I spent one full hour convincing some friends that women said poems in Ireland before Eavan Boland. The women friends are suspicious. They have English degrees.

Women come in many colours - black, white, brown, yellow, red when hot, blue when cold, green when sick, multicoloured when unwell and orange when on a night out. In some countries they even come in invisible.

So yes, women are very frightening, despite their almost universal willingness to please people, to smile and be nice.

Girls are always too something.

As a man, the worst thing is to be accused of doing something "like a Woman". Doing something "like a Woman" is a euphemism for doing something to an abysmal degree of absolute shiteness. Instead of saying that you did something like throwing, running or behaving "not very well" in your everyday language, you can handily use "like a Woman" or, if you are pressed for time, "gay" instead.

I spent those months, and since, thinking about how we women, from girlhood, are taught to think about others' needs, to care and share and never be selfish. These are good lessons, of course, but I believe, as we grow into women, we are taught to care too much about how others are, how others think of us -to worry deeply about how we look, how we are seen, how kind and caring and giving and selfless we are.