I feel that I should say something to the women of the world and in my life today. I have just been listening to a program on CBC radio where a debate between two women got hostile. The heat is being generated right now by some leading women who are supporting Democratic Party presidential hopeful, Bernie Sanders, and some - generally older - women who are backing Hilary Clinton, including some who have been doing so for many years.


For example, actor and activist, Susan Sarandon, has gone public and said in interviews:

“[The Iraq war is] where Hillary Clinton lost me,” Sarandon told the [Daily Mail] Wednesday night at the conclusion of Sanders’ Mason City rally, “because there was plenty of information that even I had that said there was a real problem with the logic involved.”


and


“When you have the other candidate (i.e. Hilary Clinton) taking money from Goldman Sachs, speaking to Goldman Sachs, getting a lot of money from Monsanto, I think it’s really naive to believe that that’s not going to have some kind of influence over policy.”









And then there are those on Clinton's side, like Madeleine Albright, whose comments included the following, as reported in The Guardian newspaper: 


'Former secretary of state Madeleine Albright introduced Hillary Clinton at an event in New Hampshire on Saturday, telling the crowd and voters in general: “There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other!”'


And feminist icon, Gloria Steinem, who, on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, said: 


"Women get more activist as they grow older. And when you’re younger, you think: ‘Where are the boys? The boys are with Bernie.’” 


(In her defense, I should say that Steinem apologized and retracted her remarks three days later.)









These comments are barely the tip of the iceberg. The internet right now is full of females having at each other. 

As an older white male, I know full well what at least some of my peers think when they listen to, and watch, this wrangling. "You can't get three women in a room to agree on anything", or worse yet, "Oh, look! The girls are fighting ...but they are just so cute when they get that way."

Damn such remarks from supposedly decent men. Patriarchy at its worst. 

There have been times past counting when men - including men on the left of the political spectrum - have fallen prey to division among themselves and lost sight of their larger political goal. Union leaders whose members are crying out for more jobs just do not see the agenda in the same way as Greenpeace activists, compassionate Christians, or foreign aid supporters do. Splitting them so neatly that they watch their candidates and their ideals go under and give up on the political process entirely is one of the favorite pastimes of the New Right. And they're good at it. Al Gore should have won the 2000 election in a landslide. 

In fact there is a side-note to this post that says we should never underestimate the intelligence of the noisemen. The superficial, jingo-spouting suits sometimes hide a guile as cunning as any that has ever existed. We underestimate the strutting and shouting performers - like Donald Rump - at our peril. They know very well what they're doing and they know how to win, far more often than conscience or logic should ever allow. Native cunning, helped on by fanatic fixation on a single goal. The formula - too often - works. 

But that is a side-note. My big point is that we shouldn't try to put back in the kitchen what was let out a generation ago. Not because such action would be unfair, but because it simply isn't going to happen. In response to any measures that tried to push them out of the work place, public life, and academia, women in huge numbers really would unite. And good on 'em for standing up for themselves. 

Even more deeply, I have to ask men who long for the not-very-good "good old days": Are you crazy? We are in a global race for economic and political survival. The nation that wins, the nation whose way of life wins, will be the one that maximizes all of its resources. Banning women - half the population, let us not forget - from the team, even if it could be done, would not be so much unjust or difficult or even foolish as it would be something else. In the real world, it would be gradual suicide. 

Why any men ever wanted women subservient in the first place, I think I have figured out. But that's another whole topic that I will save for my next post.    

In the shadow of the mushroom cloud, have a nice day anyway.