Of fish and bicycles

Many women love to lecture men about how strong and independent they are. Entire books have been written about how the male sex is unnecessary thanks to the technology men created and maintain. And yet, women vociferously complain when they are treated as equals in times of danger, and it appears some of them can't even be relied upon to try to save their own children:

The mother of a two-year-old girl who fell between a train and a platform at Sydney's domestic airport on Sunday evening screamed hysterically for someone to save her daughter who was crying on the tracks, a witness claims. The toddler was bleeding from the back of her head when her father and a bystander, Phil, pulled her back onto the platform after she fell just before 5.30pm on Sunday.

The child was believed to be attempting to board the train with her family, including her mother, father and two young siblings, when she slipped through the gap between platform one and the stationary train. Phil, who did not want his surname used, said he was sitting on the train when a woman began screaming so loudly he initially thought someone had been assaulted.

"I got out of my seat, went outside and then noted that the lady was hysterically screaming because her child had gone down the side there," he said.

"The train conductor was trying to tell the child to stay there. He went down in between his carriages, but by the time he got down there we were actually able to pull the child up. The child had reached up, and then we had to squeeze her head past the carriage and the platform."

So, the father acted, a male bystander acted, and the mother stood there screaming hysterically. Yes, they're going to be just brilliant in combat, aren't they.