Many people don't realize that lots of discrimation is caused, directly or indirectly, by the victim himself, or by the 'same kind' of the victim.

For example, lots of Asians complain that there is anti-Asian rascism rampant in society. I am one of them.

But I have met some truly godawful Asians - like, not the slightly irritating nannies, but the ones that make you want to bleach your skin and dye your hair and pretend you're from the othe side of the world. They're mean, stingy, calculative, and completely lack class and social skills. They're the kind of people who force their kids into bad clothes, smelly and impractical alternative therapy and endless amounts of tuition. The kind of Asian that doesn't understand the concept of privacy, queueing, decency, hygiene...anything, really. It takes someone, or a group of people, to be pretty goddamn atrocious to influence someone's perception of the whole race in general.

And it's not fair on us who do know how to behave, understand human rights and don't treat a fifty dollar note like their first-born son, because we're automatically judged as one of these psychotic people who are probably mentally affected by the pollution in China. I like to think that normal Asians outnumber crazy Asians, just like I like to think that good men outnumber backstabbing ,break-heart redneck bastards who think either through their stomach, their wallet or their, um, you know. That thing.

People judge me on how I judge men. I know I may seem like a dowdy blue stocking, but seriously, women have to do a lot for men. From the moment we are born there is an emphasis on looking good. As you get older this explodes into dieting, forcing yourself into that size eight even though you know with all your heart you're a size twelve, obsessively zit-squeezing and eyebrow-plucking, endless amounts of shaving, waxing, and various other forms of pain we have invented to inflict upon the female body, hairspray, to perm or not to perm, hair irons, makeup, etc.

And guys are awfully hypocritical about this. They say that it's ridiculous when women wear about a foot of makeup or go under the knife to look like that airbrushed celebrity on the cover of a glossy gossip magazine, but subconciously (or sometimes conciously) they push us into looking like that. If you look at all the celebrity chefs chances are most of the male ones are grossly overweight, greying or balding or both, and ugly as the rear end of a cow. Wherelse the female ones, which are much less numerous, are manicured to perfection.

And has anyone bothered to tell guys how bloody annoying periods are? They're bloody unpredictable, and you have to hide everything to do with them, pretend they don't exist - which means we have to find pretty ingenious ways of hiding a spare pair of undies and pants, pads, tampons and wipes, in a bag that boys habitually raid for food. They're painful as hell, like being repeditively punched in the gut for about a week, and they come every freaking month. You never catch a break, man.

Boys have been conditioned, by media and also by how women are pressured into looking these days, into thinking that all women are hairless from their perfectly plucked eyebrows down, that they're all really booby but skinny, and have perfect hair 24/7.


The average woman looks as awful as an average man does. If we eat, we get fat. If we don't eat, we die. Yep, the same basic rule applies to us, too. Isn't that news? The bigger your boobs are, the bigger your waist is going to be. If you don't wear makeup, people call you ugly. If you wear makeup, you get zits and then people still call you ugly. If you don't complain about your weight yourself people do it for you; if you do complain about it people call you a moaner.

Men stare at everything - boobs, bulging waistlines, unflattering clothes, greasy hairlines, smudgy makeup, that mysterious red stain on the seat of your pants, unshaven legs, hairy underarms, a runaway tampon - seriously, everything. Meanwhile, most of them have all of the above, with the possible exception of smudgy makeup and mysterious red stains - but, with all this metrosexual crap and the male tendancy to shockingly abuse ketchup, we see these things on the other gender too.

This is my idea of men based on the men I know. You may have surmised that the men I know aren't all that nice. The only nice men really are the teachers, but most of them are married, and it's kinda illegal for them to be too nice to us anyway. But for the most part, most of the so-called men I know are smelly, cheating, lazy, hypocritical boys with ridiculously high standards on women and ridiculously low standards on themselves.

You really can't blame me on my stance of men. This is really all that I know. The men I know in my life aren't really that nice. If you come from a place where all of your men are Mr Darcys, then I envy you. But you have no right to call me sexist. I'm that poor white dude who has no choice but to judge a bunch of crazy Asians.

Stereotyping is natural and unavoidable. I'm going on raw scientific data here, and if I do, then based on the evidence I've got, all men are fat, lazy, bad at school, have mouldy sandwiches in the bottom of your bag and will cheat on you or dump you within the week. You can't say otherwise, because anyone really would jump to that conclusion of they were me.

I'm still waiting on someone to break the stereotype. I'm not going to lie through my teeth and say otherwise about men until I actually get to know someone who isn't like this. I'm still convinced that they're out there, but they're not here, and here is where I am now, fighting my ticking biological clock just so I can get through another day without mascara-stained tissues and endless amounts of ice cream.

Your biological clock is a stupid thing. When you're way too young it tells you that you gotta find someone now now now, and men aren't ready for that. And it leads to all this frustration because men have no reason to rush life but women...women have too many reasons.

In the good ol' days men were taught to be respectful and courteous and chivalrous and gentlemanly towards women. They stood up and bowed when a lady entered the room, held open doors and helped them onto horses and into carriages. These days boys spit in your face, break your heart, slam doors in your face and call you a whiny bitch about pretty much everything. What happened to proper parenting?

People say it goes against a boy's nature to not be like that, but that's not true. When I was a younger I knew an exception - a South African boy who had impeccable manners. He wasn't effeminate or gay or anything else derogatory we can associate with good behaviour in boys - he was good at sport, athletic, all of that - but he was always polite. I can remember that because he stands out amongst all the ill-bred Aussie boys I've grown up with.

So it can happen. Men can pull their weight in this world, too.