The stupidity of cows is the single most important factor in our understanding of gender politics in the modern Western world. There. I’ve said it, and our lives can never be the same again. I’ve harnessed the populist power of the internet to usurp the oppressors and liberate women and men forever. You’re welcome.

Let me explain myself. Back around the year dot, humans cottoned on to the fact that they were marginally more intelligent than the average cow. These beasts were so dumb that they could be harnessed to pull carts around fields and, crucially, thick enough to not mind being whipped if they were slacking off. And so whips were duly invented, and about forty seconds after that, some guy was inspired to make that snide whip crack sound effect whenever another man left his company because of plans with a girlfriend. And that’s pretty much set the tone for gender relations up until now.

You’d think that we would have moved on in the several thousand years between then and now, but despite massive innovation in almost every other aspect of the human experience, this area seems to have remained pretty static. If you’re a guy, you have guy friends and the only reason you could possibly want to spend time with your girlfriend is if she’s coercing you with manipulative feminine mind darts or bribing you with sweaty pleasures. There is, of course, no other rational reason that you would forsake your broheems, right?

Of course not all men are like this, and even in this frivolous blog it would be offensive to suggest otherwise. But there is often a prevailing atmosphere, especially amongst men, that the genders are at their happiest and most natural when with their own kind and should only come together for the purpose of humping and/or bickering about whose turn it is to take out the bins (hopefully not simultaneously).

Our fascination with male-male heteromances has always been reflected in Hollywood (Laurel and Hardy were awfully cosy, weren’t they?), but never more enthusiastically than in some of its most successful recent comedy releases. Movies like Superbad, I Love You, Man, Clerks II and Pineapple Express all (awkward, prolonged metaphor alert) diligently mine the depths of man-love to exploit a rich vein of hilarity and tap into an underground reservoir of emotion. They are lighted-hearted journey to the sweet, molten centre of male bonding, and for that I thoroughly enjoy most of them. Even if I wish they’d take the genre to the logical conclusion and make a movie where two male protagonists finally admit they’re totally gay-bones for each other.

But some of these movies do sort of expose the lack of women amongst Hollywood scriptwriters. Take Forgetting Sarah Marshall, for instance. A perfectly serviceable movie, there’s no denying it, with plenty of funny moments. But, at its heart, it’s a 15 year-old boy’s revenge/wank fantasy committed to celluloid.

Think about it – BOY gets dumped by nasty manipulative GIRL, takes trip to Hawaii where he meets another GIRL, who is ten times better because she is essentially a BOY in a HOT CHICK’S body. HOT CHICK/BOY promptly, inexplicably, falls in love with BOY, which makes aforementioned heinous ex-girlfriend JEALOUS and DESPERATE. Curtains close with BOY happily wooing HOT CHICK/BOY, and the obliteration of nasty GIRL’s career. SHE DOESN’T DESERVE ONE BECAUSE SHE’S MEAN.

And meanwhile, films that purport to be made for women portray the entire gender as calculating, Machiavellian, and, let’s not forget, fucking batshit crazy. If you can stomach it, add Bride Wars, How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days, Failure To Launch or The Women to your LoveFilm list (please don’t pay for them). Depressingly, women were involved with the writing of three of these four movies, which slightly/entirely shits on my point about the lack of women amongst Hollywood screenwriters. All we can hope is that if more women get involved in writing and directing movies, the Hollywood balance of power will gradually begin to equalise and female writers won’t be shoehorned into writing such fetid drivel and can start to spread their wings. Because, for all the explosions, car chases and superheroes, one thing that mainstream cinema is desperately light on is female characters that feel remotely real.

NOTE: I pretty much made it my mission to get through this blog without once mentioning the word “bromance”, as this buzzword lost all sense of cool when Davina McCall said it on Big Brother. So I went with “Bromeo” and “heteromance”, because I feel a responsibility to push the English language forward.

Top Five: movies that have bothered with female characterisation
1. Volver (written by Pedro Almodovar)
2. Lost In Translation (written by Sofia Coppola)
3. Secretary (written by Erin Cressida Wilson, Mary Gaitskill and Steven Shainberg)
4. Sophie’s Choice (written by Alan J Pakula from a novel by William Styron)
5. Annie Hall (written by Woody Allen and Marshall Brickman)