`What gender war? I don’t see a gender war.”
I was stunned to read those words in a recent e-mail from a man who wondered what I’d meant when I wrote about the growing hostility between the sexes. (For purposes of this column, we’re acknowledging just two.)
Most likely, this reader is typical. He leads an ordinary life, takes care of business, comes home to a family. I do too, incidentally. But because of my work, I hear from the “genderists”–hundreds of men and women who are busy designing the architecture of America’s relationships.
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They sit at keyboards these days, devising lists, building verbal arsenals, constructing deployments. Web sites multiply as new gripes arise. Some that once purported only to serve as sounding boards and mutual-help sites have evolved into something that smacks of hate.
Fairness and equality have become cliches of a kinder, gentler time, replaced by hints of revenge and a battle cry of “Oh yeah, watch this.”
For women who’ve been raped, beaten or dumped by a man, men–not a particular man–are the enemy. For men who dole out child support for kids they never get to see, or who have been falsely accused of abuse or violence, women–not a particular woman–are the enemy.
Consider one of the more remarkable Web sites I’ve stumbled across lately–“The `Gentler’ Sex–Or Are They?”
Compiled by Stuart Miller, a lobbyist and senior legislative analyst for the American Fathers Coalition, the Web site consists of a list of headlines and news stories recounting abominations committed by women.
One story from Akron–“Woman charged with fire attack”–describes a woman who poured flammable liquid on her boyfriend and set him ablaze.
Another comes all the way from Zagreb, Croatia–“WW II camp commander’s wife to be tried”–and tells of Croatia’s attempt to extradite the wife of the alleged commander of Croatia’s worst WW II concentration camp. She, apparently, was bad too.
Which is the point, of course. Women are just as bad as men.
The question is, who ever doubted it? No one except the zealots who have insisted that women are victims, always. A woman doesn’t kill a man unless it’s justified; a woman doesn’t hurt a child unless she’s suffering from some hormonal dysfunction; a woman commits a crime only when led astray by a man.
Men are sick of hearing about how bad they are, and how good women are–who can blame them?–and so we have Web sites like this.
But there’s a problem. As my reader’s note suggests, most men and women live outside the substance of such headlines. Compiled in a list, the crimes of women (or men) may have a shocking effect, but what story do they really tell? None except that some men and women are off their rockers and could use a little solitary confinement. So what’s new?
What’s new–and tragic and sad and dangerous–is that such lists and statistics are used, often irresponsibly, to advance political agendas that do little to advance either the equality or harmony we desire. Instead, they feed the anger of malcontents and agitate a conflict of which most people are weary.
I don’t blame men for arming themselves. Many are the walking wounded who have lost their children. But if half the energy used to build bunker Web sites were used to make peace and consolidate our mutual interests, we might look forward to a day when children look confounded in history class and say, “Gender war, what gender war?”
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