The Mentality of the Sexes is Equal

“The Mentality of the Sexes is Equal” was the name of the last formal debate I ever took part in. That was back in the spring of 1982 and I still remember it because the result proved our debate coach wrong. He explained to us that no matter what the subject was, we could find an argument for or against it. And if we argued skilfully enough we’d win.

We were an all-boys school and had spent two years preparing our attack on the national debating finals in the only sport my school took seriously. We came up against an all-girls school in the regional finals, which we expected to be a small pit stop on our way to national glory.

I know I’m not an objective reporter on this issue, but I’m convinced that we smashed them that night. Unfortunately, we were arguing in favour of the motion and the debate was being judged by an all-male journey. They awarded victory to the girls and their explanation proved that not all arguments are winnable. Middle aged men can’t see beyond the prettiness of seventeen year old girls and the mentality of the sexes is certainly not equal.

But recent events would suggest that my old debating coach may have been right. Take Brexit, Trump or Corona Virus policy. You can take either side of these arguments with righteous passion. I joined Twitter recently because I got really annoyed by something I heard on a podcast and realised that the only way I could tell the guy how wrong he was, was to register for Twitter and tell him what I thought.

We ended up arguing about whether a certain body of water was a fjord or a drowned glaciated valley. That’s the sort of thing that becomes important to you when you’ve been stuck at home for 49 days, like I have been.

Both of us could find Wikipedia articles to back up our claim. And you can do that for pretty much every argument. At the moment twitter is all about Covid 19. It’s hard to find any comment that doesn’t reference it. Everyone now seems to be an expert on epidemiology and virology, words that people couldn’t pronounce, never mind spell three months ago.

You can see this most in comparing death rates or case numbers by country. New Zealand is generally held up as best in class when it comes to dealing with this disease. We went into lockdown earlier in the cycle than other countries, focussed on contact tracing and effectively closed our borders. But you’ll find lots of comment on line that put this down to New Zealand’s remoteness and lack of density. These people don’t seem to realise how many flights a day come into Auckland from China (or used to at least) and how densely packed many parts of Auckland are.

But I don’t engage in these arguments, because what’s the point? Very little in these virus times can be proven to be 100% right or wrong. Every country seems to have a different approach to dealing with Covid. I can have an opinion on which is best but it’s only an opinion. I can’t prove that the New Zealand approach is better than Australia for example. New Zealand has tighter controls, but maybe Australians are more compliant and more relaxed controls would come up with the same result.

But one thing that can be said with certainty is that none of these opinions have arisen in a vacuum. You talk about Covid 19 restrictions based on your personal likes, dislikes and biases. Many Trump fans in American are Libertarians who can think of nothing worse than a centralised government forcing them to stay at home. Brexit fans in the UK didn’t like being told what to do by an unseen and unaccountable government. In both these countries, you’ll see the greatest protests against the lockdowns and I reckon that if you drilled down far enough, you’ll find that Trump voters and Brexit voters make up most of these protests. I also think that climate change deniers make up a large part of this group too. The Venn Diagram between climate change deniers and Brexit and Trump fans is single circle.

I think this comes down to individualism versus collectivism. Some of us believe that we are part of a community; that we can only improve in life if we all improve. We are the ones who are happy to stay at home, to take the government’s advice on social distancing and to be good little compliant citizens. Unfortunately, we’re are also the ones who look snootily down our nose at our less compliant neighbours and write letters to the paper to inform on sun bathers and other people who looked like they were having too much fun.

Those who consider themselves as primarily individuals are less compliant. They see the shadow of totalitarianism over them. They seek out conspiracy at every turn. And if they are healthy they can’t see the sense in a full lockdown. We all know these people, the ones who will make no effort to swerve when they approach you on your daily walk. The ones who sneer at others wearing masks.

The easiest place to spot this is on Twitter. Collectivists will have similar people following them and get mostly positive responses. But the individualists are always waiting to pounce on a slip and bring up half researched facts to back up their case. The place you see this most is when people compare one countries approach to the virus to another’s. No two countries are the same, not just in terms of population, but also demographics and culture.

That doesn’t stop people having an opinion. I’m no different. I have my view on which country is doing better than others. But it’s only an opinion. But despite what I might think, I’ll keep giving it, because what else can we do when we’re all locked in our house with a laptop and nothing to do.

Rumours of my demise were greatly exaggerated

I used to think that Doctors were infallible. They could look into your mouth and tell you that you had strep throat. Tap your knee-cap with a hammer and diagnose rheumatism and most importantly give you a sick note when you need a day on the sofa under a duvet.

I learned recently that they are as fallible as the rest of us. I got a phone call twenty eight days ago to say that a routine scan had noticed something awry on my right lung. It’s four weeks since then and it’s been a rock and roll journey ever since. I’ve had scans, blood tests and a biopsy. Been diagnosed and then un-diagnosed with cancer. Told I might have a lung inflammation, then told I haven’t, then told I have it again.

But if you are going to be mis-diagnosed then it’s better to be told that you have cancer and then told that you don’t. It’s much better than the other way round. I was sent for a biopsy to see what type of cancer was swirling around my lungs. It brought me back to the dark days of 2010 when I was operated on, scanned and filled with chemotherapy drugs. In the midst of all that I remember how kindly you’re treated in the cancer system. The nurses and doctors in that system all seem to have a great sense of humour, which I suppose they need to have because of the work they do.

Despite their best efforts, biopsies are not fun. I had to lie on my stomach and stay perfectly still for twenty minutes while a needle was stuck into my back and sent on a journey through my rib cage and into my lung. They took four samples and the weirdest thing about the whole procedure is that I heard a loud snapping noise each time they did it, as though there was pair of fisherman shears deep within me that was cutting through bailing twine.

Three days later the specialist who had told me that I had cancer called me with good news. She said the biopsy wasn’t showing traces of it. The rest of the call was a bit of a blur to be honest. She mentioned something about getting the opinion of other radiologists. The most important message was that I should cancel the oncologist appointment I’d made.

What she didn’t do was apologise for the original diagnosis and the fact that it put me through two of the darkest weeks of my life. I’ve had cancer before of course and came through it. But that was testicular cancer, the one with the best survival rate. I convinced myself then that it would be the end of Cancer. You can cut out a whole testicle and be sure that you’ve got all the nasty stuff. With other cancers, you have to cut around the tumour and never be certain that you’ve caught everything.

When I got the news two weeks ago that I have a lung tumour, I was devastated. I’d gone from the cancer with the best chance of survival to one with the worst survival rate. In the ten years between the two cancers, I’d gotten married and had a daughter. The thought of telling an eight year that the big C had returned scared me, not least the fear that it would kill me and that she’d be left without a Dad.

It led to several sleepless nights and days filled with dark thoughts. All around me, the world was starting to get to grips with Covid 19. I hardly thought about the virus during those weeks while I lived within my own private hell. I think I handled it by trying to push as much of it out of my head as possible. It was probably not the smartest thing to do from a mental health perspective even if it did help me to get to sleep.

Now I feel like I’m not sure I have processed the fact that I had cancer to be able to process the fact that I don’t. My brain seems to be a month behind the real world.

That world, of course, is obsessed with the Corona Virus. I’m not sure if that has helped or hindered me over the past few weeks. I guess there is only room for so much anxiety inside your head at any time.

It now appears that I have Sarcoidosis, a word I didn’t even know until this week, even though it has been in my medical records since 2010. That’s a lung inflammation that seems to affect Irish people and Africans at a disproportionate level. Nobody knows why. But perhaps it explains why Jimmy Rabbit in the Commitments thought that the Irish were the blacks of Europe.

If you have Sarcoidosis, it can often sit in your lungs for years without you knowing. Expanding and contracting for reasons no one understands and occasionally making you cough or be short of breath. I’ve had both these symptoms over the years. My cough is so regular that I don’t even notice anymore. Others do and before the lockdown, I would often get strange looks in the supermarket when I’d cough in the dairy aisle and spark a Covid 19 panic.

I also get a little short of breath when I climb stairs. To be honest, I always put this down to being a fat bastard. But I’ve been working on getting fit over the last few years. I can do a 5km run and a 70km cycle. But a flight of stairs nearly kills me. So I guess I can put that down to the inflammation as well.

The doc told me not to worry about things. They will keep an eye on it and I might need a few more tests. But otherwise, I’ll clear cancer out of my head and fill it with worrying about Covid 19 like the rest of the world.