Renee Zellweger

                    (credit: Berlin_Film_Festival_2009, via Wikimedia Commons) 

                                              The Women’s War

I’ve long thought that the idea that all the men of the world should apologize to all the women of the world was silly. I know it was a quote I read somewhere. I can’t find it right now. But I don’t have to look very far to disprove it. I find immoral women in my world, ones who hurt on purpose with no regrets; hurt each other, their men, and their kids. Even become right wing politicians. But there are just as many men as anyone can see. Or some become left wing politicians who learn moral judgement, while unlearning forgiveness.

We are a fallen species, Christianity says. All down here in the mud. And there’s lots of evidence supporting that belief too, for those who wish to promulgate it. But I get weary of the endless recriminations aimed by everyone at everyone. Moral high ground maneuvers. Books on them fill our society. Achieving …what?

For persons of conscience then, is the answer to withdraw from society? Find total humility? Contemplate the mystery of the universe? Meditate hourly? Not for me. I can’t study my navel while my grandchildren’s world goes to ruin.

So I speak up. And as an individual male, not a representative of patriarchy or any other ideology, I sometimes make a mistake and realize I’ve made a mistake and apologize. As one male. Not a representative of any system. Take my lumps. Move on. I keep trying for a life of engagement with my world and its problems because to do otherwise would make me a piece of unwanted tissue in my own eyes. A social skin tag.

So today, I’ll begin from that. And apologize to most of the women of my world.

I repeat that I can’t blanket apologize for patriarchy. I didn’t make it. I work to change it. I want out of it as much as any woman I’ve ever known.

And we do well to remind ourselves that some women don’t. We should never forget Phyllis Schlafly; her adherents number in the millions. They’re out there. Fifty-six percent of white women voters in the U.S. voted for Trump in 2016. I think the explanation is that they grew up in patriarchy. They know how to play its game. They will not let it go easily. The power of cultural conditioning can, as Shakespeare says, shove by justice.

But I do apologize to the women in my life whom I did not properly understand for a long time. Many of them don’t give primacy to the issues of politics and war in their lives. I long believed they should. I see now why they don’t.  

I’ve had circular arguments with some of the women in my life on this subject for a long time. One can’t – I’ve long argued – just ignore politics, and sometimes, the failure of politics which is war. If you don’t deal with war, it will come to deal with you.

But that is not the end of this argument. I thought it was. It’s not.

The brutal truth that old soldiers won’t tell is that they didn’t just see terrible things, they did terrible things. Brutal, horrible things. With their own hands.

But women have hard truths of their own that they don’t want to tell. Especially many of the ones who are still serious contenders in the Make-up Games.

 The women’s main hard truth goes something like this:

“If I and my children and my old mom are driven to the extreme sometime in your hypothetical future …for food and medicine and some temporary security, I’d trade the main thing I have to trade. I know I would. You know what that thing is. And if that hurts your feelings, too bad. When my kids begin to starve, your feelings won’t be on my mind. In fact, that victor with his clean uniform and shiny rifle and full rations pack is going to look pretty good.”

I know now that the women don’t like to say such a truth out loud for a reason similar to the one that silences soldiers who have seen war up close. They don’t want to see the look in your eyes change. The ideal die. 

It's true that some women don’t understand war for what it is. But many do. Older ones who’ve seen its effects on their men, and young ones who are just smart or who have lived by war. Most don’t want to kill anyone. So, if desperate times should come, they know what they would do for the survival of their kids.

In fact, if you want to see what ruthless looks like, kill one of the kids. Wounded American soldiers in Vietnam, lying helpless in a rice paddy, prayed that if they were found by the enemy, that enemy would be male. Then, there’d be a chance that they might be spared. With a female soldier, there was almost none.

Some of this view I learned from two women in my life, and I’ve gradually come to see that it is true, however deflating it may be to male self-esteem. And some of it, I learned from art. Cold Mountain, in particular. It was the defining work of three actors’ careers as far as I’m concerned: Jude Law, Nicole Kidman, and most especially, Renee Zellweger. She was just amazing.

But the point of the film, for me, was left to Kidman’s character, Ada Monroe. In voice over narration, at the end of the film, she says:

 

What we have lost will never be returned to us. The land will not heal - too much blood. All we can do is learn from the past and make peace with it.

 

That quote haunts me. The South, whatever its vices, suffered terribly in that war. But the South did go on.

This truth isn’t – as many male novelists in Romantic tones would have it – that the “land” goes on. The land doesn’t care. It’s the moms that go on.

                                                Nicole Kidman 

                                (credit: Georges Biard, via Wikimedia Commons)