There's the war in Iraq, Bill Maher, the financial crisis in Iceland. (No joke. The government appointed women to head its two recently nationalized banks).
And when it comes to dating, it's also a force to be reckoned with.
Sometimes it can feel like there are three of you in a relationship -- him, her and his ego.
While guys go about their business, oblivious half of the time to why they're doing what they're doing, women are aware of the need to carefully calibrate when, where and how to stroke his ego -- or not -- to take him down a peg to two.
When he won't ask for directions, when he'd rather do a bad job himself than hire someone or get help, when he would rather give the wrong answer than say "I don't know," when he feels compelled to offer advice when she just wants someone to listen -- male ego.
When he wears platform shoes, gets a hair weave, pulls up in a Ferrari -- same thing. "Sex addiction" and/or compulsive womanizing, competitive and embarrassing alpha-male behavior, trophy girlfriend -- yup, male ego strikes again.
Guys pretend to be tough, impervious to pain, but the ironic thing is that the male ego is as fragile as an egg. Or, as NewYorkMoments writes on the appropriately titled blog Tired of Men, "The male ego is like a zeppelin. It's big & bloated & full of hot air. In fact, it's so big it floats, but one little spark destroys the entire thing."
So how did it become this way, and what can be done about it? Well, Rabbi Manis Friedman has a theory: Basically, that all men are perennially in an existential crisis.
"Men have this complex that if you strip away the external, the trappings -- if you take away his car, and his money, and his blue suede shoes -- there's nothing, there's dust," Friedman writes on a Jewish singles website.
"Every man is terrified that in the end, he will have amounted to nothing. No matter how much he has accomplished… deep-down inside he is afraid that it is all going to go away and he is going to remain a nothing, a non-entity, a zero." And with good reason, considering that's what happens.
If we want to go back to the source, Sigmund Freud posited that "the ego represents what may be called reason and common sense." It's also the source of defense mechanisms, which explains why, in men, the ego often manifests itself in protective measures.
Wherever it comes from, women are used to it, recognize it, and learn to deal with it. They let him feel like the smarter one if that's what he needs, or the more competent one. They let him think something is his idea. Little white lies, such as telling him he's the best lover she's ever had, can do restorative wonders. Likewise, implying otherwise can keep him up nights.