reason to question whether the self importance of men like Gates and Trump is all that over inflated. Arrogant and spoiled? No doubt, but they have accomplished incredible things in their lives.

Women, on the other hand, have a much different set of circumstances. All men are Yes Men, or are damned well expected to be, and it costs those women absolutely nothing to realize their expectations; their only qualification for that status is the possession of a vagina. No need to build and empire or revolutionize technology. Just sport the P-nay-nay and the lap dogs will come a yappin’.

You don’t have to look any further than the comments on MRA websites to see what happens when some of us get uppity and start telling the truth, without say so from the Princess Collective.

I can even hear even more of it coming now. Eeewwwwww! That’s so hateful and misogynistic! You’re just frustrated because you can’t get laid!

Sure, cupcake, and I have no doubt you fully expect people to agree with that assessment. Aren’t you entitled to that, as a woman?

I will answer those comments, should they occur, in advance.

First, the truth isn’t hate speech. Never was. Second, if you don’t like the truth, grow the hell up and quit living by a standards that require people to lie. And third, grow the hell up and quit living by standards that require people to lie.

Failing any of this, quit expecting anyone to regard you as an equal. It just doesn’t work that way.

Sheesh, and they say men have fragile egos? Gimme a break.

I often consider all of this when women question me about a gender wage gap that does not exist. Or about the myth that women in this culture were ever oppressed. Or about domestic violence being only committed by men.

And my conclusion is that those questions aren’t really those questions.

Those questions are “Do you think my ass looks fat in this dress?”

Of course, I am supposed to maintain the status quo and give the answer that is expected to those and a litany of other non questions, for fear of getting Sigourney Weaver thrown back in my face. Just as I am supposed to not recognize that such inquiries are really just fishing expeditions from the imagined infallibles that are the fairer sex in modern culture, NAWALT’s notwithstanding.

Unfortunately, I lost interest in the right answers to anything a long time ago, figuring that the best answers are always the truthful ones. That became necessary when I discovered that I could not seek the truth and placate children at the same time.

But it gives women what they have claimed to want for so, so long.

Equal treatment.

After fifty years of endlessly disseminating information on the darker side of masculine nature- information that morphed into the unrestrained male bashing that now pervades modern consciousness, it is fair and just, in the name of equal treatment, that we begin to explore the darker, more destructive side of the feminine as well.

Funny how that does not sit so well with so many of them.