Some human males are prone to dialectical and other speech-based errors in judgement. Others are just stupid. Others use “mankind” because they know Neil Armstrong landed on the Moon and said that, so it’s okay.

However, some human females do not think it is “okay”. Indeed, some believe it to be a grave error in spoken incorrectness. And that is what we’re exploring today to clear up all this mess.

When a Man Says “Mankind” and it’s a Problem

Dear agony aunt,

My DICKHEAD of a husband is going out of his way to wind me up. He keeps saying “mankind” all the time, and texting me and using that word a lot. It’ll be a message like: “Hi babe, we going to go to the restaurant tonight to eat with mankind?” or “hey babe are you going to do my washing for the good of mankind?” and “manking is the main breadwinner babe you need to earn less than me”.

He keeps making typos, too, and uses “manking” and that’s somehow even worse and I’m not even sure why.

I know why he’s doing it. It’s because I bought the Blu-ray special edition of Barbie and we watched it for movie night and now he’s angry because I made him watch a “chick flick” and forced “feminist propaganda” onto him. This man is 43 years old by the way.

So, I came up with a bunch of strategies to screw him over. Figured that’s a healthy way to respond as a mature adult:

• The Neil Armstrong Protocol: Whenever he uses “mankind” I pretend to be an astronaut and start pretend floating around the room, while responding with NASA-like space telemetry jargon. See the below example:
  • “Copy, Houston, the carrier lock and signal-to-noise ratio is OOL, the attitude determination and control system is downlinked, uplink it to reduce the bit error rate and upload the housekeeping data.”
• Blocked on WhatsApp: I’ve blocked him on WhatsApp so I don’t get his “manking” messages. He’s asked me why I never respond to his messages and I tell him it must be because of a bad connection.
• Overuse of Womankind: To wind him up, I’ve been using “womankind” constantly throughout our conversations and regularly remind him that he has a hairy back and only an average sized penis.
• Drunkenness: I’ve also started getting very drunk at random times (for example, on Saturday morning) just to wind him up. This works and he says “Why are you drunk!? It’s Saturday morning!” and I burp loudly and tell him to get back to his kitchen.

It’s fair to say all of this has led to a decline in our marriage situation. We’re not on speaking terms at the moment, which is about the 10th time this month. And you know what? I’m kind of enjoying the peace and quiet.

Do I hear divorce bells?

Hit me with your rhythm stick (i.e. please provide logical feedback).

Yours,

Poppy

Hi there, Poopy! You’ve asked for “logical” feedback, but we’re not that type of agony aunt. We’re more on the illogical side of things. However, we do think you’ve brought your A game to this marital conflict. The fact you can hear divorce bells signals one of two things:

1. You’re having a mental breakdown and need urgent psychiatric assistance
2. The Divorce Gods are calling to you and it is time to dump that zero and find yourself a hero

We’re on first name terms terms with an industry-leading Divorce God, so we’ll forward her number and you can have a lovely chinwag about clinical insanity, manking, humanking, and sandwiches.