Opposite Sex Arch Nemesis

There are certain conversations of such a philosophical nature that they can only occur past the hour of 11 o’clock or past the consumption of no less than 3 beers. Last night I had such a philosophical conversation while on a night out with the boys. After a few beers at the Phryst the subject of “opposite sex arch nemesis” was broached. There was a short discussion on what the proper pronunciation of the plural of nemesis should actually be which went as follows (and forgive the phonetics here but it’s the easiest way to describe what actually went down):

**Sam: Can you have an opposite sex nemesis? I mean, think about all of the nemesises…neme-sigh? Neme-see? Neme-sigh? I think it’s neme-sigh.

John: No, I think it needs to be neme-see.

Me: I’m pretty sure it would have to be neme-sigh, I mean, there’s octopi.

John: But neme-see sounds better.

Sam: Syllabi.

Me: Cacti.

John: Neme-see.

Sam: I’m going with neme-sigh.

Now that you’re all on the same page with me as to the course of the night, let me further illustrate our argument. It was decided among the group that there were no male-female arch-nemesis combinations. After exposing ourselves to be the nerds that we are, we came up with what we felt to be a fairly inclusive list of examples and rationale for our decision. I present to you all, for further opinion (as we’re really and truly still curious about this) our argument:

Male superheroes can’t have female arch-nemeses (which for those who happen to be curious, or who want to mock me a little for not knowing this, is the actual plural of nemesis) because it is considered a form of domestic violence. We figured it’s okay for women to beat men, I mean, violence is bad, use your words, but if you have to fight, it’s more socially acceptable for a woman to use her laser eye to melt a hole in a guy’s superhero outfit or use her super-strength to throw him to Abu Dhabi (which if you’re up on your Saturday morning cartoons you know was Garfield’s choice destination whenever he got the urge to mail Nermal somewhere). If male superheroes hauled off and used their freezing capabilities to turn their female nemeses into a spandexed Popsicle it would almost certainly warrant a call to the police.

The counter argument to that is that any male who had a female arch-nemesis was then, by proof of technicality, her arch-nemesis as well. It makes no sense for Circe, the arch nemesis of Wonder Woman (and let me take the time at this juncture to explain that these specifics are thanks to Wikipedia rather than my very limited knowledge of superheroes, villains, etc. as my knowledge goes no further than names and occasionally alter-egos because lets face it, I wouldn’t be American if I didn’t know that Clark Kent really is Superman) to then have a male arch-nemesis of her own. I figure this is like one of those mathematical properties: if A x B = C then B x A = C so why would Circe, arch-nemesis of Wonder Woman, not equal Wonder Woman, arch-nemesis of Circe? Exactly our point.

So, on behalf of those participants in the above debate, if you see me at the bar and you happen to have an opinion on why it is that there are no male-female arch-nemesis combinations, or if there is in fact a combo that we may have overlooked, then let me know. But please, before we get into it, make sure that it is no earlier than 11 and that we’re no less than 3 beers into the night, otherwise, this just won’t make sense.

**Names have been changed to protect the innocent and to ensure that I’ll still get called to go out on the weekends without fear of writing about any and all conversations that may occur.