Now I'm a reasonable guy I really am, I can sympathize with pain and suffering. I have been through my share of break ups but I don't have an anthem to separation. However at some point in every woman’s life she discovers ‘I will survive’ by Gloria Gaynor and it becomes a personal club to beat every man over the head with.

If you go out to any pub eventually you will come across the relationship equivalent of matter and anti-matter meeting. A huddle of women commiserating over some terrible break up, meanwhile one of them going through the songs on the jukebox. She will find the number that will change the course of the evening for everyone present. She'll wander back to the table and whisper in a friend’s ear the good news, then settle back and wait for the fireworks.

After a while the opening bars of the song will begin to play, slowly recognition begins to dawn on women throughout the bar. Through years of brow beating men will begin to cower and look around nervously as every woman present starts to tap her toes and hum, the hands on hips and neck shaking begin in earnest. Every woman present suddenly gets ancestral attitude and sees what a pig her previously wonderful boyfriend was. But that’s not enough, oh no the entire table of women will spontaneously burst into song. Oh please deliver me from this song.

Gay men who have never had to put up with this shit, have seen the agony we go through. They even tried to help by adopting the tune as a gay anthem which didn't help a bit though because now you’ll find gay men singing along in earnest. Now a whole new generation of girls have discovered the man bashing sisterhood of Gloria.

Please make it stop, I’m walking out that door now.

There are two things you can do:
  1. discover Cake's version (they've turned it into one of my favourite songs)
  2. beat yourself over the head with it before someone else does

Applied appropriately, the song will keep you humble. This is a good thing.

Actually there are at least two more things you can do:

3.   Discover "Song For The Dumped" by the Ben Folds Five. (Maybe it would be better for us guys if it were an aggressive heavy metal song or something, but the lyrics are pretty much on point.)
4.   Take a deep breath and remember that the songwriting royalties for all those countless renditions of "I Will Survive" are going to Freddie Perren and Dino Fekaris, the two male composers and producers of the song... so who's laughing now?

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