HUMANITY'S BIGGEST BATTLE; WELL AT LEAST LONGEST

There are many battles that rage in the world. Then and now, there and here. But perhaps the greatest battle of them all is the eternal battle of the sexes. Beginning with that apple caper in Eden. Wounded men have been writing about wily women ever since. Sometimes with humor, mostly with suspicion.

It seems that in the very early stages of post-Eden civilization, fertility was seen as the center of life, and thus female gods. Later, when power was understood as more important than fertility, male gods. From then on, women usually get the short straw in the stories. Jezebel...Bathsheba...Salome...Helen of Troy...Cleopatra... Lucretia Borgia...Lady Macbeth...Anne Boleyn...Madame Defarge...Mata Harri.

But then there are a few undisputed heroines. The Virgin Mary...Dante's Beatrice... Joan of Arc...Elizabeth I... Madam Curie...Susan B Anthony....the Gibson Girl....Mother Teresa...Margaret Thatcher,,,Golda Meir...Hillary Clinton.

And yet, as with all historic struggles, the story is rarely simple black&white, right&wrong, Venus&Mars. The sisterhood of modern women today have a great many leaders to look to who are debated as hotly as they are honored. These are not the ladies-who-lunch. These are those who stir the national waters, generating equal parts praise and panning. Betty Friedan...Gloria Steinem...Oprah Winfrey...Jane Fonda....Barbra Streisand... Barbara Walters...and lately the Dragon Lady professor from Yale Amy Huan who has a brittle new theory for raising girls.

There are biologists who will explain this competitive dynamic in terms of our genes. Psychiatrists in terms of our mother. Hollywood producers in terms of our sexuality. Rock singers in terms of groupies. My wife and daughters in terms of my dis-informed cultural conditioning.

The French who wisely, unlike their American counterparts, linger over long lunches and wax eloquent about all things sensuous, approach the differences between the male and the female of the species with the usual Gallic flair. Hard to argue with this toast: "Viva La difference'!"