Boys Will Be Boys and Girls Love Them For It!

Dave Shiflett reviews two books about the male of the species for the WSJ:

The very cultures that men have built, he (author Roy Baumeister) says, have considered males more "expendable" than women.

The expendability is reflected in wartime casualty rates, of course, but men also die more often in work-related accidents and die earlier, on average. Their energies are the motor for some bad things but also for a great deal of good, including the economic bustle and technological advance that we associate with progress. But men, Mr. Baumeister says, are often taken for granted and denigrated as the bane of female existence, with some gender activists insisting that women would be better off without them. In a feisty rejoinder, Mr. Baumeister says that "if women really would have been happier without men," they would have "set up shop" on their own long ago. "The historical record is overwhelming," he adds. "Women stick around men."

It's the men who don't stick around women who are part of the problem.

UPDATE: A friend reports: Thirty percent of the last words of men are "Hey y'all watch this!"