If Mothers Ruled the World…

~ Laura

Last Sunday, Sally Field was bleeped as she said, “…if the mothers ruled the world there would be no goddamn wars in the first place.” Some said she was bleeped for the naughty words; others are saying that it was the anti-war comment.

In 2004, after the Abu Ghraib scandal, Barbara Ehreneich wrote, ” A uterus is no substitute for a conscience.”

I’m with Babs on this one.

Published by Laura

12 thoughts on “If Mothers Ruled the World…”

  1. Sally seems to have conveniently forgotten Margaret Thatcher, Indira Gandhi, Sirimavo Bandanaraike, Hasina Wajed, Khaleda Zia. Elizabeth I probably doesn’t count, since she had no children???

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  2. Michelle Malkin has a piece on this in NRO. Here are a couple of passages that I liked:
    “Like actress Sally Field, I am a mom. Unlike Sally Field, I do not live in La-La Land. We breathe a different brand of oxygen. We hold diametrically opposed worldviews. We have nothing in common but stretch marks.
    Contrary to tongue-tied Sally’s incoherent Primetime Emmy Awards diatribe, childbearing, and childrearing experiences do not bond all women in a universal sorority of non-confrontation. There are sheep moms. There are lion moms. We know which kind Sally Field is.”
    “Motherhood and peacemaking are not synonymous. Motherhood requires ferocity, the will and resolve to protect one’s own children at all costs, and a lifelong commitment to sacrifice for a family’s betterment and survival. Conflict avoidance is incompatible with good mothering.”

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  4. Baaaa. Call me a sheep mama.
    thanks for the poll results, jen. It’s fun though. I sort of remember some polls from a few years back that showed that soccer moms were really in favor of the war.

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  5. Sally seems to have conveniently forgotten Margaret Thatcher, Indira Gandhi, Sirimavo Bandanaraike, Hasina Wajed, Khaleda Zia. Elizabeth I probably doesn’t count, since she had no children???
    I think the comment of hers was inane, but to be fair there’s a difference between “mothers ruling the world” and “a few mothers making it to positions of power, a feat which usually requires aping the behavior of men in power”.

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  7. Well, the Iroquois were a matriarchal society that was also extremely warlike, so there ya go. I can give numerous examples of societies that gave women high regard and political power yet waged frequent wars.
    I do think it’s safe to say, however, that if there were more women in positions of power there would be fewer hungry children (see Scandinavia).

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  8. “Unlike Sally Field, I do not live in La-La Land. ”
    No, she lives in Screaming Psycho Land. Now, one might use her as a counter-example, a woman who’d cheer on any atrocity, but not for her judgement.

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  9. Barry,
    So you agree with her. Malkin’s argument (in the passages I quoted) is that mothers are not innately and universally peace-loving.

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  11. Helen,
    Describing political opponents as insane has a long pedigree, dating back at least to the abuse of psychiatric wards in the later, more humane Soviet Union, where many were imprisoned on the grounds that being a dissident or desiring to emigrate was proof of insanity. Let’s not go there.

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  12. Yes, I was out of order to describe MM as batshit crazy. She’s a deliberately divisive, rather nasty, trolling writer/shock jock who deliberately fosters hatred of minorities, and deliberately pushes the buttons of the lowest common denominator. But I agree it’s a performance rather than madness per se.
    Although I do think to put it out there like she does, one must have iss-yews to some degree.

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