My Man Flu Theory

I have a theory about man flu. Now, having reviewed my current list of followers I can see that sharing this may not be my wisest move but, on the flip side, I’ve never been famed for making particularly safe or wise decisions.

Man flu is deadly to women. I know. It’s a shocking medical revelation that may well come as a suprise to some and be met with a shaking head of dismay nay, a sigh of disbelief by others. But hear me out.

For as long as men and women have been around, since the days of “Ug” and “Ag” or “Adam and Eve” depending on your belief in factually proven science or popular fiction, the debate has raged hard in the realm of gender comparisons. We have each been given our relative skill sets though, according to some, running the line at a football match is still to be decided. The real bones of contention however always surround suffering and pain and on this there seems to be little agreement. I just wanted to throw my own spanner in to that cauldron of confusion.

As all men will tell you, being hit in the most private of private parts, normally my experience would suggest on the left one, is excruciating. I will always remember the shot of a burglar, crest fallen with legs akimbo either side of a roof beam as he was making his escape from a drugs store in the States. Having in fact burst one of his giggle-berries he was left stricken, awaiting his inevitable arrest and subsequent hospital treatment. Now that is obviously most extreme but still, there are some amongst us, almost half of you I’d presume, that would argue such agony pales into a mere pin prick compared to the emergence of a child into the world when travelling the au natural route. The problem is that no-one is ever going to be able, truthfully, to compare. 



Real Pain?

Such an ailment as man flu has different descriptions depending on your sex. For a man, this is the vicious attack by a bug causing thumping headaches, making your throat feel as though you’ve just gargled concentrated sulphuric acid whilst chowing down on some rusty razor blades. All of this is closely followed by attempting to cough up your feet by drawing them and every internal organ out through your chest. For women, it’s when men get a pathetic sniffle and thing they are dying. This whilst thinking that they would not only still go to work but also paint the Sistine Chapel, do a weekly shop and, depending on the individual, all of the above whilst breastfeeding and not moaning. Not once. The only explanation that I have been able to come up with to explain such polar opposite opinions MUST be that man flu is deadly to women.



Now my medical training is somewhat lacking. I did do a first aid course whilst at school and I have resuss’d more than one Annie in my time. Such training has served me well thus far – I’m plague free and have numerous times fixed bleeding hockey players with bandages and a modicum of sarcasm – so I trust it implicitly now. The fact must be that women must rarely catch man flu or else they would surely demonstrate a morsel of sympathy, an iota of warmth, a soupcon of understanding. But no. Since as a species we’re so fond of a good conspiracy theory how about this? Rather than not being able to catch it, I think it’s just very difficult. However, when a woman does get man flu, it is deadly. What with the majority of coroners being men, they simply cover up this terrible truth and fritter any unexplained deaths away as aneurisms or heart failure.



This I feel would explain the lack of sympathy, of medical assistance, mopped brows and warming cups of healing tea. There is no empathy because there is no back catalogue of shared experience upon which to draw and human nature does have a tendency to pour scorn and doubt on those things we simply cannot understand. A reasoned argument I feel and, gentlemen readers, one that ought at least earn you a cup of tea and the TV remote if not for acceptance, then more for the worry of your delusional state than the agreement of the theory.