It was the year 2057 when some scientist finally figured it out:
Men and women are actually two different species
that are completely incompatible.
Actually, it was no profound scientific statement on the scientist’s part.
One could say that it was simply a philosophy,
inspired by his wife making him sleep on the couch
the night before the discovery.
Surely the sleep deprivation had rattled his brain cells,
along with the lack of a hot homemade breakfast the next morning.
But anyway no one inquired about this.
Instead the ensuing movement gained steam
as fast as a rich man gets girls
and after a while the politicians worked out the settlements
and they split the earth right down the middle:
The left hemisphere for the men
and the right hemisphere for the women, ‘cause, y’know,
women are always right.

For a while it was great.
The men destroyed the flower shops and jewelry stores
and spent the saved money on Xboxes
and stayed out as late as they wanted,
and the women bought take-out every night
and let themselves gain weight
and banned and burned the magazines
with buxom models on the covers.
But then of course the reproduction problem came up.
This time the politicians couldn’t work it out,
because neither side wanted a thing from the other.
So they decided, in the meantime, that the existing male children would be handed over to Mentropolis
and the existing female children would be given to the Fempire.
And so it went that the young boys were taught that women were all rebellious homemakers
and the little girls were educated about the selfish and lazy nature of men.

It was the year 2149 when some scientist finally figured it out:
The initial experiment’s results had been skewed
and it turned out that men and women were, in fact,
of the same species
and perfectly compatible.
And of course the scientist was awarded—
not the Nobel Prize,
but the capital punishment for this piece of rabble-rousing heresy,
and the two dozen people left in each nation
continued in their curses of the opposite sex
until their dying days.

But it was better off that way anyway, see,
because the last woman who ever lived
never had to put up with wiping the mud off of her son’s face
and sighing,
Boys will be boys,
and the last man who ever lived
never had to roll his eyes and sigh and put his arm around his wife’s waist, lamenting,
Women—
you can’t live with ‘em, and you can’t live without ‘em.