A cup of oppression, dear?

It is now time to turn our attention to that twisted instrument of female oppression – coffee! Yes, I have been coffee-free for a week now, and the truth about coffee is blinding. Talk about liberation. This cruel instrument of male oppression must be banished from the face of the earth. I know that I have stretched credulity before and I can hear the threads of your attention stretching to breaking point at this moment. But tell me, have I let you down before? Believe me, coffee fits right into the fight for women’s equality and we can and must dethrown it.

Coffee makes us work in a fog of blind panic that may seem productive but only really results in long hours flitting from task to task and getting none done properly. Multi-tasking is not actually a good thing – it just makes us get a lot of stuff half done and then feel guilty. Guilt: isn’t that the very key to our constantly walking backwards down the ladder instead of up it. Guilty that we will fail our children and family, guilty that we will upset each other or some bloke. Guilty that we can’t have it all and retain any sense of sanity.

Then, hyped up on coffee, not only do we work our eight hours in the office, another three or four at home in domestic duties but we wake at 3am and start work again. Did I do all I needed to do yesterday? What must I achieve today? You following me?

The kind of anxiety induced by the coffee rush is that whirlwind, non-specific sense of general failure that induces women to apologise for their every move. It makes us say too much of how we really feel, instead of playing our cards close to our chest, observing the landscape around us,and saying a few incisive words that work to our advantage. Coffee makes us spill our guts and then run around trying to mend the bridges we have so decisively burned.

But what about the blokes, you ask? Coffee must have the same effect on them? Surely it is not a gender specific drug? Here, we turn to the internet to find ... What! An international, worldwide, global conspiracy to promote coffee, especially to women.

Study after study tells us that MEN are the ones that are the worse after coffee consumption. A study by psychologists at Bristol University found drinking caffeinated coffee boosts a woman’s performance in stressful situations but has the opposite effect on men, reports the Telegraph in the United Kingdom. Coffee makes women smarter and men dumber, says Nerve.com (whatever that is).

Ha! Not falling for this one. I leave you to judge whether my analysis accords with your experience, or whether you believe the “studies”.

I tell you, dear readers, if you want to strike a blow for feminism, have a cup of tea. This genteel practice is all about refreshment and reflection. Tea does perk us up but does not send us into a humiliating frenzy. Tea is shared, or sipped in solitude, shoulders back (not hunched over the evil brew), eyes ahead (not staring gloomily into the chocolate powder pattern on the froth).

Tea – from that stirring, eye-opening Irish breakfast brew to the subtleties of a bunch of peppermint leaves crammed into a glass – is the first step on our path to freedom.

Do you agree? Write and tell me your views.

BRW

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