April 19, 2007
Women: Please stop fighting
There are words and then there is writing. The former can round out a blog post, or an opinion editorial or a grocery list, but they cannot do what the latter can do. Words alone cannot transfix the heart, they cannot reshape the mind, they cannot weave from loose thread the strong cord of thought and furious sound that tethers the soul to a safer anchorage than can be found in the open water of semantics. Only writing can do that. And that is why it is still a noble thing to write, which is something entirely different than to use words.
Then still, writing can hurt. Writing is the two-edged sword of the mind and the most damning of the sciences. Writing is the haughty craft that pronounces its judgment on all other crafts and if that judgment be harsh, writing swiftly executes its own sentence, sometimes brutally. And that is why it is still a risky thing to write, which is something entirely different than to put words into print.
Take a case from this very blog, please . . .
A friend and colleague of mine wrote, in compelling prose, that the United
States Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision to uphold a law that bans partial birth abortion on the grounds that said law reflects the “government’s legitimate, substantial interest in preserving and promoting fetal life,” is a ruling at odds with this government’s practice in the area of life-preservation and promotion in general. She wrote reflectively, she wrote persuasively and she wrote from the heart. – the heart of a mother whose own daughter’s opportunities in adulthood will be determined, in part, by how much our generation is willing to struggle to preserve the opportunity for opportunity.
A reader responded to my colleague’s post and wrote, in so many words, that while my colleague’s thesis is unquestionably correct and while her reflection upon the matter brought out accurate sentiment, it is instructive to note that the backward step represented by the Court’s decision should alert a generation of young women to the truth - that there is no safety in past progress. Advances can be lost and gains given back in any battle if one contents one’s self simply to hold one’s ground. It is in moving forward, not standing still, that we beat back the tide of reaction and repression.
Another reader responded to the foregoing by observing that she believed my colleague had attempted to do that very thing, to write of the need not to rest and trust but to fight on and charge full ahead.
This is what got written, but somehow what got said was, “I’m a real feminist – no you’re not – yeah huh – oh yeah, well I march – so, I march too but I don’t feel the need to brag about it – well at least I didn’t change my name – neener, neener, neener,” and upon reading it all a demon rushed into this writer’s heart and I nearly wept but instead the scoundrel in me said, “Ladies, simmer your collective ass the fuck down!” and now the writer in me asks, eyes wet, “Women, will you please stop fighting – if not for yourselves, for the rest of us?”
Maybe April finds the child in the heart. Maybe in the bursting forth of brash new life consumed by hope I find myself trying to look no longer through the eyes of a wretch at the ugly and fetid world of things beaten and small. Maybe I tire in spring of the gnashing of teeth and the scrambling in the filth and soot for what meager sustenance feeds the heart of a man and maybe it is this that makes me want instead to see what women see – perhaps to glimpse this world once, just once truly and well lit, through the eyes of a mother in her late life and see the wash of true adoration for all things bright and beautiful or perhaps instead to see through the eyes of a daughter a world of ice and high mountains and travels still to take, or through the eyes of a sister a world of verdant calm where the baser, violent things, the things of men, can find no purchase. Whatever it is, it rends the heart and boils the brain and please, women, stop fighting.
Something there is in a woman that, however she may think, can still hold in fief the gathering storm and soothe the tortured soul and send the angel back into the scoundrel’s heart and with a laying on of her small hand quench the pain and unutterable wrath of a man in the warm spring water. Something there is in the world that needs the woman’s touch, something that needs its heart pierced by the angel, its soul soothed and its pain muted, and please, women, please stop fighting.
“Aha,” you’ll observe, “but what of the beastly things, the monstrous things,
the ugly and devouring things? While women fill your world, you fool, with dreams of spangled tapestries and splendid galleries of rich statuary, who guards the door? Who watches that the demons do not swell their ranks and charge us in such force that we cannot long withstand?” It is one thing to watch, women. It is another thing to fight among yourselves about the watching. And please, women, please, for all of us – please stop fighting.
For while you fight, who will send the flare into the sky to alert the soldiers to their real call and duty? Who will sound the bugle and send forth the stalwart defenses to drive back real monstrosity when it shows itself? Who will send the runner to call the warriors from their drunken revelry and drive them out to meet the dust of thundering hooves beneath the war horses of true wickedness? While you fight, what keen eye will spot the threat on the horizon and pull us from our vice and shame and cast us as fiends at the enemies of beauty? Please, women, please stop fighting.
All flowery rhetoric aside, all musing and writer’s craft put away, look honestly at our world, detached, apart, at a distance, and ask if there was ever a time when your watch was more needed, your call more overdue and your orders more awaited. Look out at a world where someone has taken duty and hidden it in imperialism, where someone has taken fairness and hidden it in reciprocity and someone has taken love and hidden it in desire and ask whether you are not our first line of real defense. Ask if your eyes have not themselves been clouded by the encircling grey of a world gone mad under man’s dominion and ask if we can ever see the sun again without your leadership. Ask if rancor and self-struggle amount to leading. Ask yourselves that, answer, and please women, stop fighting.
The world is an awful place in which cruelty abides and hope shrinks. Maybe it must be thus. But would that it were not! Would that cruelty could shrink and hope abide! Would that the sum of wars be forgotten and the wretched things of men cast down into the sunken depths of the abyss of time. Would that ours were a world where women watched that broad horizon and ordered us into battle in time to halt the diminution of our claim.
I am ready to live in such a world or to die fighting for it. I am ready to heed the call and to rail against what ravenous monster might show itself at the gate. I am ready to put in service what ugly man’s weapons clutter my arsenal and to carry out what ghastly duty befalls me in the service of hope and womanhood. But I cannot hear your orders above your shouts and taunts and jeers at one another and for that reason I ask you please, please my mothers and daughters and sisters, please stop fighting.
Women: Please stop fighting
There are words and then there is writing. The former can round out a blog post, or an opinion editorial or a grocery list, but they cannot do what the latter can do. Words alone cannot transfix the heart, they cannot reshape the mind, they cannot weave from loose thread the strong cord of thought and furious sound that tethers the soul to a safer anchorage than can be found in the open water of semantics. Only writing can do that. And that is why it is still a noble thing to write, which is something entirely different than to use words.
Then still, writing can hurt. Writing is the two-edged sword of the mind and the most damning of the sciences. Writing is the haughty craft that pronounces its judgment on all other crafts and if that judgment be harsh, writing swiftly executes its own sentence, sometimes brutally. And that is why it is still a risky thing to write, which is something entirely different than to put words into print.
Take a case from this very blog, please . . .
A friend and colleague of mine wrote, in compelling prose, that the United
States Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision to uphold a law that bans partial birth abortion on the grounds that said law reflects the “government’s legitimate, substantial interest in preserving and promoting fetal life,” is a ruling at odds with this government’s practice in the area of life-preservation and promotion in general. She wrote reflectively, she wrote persuasively and she wrote from the heart. – the heart of a mother whose own daughter’s opportunities in adulthood will be determined, in part, by how much our generation is willing to struggle to preserve the opportunity for opportunity.A reader responded to my colleague’s post and wrote, in so many words, that while my colleague’s thesis is unquestionably correct and while her reflection upon the matter brought out accurate sentiment, it is instructive to note that the backward step represented by the Court’s decision should alert a generation of young women to the truth - that there is no safety in past progress. Advances can be lost and gains given back in any battle if one contents one’s self simply to hold one’s ground. It is in moving forward, not standing still, that we beat back the tide of reaction and repression.
Another reader responded to the foregoing by observing that she believed my colleague had attempted to do that very thing, to write of the need not to rest and trust but to fight on and charge full ahead.
This is what got written, but somehow what got said was, “I’m a real feminist – no you’re not – yeah huh – oh yeah, well I march – so, I march too but I don’t feel the need to brag about it – well at least I didn’t change my name – neener, neener, neener,” and upon reading it all a demon rushed into this writer’s heart and I nearly wept but instead the scoundrel in me said, “Ladies, simmer your collective ass the fuck down!” and now the writer in me asks, eyes wet, “Women, will you please stop fighting – if not for yourselves, for the rest of us?”
Maybe April finds the child in the heart. Maybe in the bursting forth of brash new life consumed by hope I find myself trying to look no longer through the eyes of a wretch at the ugly and fetid world of things beaten and small. Maybe I tire in spring of the gnashing of teeth and the scrambling in the filth and soot for what meager sustenance feeds the heart of a man and maybe it is this that makes me want instead to see what women see – perhaps to glimpse this world once, just once truly and well lit, through the eyes of a mother in her late life and see the wash of true adoration for all things bright and beautiful or perhaps instead to see through the eyes of a daughter a world of ice and high mountains and travels still to take, or through the eyes of a sister a world of verdant calm where the baser, violent things, the things of men, can find no purchase. Whatever it is, it rends the heart and boils the brain and please, women, stop fighting.
Something there is in a woman that, however she may think, can still hold in fief the gathering storm and soothe the tortured soul and send the angel back into the scoundrel’s heart and with a laying on of her small hand quench the pain and unutterable wrath of a man in the warm spring water. Something there is in the world that needs the woman’s touch, something that needs its heart pierced by the angel, its soul soothed and its pain muted, and please, women, please stop fighting.
“Aha,” you’ll observe, “but what of the beastly things, the monstrous things,
the ugly and devouring things? While women fill your world, you fool, with dreams of spangled tapestries and splendid galleries of rich statuary, who guards the door? Who watches that the demons do not swell their ranks and charge us in such force that we cannot long withstand?” It is one thing to watch, women. It is another thing to fight among yourselves about the watching. And please, women, please, for all of us – please stop fighting.For while you fight, who will send the flare into the sky to alert the soldiers to their real call and duty? Who will sound the bugle and send forth the stalwart defenses to drive back real monstrosity when it shows itself? Who will send the runner to call the warriors from their drunken revelry and drive them out to meet the dust of thundering hooves beneath the war horses of true wickedness? While you fight, what keen eye will spot the threat on the horizon and pull us from our vice and shame and cast us as fiends at the enemies of beauty? Please, women, please stop fighting.
All flowery rhetoric aside, all musing and writer’s craft put away, look honestly at our world, detached, apart, at a distance, and ask if there was ever a time when your watch was more needed, your call more overdue and your orders more awaited. Look out at a world where someone has taken duty and hidden it in imperialism, where someone has taken fairness and hidden it in reciprocity and someone has taken love and hidden it in desire and ask whether you are not our first line of real defense. Ask if your eyes have not themselves been clouded by the encircling grey of a world gone mad under man’s dominion and ask if we can ever see the sun again without your leadership. Ask if rancor and self-struggle amount to leading. Ask yourselves that, answer, and please women, stop fighting.
The world is an awful place in which cruelty abides and hope shrinks. Maybe it must be thus. But would that it were not! Would that cruelty could shrink and hope abide! Would that the sum of wars be forgotten and the wretched things of men cast down into the sunken depths of the abyss of time. Would that ours were a world where women watched that broad horizon and ordered us into battle in time to halt the diminution of our claim.
I am ready to live in such a world or to die fighting for it. I am ready to heed the call and to rail against what ravenous monster might show itself at the gate. I am ready to put in service what ugly man’s weapons clutter my arsenal and to carry out what ghastly duty befalls me in the service of hope and womanhood. But I cannot hear your orders above your shouts and taunts and jeers at one another and for that reason I ask you please, please my mothers and daughters and sisters, please stop fighting.
