Crane lady rant...

500-ish words, to go towards this week's 1000-word total.


We lost the gender war. Not you younger women who can now do any trade, any job (even the dirty ones), even if it still isn't for as much money as the blokes sitting beside them. We took the jibes, we marched in, heads high, pride swallowed as men called us slags, traitors, home-wreckers and insults too old-fashioned for you to even understand, like "unladylike". But we, the women who fought the war, we’ve lost. We took it all - the jokes, the side comments, the demands for coffee, the pats on the bum, worse, and we took it to give the next generation of women and the generation after that the chance to be who they wanted to be. Hell, we even campaigned for women to be seen as more than tarts, mothers or pin-ups. And what did you do with it? You learnt to compete, learnt to use everything as a weapon in your fight for the top. Including sex. You decided the playboy symbol was a neat logo for your pajamas. And we learnt that you don't have to pay £200 a night to be screwed by the next generation. It's not that we were expecting a thank-you. Why would you even think about it? The doors that we had to beat on to be let in were wide open by the time you got to them. But somehow in all this you've ended up acting like a bunch of ungracious teenagers. There, I can already hear you starting to grumble about it; "it's not our fault", "why do you expect us to be grateful". But look at it from our point of view for a minute.

There's sex everywhere. I went to the opticians today (we all get old, unfortunately), and there it was. Lady optician, nice lass, but an enormous uncovered bosom, floating just under the finger she was asking me to follow. I mean, I'm amazed I wasn't listed as the largest eyeballs on the planet. Just. Where. Are. You. Supposed. To. Look? And don't tell me it's your right - we campaigned for equality, for dignity, for equal treatment. Not the right to embarrass the hell out of men all the time. Or worse, to remind them about sex, the great discriminator. And then we’re screwed. Or rather, we’re not. Because faced with all that sex, all those visible nubile bodies, is it any surprise that men our age don’t find us attractive any more? So enjoy it while you can girls, because you’re pissing it all away. The pay gap is widening again, the doors are starting to close, and if that doesn’t get you, then get as much sex as you can before 40, because the next generation is waiting to take you on too.