Bring on the quickie divorce…

You might think that someone with conservative leanings would be horrified and appalled by today’s Tellygraff headline.

I think this is an excellent idea.

Marriage used to be a package of ‘good things’. A safe, stable environment in which to raise children. Conferred social status. Tax benefits. Pooled resources. Lifelong companionship. Extended family. Benefits to mental and physical health. Channeling of hereditary infuence, power and wealth. And – gasp – women had the benefit of her and her children being protected by her husband, physically, financially, socially and morally.

A rose-tinted view to be sure, but it’s not really any of those things any more, is it?

Not since the thin end of the wedge was inserted a generation or more ago by feminists and pandering politicians. Not since invertebrate conservatives and churchmen capitualted to what was then seen as a piffling threat from a barmy and chaotic fringe movement.

In fact, with the ratcheting up of benefits accruing to women from the dissolution of marriage, and the sharing of the spoils, and the burgeoning ‘you go girl, you can have it all, don’t need no manfishbicycle’ culture that has become utterly mainstream, marriage has become something that, for men, is a very high risk, very low reward proposition.

2017 divorce statistics for England and Wales

• Initiated by Men: 38%
• Initiated by Women: 62%

This latest step will help men realise that they are being shafted, stop imagining that their marriage will be different, because their wife is different. Not All Women Are Like That, right?

The easier it is to get a divorce, the sooner men extricate themselves from the clutches of marriage, the more men dodge the bullet in the first place, the sooner women can fulfil their destiny as fat, hairy, miserable, bitching, scheming, curtain twitching catladies.

“Where are all the good men?” they will cry, as their ovaries dessicate and their miniature poodle drops another dog egg in their Louboutin shoes. “Hashtag KillAllMen” they will tweet. From their iPhones, invented, designed, built, transported and delivered by men. Using machines, technology, science, techniques and processes invented by men.

All the good men are over there, dear. Working hard, inventing things, building things, maintaining things. Meeting with their friends at the pub, playing football, going motor-racing, taking the piss out of each other, going on tour, banging pneumatic 25-year-olds.

They see your game, wimmin, and they aren’t going to play it anymore.

Perhaps one of the reasons that women are embracing this lockdown in a way that actual men are not, is that it involves an extended period of sitting around in your pyjamas, talking endlessly on the phone, eating chocolate and watching Friends box-sets, paid for with money that fell from the sky.

Which is actually what most young women do when they’re not going out dressed like a Kardashian and acting like Jade Goody, or go-getting in their brilliant career as a copywriter in the packaging department of a company that makes bin liners. And moreover – much to their delight – the kibosh has been put right on all those things that men like to do. How gleeful they are.

So yeah. Fuck it. You started the fire under society 50 years ago and it’s been smouldering and slowly oxidising away in the breeze ever since. There’s nothing left to repair. Just a hulking pile of embers. Why not chuck a gallon of petrol on it and get it done so we can sweep it away and start again?

AJ

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