The Mate Man-Purse

"Why are all of the men carrying man-purses?" my friend Emily asked me when she was visiting for a week.

"Ha, ha, ha, man-purses?" I laughed, "they aren't man-purses, they're materas (or mate bags). That is the container they use to carry their mate cup, straw, thermos, and yerba mate. Silly Emily. They are unisex carrying devices, not man-purses."


Ahhh, yes, but time would prove me wrong. We happened to befriend a few waiters at the Mercado Del Puerto who we met up with after they got off of work, and lo-and-behold eventually the conversation turned to Uruguay's favorite drink and pastime--mate." Our new friend said, "Oh well, I would let you try mate, but here in my mate bag I don't have mate."

"Oh really, you don't have mate in your mate bag? So what do you have in there?"


"Well, let me show you," he says as he opens up his leather bag strung over his shoulder. Gasp. Inside he had a gigantic bottle of hair gel, deodorant, cologne (ironically pronounced "perfume" in Spanish), and other beauty supplies.

One word: deception.

Now I know Uruguayan men, now I know what you carry in your mate bag man purse!

Regret: The Nature of Women and Men

I was browsing Neuroanthropology: Yes, as nerdy as it sounds. But interesting. Very interesting.

Most current article: Girls gone guilty: Evolutionary psych on sex #2 A recent journal publication argued:

that women are ‘ill adapted’ for promiscuity, that the ’sexual and feminist revolutions’ didn’t work because women couldn’t shake their inherent nature, which is to long for committed relationships and loathe themselves if they act like cheap floozies.

To which, gregdowney, whose paraphrase is above, repudiates:

That is, if you went in with a different framework for explanation — like, ‘too many guys in one-night stands don’t know how to satisfy women’ or ‘women are better at sex than men’ — you could construct another story around this data that was equally plausible — no, more plausible — than women are programmed to want long-term relationships.

I think I disagree with large portions of both viewpoints.

1. The feminist movement was not merely an attempt to allow women to have casual sex with ease. This seemed to be some sort of motive that got super-imposed upon the feminist revolution to make it seem more sinister and well, ridicule-able. I do believe it had more to do with equality and fairness.

2. I think that both men and women are programmed, as we shall call it, to desire stable long-term relationships.

3. However, the additional "programming" that influences women more so than men is the social conditioning of society rather than one's nature. Society tells women that they ought to be married and popping out babies (among other messages) in order to be successful. Also, a woman who is sexually promiscuous may be labelled a whore, whereas a man with similar habits is a stud.

My conclusion: Neither men nor women are naturally inclined to embrace the phenomenon of a one-night-stand as a self-fulfilling, emotionally satisfying way of life. Temporary physical relationships lead to loneliness and emptiness regardless whether there is bragging or hiding occurring the morning after.

Good or bad moral decisions, if you will, are always either punished with *eventual* remorse or rewarded with *underlying* self-affirmation. Depending on which path was taken, the notion of right or wrong always lingers and always catches up. Man or woman.