Man up and get over this pitiful Man Flu

There has been much talk about Man Flu recently. It is being taken seriously as a real condition - not just as an allegation that men take to bed and become useless to the rest of humankind at the first hint of a sniffle.

There are new claims, not very substantial ones - research related to bacterial, not viral infections, was done on rats and mice - that there is evidence of women being stronger than men.

Man Flu is the name given to the time that men take languishing in bed, and has become the reason to explain their pitiful behaviour.

But I think this condition, described by www.ManFlu.info as "a crippling and debilitating disorder indiscriminately striking down male members of the human species without warning" has so been called to shame and embarrass men and give women reason for our own viciously bad behaviour.

My man is in a fairly bad way. He has a back spasm. And as I write this, he is snoring and barking his way through the little flu he is suffering from too. It's been a week since I've had his help breakfasting and making tea, dressing kids and so forth. Thankfully, he doesn't take to his bed too often for this long. Not because he is stronger than most men who suffer from their specially labelled flu. But because with each aching hour my resentment and irritation grows mountains. My response to an ailing man is to become mean-spirited and short-tempered.

I am not alone. One of my friends is referred to as Nurse Mengele (after the man known as the "Angel of Death" at the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau) by her husband when he is in need of TLC. She claims she gets irritated by his pitifulness. Another friend says she can't stand that hers doesn't lift a finger when he has a runny nose.

Seeing your virile man flailing around in pain gives no self-respecting woman any confidence in her chosen male partner.

So excuse me fellow feminists as I find my way around this Man Flu issue. I believe there are still primal responses harboured in our sophisticated modern female beings. The man in our life is meant to be fending off danger from our front doors, and bringing home the beef.

Over time, these roles may have developed into making a pot of morning tea and taking the rubbish out to the street for collection. But there is still a far off memory of the strong hunter-gatherer type who was physically capable and protective.

A man in bed with flu and spasmodic muscles is no use to anyone. So we've shamed him and named him a pathetic Man Flu sufferer in the hope that he'll get up, jump back on his feet and go to work.