THE GENDER IMPLICATIONS OF BROLLIES AND HOODS

When brought into use, brollies (umbrellas) are divergent (opening outwards), hoods convergent (closing inwards). Hence the former are fundamentally female in character and the latter essentially male – despite appearances to the contrary.

Further to this basic distinction, one should distinguish the sensuality of ‘outer’ brollies and hoods from the sensibility of ‘inner’ brollies and hoods, as between non-collapsible and collapsible brollies – arguably metachemical and pseudo-chemical or, depending on the axis, chemical and pseudo-metachemical, and non-folding hoods – arguably pseudo-physical and metaphysical or, depending on the axis, pseudo-metaphysical and physical; though correlative distinctions between the female and pseudo-male and/or male and pseudo-female alternatives could, I contend, be made, if only to distinguish the metachemical from the pseudo-metaphysical (noumenal divergence from noumenal pseudo-convergence) kinds of brolly and hood; the chemical from the pseudo-physical (phenomenal divergence from phenomenal pseudo-convergence) kinds of brolly and hood; the physical from the pseudo-chemical (phenomenal convergence from phenomenal pseudo-divergence) kinds of hood and brolly; and, finally, the metaphysical from the pseudo-metachemical (noumenal convergence from noumenal pseudo-divergence) kinds of hood and brolly.

From the sensual, or ‘outer’, standpoint the objectivity of brollies will condition the pseudo-subjectivity of hoods or, more correctly, pseudo-hoods in metachemistry/pseudo-metaphysics and chemistry/pseudo-physics at the northwest and southwest points, respectively, of the intercardinal axial compass of bisecting inter-class diagonals; whereas from the sensible, or ‘inner’, standpoint the subjectivity of hoods will condition the pseudo-objectivity of brollies or, more correctly, pseudo-brollies in physics/pseudo-chemistry and metaphysics/pseudo-metachemistry at the southeast and northeast points, respectively, of the said compass of bisecting inter-class diagonals, with the usual sensual/pseudo-sensible female-dominated or sensible/pseudo-sensual male-dominated implications, the concrete interpretations of which I would rather leave to the reader’s discretion, even though brollies will always be female and/or pseudo-female and hoods, by contrast, pseudo-male and/or male, depending on the elemental/pseudo-elemental context.