No man’s land

Fredericksburg, Virginia

Walt Whitman once observed, ‘In America, the men hate the women and the women hate the men.’ That sounds like a commentary on feminism and probably was. Although Whitman was caught up in personal sexual conflicts more befitting a sensitive poet, he lived through most of the 19th century, when women were in vociferous pursuit of the vote, so he probably muttered his share of ‘If I hear “vote” one more time… .’

To judge from our current cris de coeur, his remark about the battle of the sexes rings truer for our own time than for his. The Republicans are accused of waging a ‘war on women’ ranging from the curtailing of abortion rights to equal pay for equal work; TV psychologists regularly hold forth on ‘battered wife syndrome’; and ‘domestic violence’ now rivals gunfire as our most frequent police call. Much of this is blamed on tensions arising from our failing economy, but that’s a big answer and big answers tend to be pat answers.