Breaking Wind Is Manly And Women Love It

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a man in possession of a good bellyful of dinner must be in want of a giant belch.  Or, if it’s a bit longer after the repast, a fart.  And I don’t think I’d be committing too great a faux pas of sexual stereotyping if I said that a significant number of men break wind one way or another, more or less publicly, quite often.  Furthermore, it wouldn’t be reinforcing those stereotypes to observe that women aren’t as prone to this impulse.  So, why do men do it?

Is it the same as spitting?  There is a theory about men spitting – that it’s an impulse to document and signal one’s presence in this world as one goes through it, in the same way that a male dog will pee on every available corner or tree – but I don’t want to go into that now (I’m saving it for another one of these columns).  Well, it could be something like that.  It’s certainly possible that farts, at least, are like little lingering signposts testifying to their owner having passed by.  But they fade, and burps don’t really have that much of a lingering impression.  Their impact (and this is even more so true of farts) is mainly in offensive revoltingness or comedy.

So is that it?  Do men break wind because they think it’s funny?  Well, it can’t be denied that we certainly find it so.  But that has more to do with the situation it’s done in, and it’s generally more funny in any case in films or on television, or by someone unexpectedly or unexpected – a demure woman newsreader, for example, or a grandfather at a family dinner, or a horse in an out-take from a Western.  But men persist in doing it even when (repeatedly) asked not to, by mothers, wives, sisters etc.

So why else would it be?  Why do boys almost all take such care to master advanced wind-breaking when young, even to the extent of being able to do it at will?  Well, I know that some women can’t burp – never mind on demand; they can’t actually burp, even after downing half a can of Coke.  But I have never known a bloke with the same problem.  And I think that may be getting towards the main point.  Maybe men continue to break wind in front of their women, even when the latter find it revolting and ask them not to do it, both because they can and because it is in itself a difference between men and women.  In burping or farting, men are deliberately defining themselves as the coarser sex.  This may simultaneously make them appear wilder and therefore more manly, while making their women, by immediate, automatic and stark contrast, look more refined and feminine.  It is simply an instinctive enhancing of the traditional gender roles – one that has survived not in spite of the development of civilisation, but perhaps because of it.

And maybe, because it wouldn’t otherwise be an evolutionarily stable impulse – i.e. because men would never get women to mate with them if it wasn’t the case – women must actually (perhaps unconsciously) appreciate this too.  I’m not saying that, if it weren’t for the smell, the personal affront and the hygiene implications, women would all be laughing adoringly every time their men broke wind – but you’d miss it if we stopped.

Contact the author here: thewhy@morningquickie.com