IF MOTHERS . . .

Sometimes I get distracted and wander off the subject, tracking down some piece of trivia that has nothing to do with what I’m doing. Add to that, I am drawn to quotes. If and when someone I respect and admire says something powerful or insightful, I add it to a long list of quotes I keep. As the list grows I tend to reread and review the list, rebooting those ideas. Yesterday I was looking for the source of, “If mothers ruled the world there would be no wars.” The quote pops up in various forms regularly. The best, most likely source is, Anonymous. But many famous people have leaned on it. In 2007, Sally Field won an Emmy for a dramatic role. In her acceptance speech she embellished her remarks paraphrasing “Anonymous”. She said, “If the mothers ruled the world there would be no God Damn wars anyway.” Fox Broadcasting  Company which aired the show, when they saw where she was going they killed the mic and camera so, with the time delay the tv viewing audience missed it. Fox knew her politics and were prepared to cut her off. So much for Sally and Fox, no secret who gets my respect or which one I admire. 

It takes something dramatic in the short term or something consistent and compelling over time to get adults to change their ways. We are creatures of habit and giving up anything that feels both good and right, it doesn’t come without a fight. A big part of that human paradigm would be; “Women are from Venus, men are from Mars.” The gender gap has, I think, always been a stumbling stone. One doesn’t need a story to understand male privilege and how primitive men dominated by physical power. Still, civilization came along and very little changed at the gender gap. Long story short, women still come up short on the equity score card and the rhetoric over the bitchiest bitch or (men) the shittiest ass hole still mucks up the gender bias. Men believe they are superior by historical precedent  and divine declaration while women defend their position by simply doing the math. 

I was a typical male, still believed in common sense and it told me, all those other men can’t be wrong. But I would change. When my daughter was born I began to consider the possibilities and pitfalls she would encounter. It was a sobering experience. When her three older brothers were born I had no such concerns. It took years of noticing holes in the male-myth, like a neural maze where every argument for male superiority petered out in a dead end. My cohorts would lean on double talk and fiction to sustain their egos but I was vulnerable to reason.  I thought of my own growing up, of my parents and their roles. Using a ‘sailing ship’ metaphor; if our family was a schooner then my dad would have been the main sail. He was larger than life, up high in full view, harnessing the wind, driving us forward. My mom on the other hand was nowhere to be seen. She was under the stern, she was the rudder but had full control over where we were headed and she could change course without permission, leaving the sail to flap and hang useless. 

Honey bees have adapted to the gender gap quite successfully. Drones are good for one thing. When they no longer serve a purpose and food gets scarce they are banished from the hive and starve. In the human realm, I tend to be critical of male hegemony. You do the math and numbers are so much more reliable than made up hyperbole. All we are good for is, like drones, sewing our seed. In the long time lapses between servicing queens we have become hopelessly competitive to the point of ultimate competition, waging war. Even then, the gain is measured out in prideful ego and temporary power. With women, if you can’t overpower your gender opposite, being bitchy works. At best, the weaker sex has a way of having their way. But times change and women are competing with men successfully, at least in my culture. They haven’t crossed the bar yet, (another sailing reference) and they don’t have parity just yet but who knows? 

Sally Field was right, she was right on the mark! If you don’t have a uterus and you haven’t nurtured life in the womb, brought it to fruition and launched it on its way, then you can’t appreciate the wonder of it all. Mothers are the glass half full. Men have to settle for half empty. Maybe it’s true, all we men are good for is ego driven pride and sending our progeny off to wage war. Men do a thorough job of over-inflating patriotism and the virtue of waging war. I didn’t want my baby girl to grow up the vassal of some man by way of a Y chromosome. Now I have granddaughters to further my concern. I feel fortunate to be a man who both understands and appreciates his role in the scheme of life. My role may be that of a boorish self-seeker but I can adapt and improvise, the gender gap gives me good cause. Civilization doesn’t have to be right, it just has to work and it's been working more for men than for women. Women are after all from Venus, and men are from Mars.