So, yet another season of Survivor has graced the magical world known as television. This year, it's in the Amazon. Their big twist: they split up men ad women into separate tribes. Obviously it's an attempt to breathe some originality into a show that I probably would watch anyway. I think it's kind of lame, myself.

Sounds awfully unbalanced from the start, doesn't it? Guys are, by definition, physically stronger and tougher than chicks. I read a newspaper article that grudgingly acknowledged this fact, but said that "maybe the chicks would work well together." Please.

Being the wildly liberal freak that I am, I'd argue that mentally, guys and chicks are pretty much equal. I hear crap about chicks not being as good in math or guys not being as emotional, but it's pretty much impossible to disentangle the source of those qualities from the societal norms that are impressed upon them. Nurturing male and adventurous female personalities are suppressed. If I were raised in a culture where the male expression of emotions was encouraged, would I cry at sad movies and be filled with joy at the sight of a puppy running through a blanked of wild flowers?

Probably not, since I'm all man. Still, some guys might. 

Anyway, since I'd contend that chicks and guys are basically equal from the neck up (except where cosmetics are concerned), I foresaw a pretty even competition between men and women. After all, the challenges on Survivor rarely rely on physical strength, and they'd probably be even more likely to stick to brains than brawn for the chick vs. guy competitions.

The first day totally changed my mind. The chicks, I realized, were doomed. 

There is some delusion out there that chicks are particularly cooperative with each other, but any casual glance at a culture that strongly enforces teamwork among males (sports, the military, etc.) should easily deride this as total bullshit. Many, if not most, chicks have no idea how to work as a team, and that became grossly apparent on Survivor.

On their beach, the guys immediately built a sturdy, nearly water-proof structure, built a fire, and pretty much had everything neat and organized.

The chicks didn't do squat. It wasn't until it was getting dark that they thought about a shelter, and managed to put together a primitive little platform before total darkness set in. And it wasn't until a WEEK later that they finally decided to improve upon it and create a roof. What's more, since they have to boil water to sterilize it, thus making the ol' H2O a fairly valuable commodity, one of them decided it would be a good idea to clean her underwear in their boiled water. Thus, no one had anything to drink for a few hours. There's also a deaf chick on Survivor this time, and the other chicks made no effort to include her in anything. All in all, they were just all grossly disorganized, feuding among each other, starving, and just not cooperating. Worse yet, those bitches killed TWO tarantulas!

Sure, some of the guys are assholes and they're all thinking about how to maneuver themselves to win the game, but they've created a working mini-society a hell of a lot faster than the chicks did. For that, they deserve to win.

At the end of the day, though, the record of challenges was 6-5, slightly in the chicks' favor. The just goes to show that once you take physical strength out of the picture, guys and chicks are basically the same.

Sadly, in the most recent episode they've mixed up the tribes, so now we'll never know which gender is truly superior. What a bummer.