The general go-to when it comes to chalking up a woman’s “insanity” to something–if she’s even allowed the “courtesy” of being given a reason for said unhingedness other than her gender–is that she must have daddy issues. This, too, must also be the reason why she can never be satisfied by any “man”–least of all one in her age bracket. No, she’s too busy subconsciously comparing him to her father–even if he was never around to make for much of a comprehensive comparison.

But “men,” often more unwittingly convinced of the Electra complex than women are of the Oedipus one, are too quick to write off a woman’s neuroses to the very first “man” she ever had any dealings with in her life: old Daddy-o. Except, in most latchkey kids’ cases, there wasn’t much interaction with her patriarch anyway–of course, they (therapists?) say that the absence of this key “male” figure in a girl’s life can be just as damaging in the same ways that a ubiquitous “father” can be with his invariable verbal and/or physical abuse. Regardless, a woman’s alleged “madness” can’t be attributed entirely to the one “male” in her life whose job it was, by twentieth century and prior standards, to make her “palatable” to another “man” who would be responsible for taking care of her (since, basically, a “woman” had to be passed off, as it were, by the time she reached a certain “marriageable age”). Except, in truth, this obligation always fell to the mother. In any case, if we’re going to place blame on anyone for a woman’s “batshit” ways, let’s place it on all “men,” largely immune to common decency and morality as they are, not just those “penises” responsible for bringing a child into the world against her will.