Girl Power

Sometimes when I'm performing routine tasks, a nerve synapse somewhere in my brain randomly fires and I remember a mostly irrelevant thing from bygone times. Well, that happened just a second ago while I was showering, and it's about to spawn what you're reading at this very moment.

Before the beginning of my freshman year at college, I partook in this thing called "Wilderness Orientation," where a bunch of UCSC students-to-be go hiking for about a week and a half in Yosemite. Prior to disembarking, one of our group leaders, a rather pungent yet knowledgeable young woman with hairier armpits than mine (no damn joke, I'm afraid) briefed us on what we were about to experience.

Suddenly she brought up the subject of menstruation. As she put it, the ladies of the group were going to have to be extra "prepared" because they might deviate from their normal cycles. This was mainly because the strain of the trail tends to coax out a bunch of sweaty girl pheromones or something. Well, as little as this applied to me, I guess this was a fairly relevant matter to bring up. But what really caught my attention was her following statement.

"This phenomenon just goes to show the power of female camraderie."

Um... I'm sorry, but is that the best you've got, lady? When women join forces they can bleed together? I think she was selling her gender short. I mean, according to her, while groups primarily dominated by men had got together in the past and

-Engineered powered flight
-Sent people to the moon
-Journeyed to the center of the Earth?
and
-Supported the economy of San Diego by attending the annual Comicon,

the most prominant thing she could attribute to women was the ability to have their periods in perfect harmony much like some menstrual barbershop quartet. Well... shucks. Being male, I really feel like I'm missing out. Feminists: 1. Olivonius: 0.