Way of the World Michael Deacon

In this week’s episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm – very possibly the last remaining sitcom on earth that’s actually funny – Larry David issued a warning that all men would be wise to heed. Especially if they’re about to go on a date.

“Women like questions,” he explained to a male friend. “When you have a date with one, you’ve got to ask a ton of questions. Otherwise, they’re going back to their friends, and you know what they’re saying? ‘He didn’t ask me one question.’”

To men, that might not sound like the worst crime in the world. Women, however, take a very different view. Last summer, a female journalist wrote a column in The Sunday Times complaining about all the men she’d dated who hadn’t asked her enough questions about herself. The column went viral online, with countless female readers reporting that they’d had the same experience. Such behaviour, they fumed, was typical of male sexism – because it showed how uninterested men are in women’s careers, experiences and opinions.

What none of these women seemed to realise, however, is that for men it’s the other way round. We can’t stand it when women ask us lots of questions on dates. So while, for men, it’s a mistake to ask too few questions, it’s just as big a mistake for women to ask too many.

To a man, being bombarded with questions makes the date feel like a job interview, for the role of boyfriend. The woman comes across like a prospective employer, demanding to know our qualifications, relevant experience, and where we see ourselves in five years’ time. We start to worry that we’ll be asked to supply two references from former girlfriends.

On top of that, excessive questioning can make a woman seem too keen, thus triggering male commitmentphobia. If this is what she’s like on the first date, the man thinks, imagine being married to her. Would she endlessly interrogate me about where I was going, who I was meeting and what I was thinking about? (This last question in particular highlights how little women know about men. Because, all too often, the truthful answer is either nothing, or nothing we’d want to admit.)

All of which explains why men are reluctant to ask too many questions themselves. Women may not like it. But they shouldn’t take offence. The fact is, men don’t ask their male friends questions, either. Instead, we communicate largely through jokes, anecdotes, mutual mockery and exchanges of trivia.

So yes, we may be shallow and emotionally stunted. But not sexist. Because we’re just as bad with each other.

During a talk about diversity, it was reported this week, staff at a well-known organisation were told about the importance of “allyship” and “recognising your privilege”. These staff have also been informed that “gender-fluid” means someone whose gender identity is

“on a fluctuating spectrum”, and that “white privilege” is “the unquestioned and unearned set of advantages and benefits bestowed on people because they are white”.

These days, of course, there’s nothing especially unusual about this. Many organisations are eager to show off how au fait they are with the latest progressive lingo. What I find intriguing about this particular story, however, is that the staff are employed not by some lobby group or NGO. They’re employed by the nationwide pet shop chain Pets at Home.

But if your job is to feed guinea pigs and muck out gerbils, why on earth would you need to know this stuff?

I myself have never worked at a pet shop. Over the course of a typical working day, however, I can’t imagine that analysis of white privilege is of much practical use. Unless, that is, experts have found statistical evidence that white rabbits are treated more leniently by police than black rabbits, or that black rabbits are significantly under-represented on television.

Still, these are apparently concepts with which modern pet shop staff are expected to be familiar. Next thing you know, they’ll be telling the pets to check their privilege, too.

“Who’s a good boy? Who’s a good boy? Who’s a very, very good boy? Unfortunately, not you, Rover – because you remain disturbingly silent on Gaza, the climate crisis, the marginalisation of trans people, and Starmer’s sickening betrayal of Jeremy’s 2019 manifesto.”

Here’s a story that illustrates just how dramatically society has changed. In 2022, a headmistress was sacked after another teacher at the same school filed an official complaint, accusing her of physically hurting a child. What exactly had this headmistress done?

She’d tapped the child on the hand, to deter him from mucking about with a bottle of hand sanitiser. As it happens, the child in question was the headmistress’s three-year-old son.

Until about 40 years ago, teachers were entitled to thrash children with a cane. Now, it seems, they can’t give a child a gentle tap on the hand. Not even if the child is their own.

Thankfully, some semblance of sanity has at last been restored. An employment judge has ruled that the headmistress was unfairly dismissed. She’s now in line for compensation.

In the old days, children were taught not to tell tales. Perhaps some teachers should be taught this, too.