I’ve always had the greatest respect for Emma Watson. She was always clever and bright, consistently scoring better that both Harry Potter and Ron Weasley in spells, Studies of the Dark Arts and Dragon Rearing. After that she went to Harvard, or Yale; somewhere American, and acquired a BSc in Witchcraft, or Politics or something or other. And although getting a degree from the States is not like a ‘proper’ degree from Cambridge or Bath or the University of the Stourbridge Bypass over here, its definitely one up from buying one in a street market in Mumbai. How are you wanting to spelling ‘filosopheee’?

But mainly I respect her because she grew up rather gorgeously. Waif-like, a touch ‘cold’, but beautiful in a very fragile way. And being a man, that’s what you notice first. Long before the words. She might as well have the volume turned down to ‘0’ (as if any woman possesses such a dial, and if they did the lowest setting would be ’17’). And that’s not objectification, admiring beauty, though it may look like it to some, and its not sexism, nor chauvinism but just being a man. Even a post-feminist, right-on, egalitarian man like wot I am.

Emma is now the Goodwill Ambassador for UN Women. Angelina Jolie is a Goodwill Ambassador to the UN for something else. I want to be the interviewer for Goodwill Ambassadors to the UN. BTW: Emma made a speech, she’s a clever little thing, about how men too are ‘imprisoned by their stereotypes’, presumably meaning that we feel obliged to ‘PHWOARRR’ at passing babes when we’re working on building sites, spend evening talking to chests at dinner parties and fail to connect with our emotions, or at least to outwardly display them.

Or maybe it means we can wear her underwear if we want to. I’m not really sure I know what it means, other than it sounds clever. And on an intellectual level equality is a wonderful thing. And I revere women, not just the ones on porn sites, but all women. And believe them to be equal in virtually all abilities other than throwing a ball. There’s no ‘glass ceiling’ in my world. Honest, there ain’t.

And yet I’m a man. And men are, first and foremost, animals. Literally so. As are women. And testosterone is a terrible thing. But like all drugs, it feels so good at the time. And it drives men to objectify women. Its not a conscious act, it just happens. Its visceral, its innate and so when Emma Watson talks about being imprisoned by stereotypes (as she saunters down a catwalk in the latest Burberry, make up by L’Oreal, hair by some ponce in Conduit Street) I think she’s missed an important point. Men are driven by lust. Its chromosomal. Even men who cry. Which is often just a ploy for sympathy anyway; a quick path to physical contact.

Men are horrible. Stereotypes are there for good reason. Accept it and move on.

Avera Kadavra

A xxxx