How many women felt a deep sense of despair over their sex at the sight of all those sisters stripping themselves naked for peace? asks Kevin Myers
In England naked women confronted male police officers, which I dare say made it a better than average day for the chaps. In Ireland, forty eight naked women "artists" formed themselves into the shape of the CND logo at Mullaghmore on the Burren. Surprisingly, neither gesture - undisputedly heroic though each was - has yet caused the US president to close down the US army.
Now it's more than possible that the girls thought that all that gee bush would get rid of G. Bush; and if that's so, it merely says something about their grasp of world affairs. But they did make an unintended point, and it's to do with sex; because men don't do this. Men don't take off their clothes to state a case. They take off their clothes to bath, and they take off their clothes to have sex, and sometimes take off their clothes when they're drunk in order to be stupid. But they don't take off their clothes to make a political statement; and for this we should be deeply grateful.
It would be a sorry day indeed if Fianna Fáil went in for corporate male nudity, led by a bare Bertie Ahernia. It happens that I live in abject terror of seeing Eamon Ó Cuiv in the altogether. (His grandfather, happily, never knew a moment's nudity in his entire life.) Even the idea of a completely clothesless Cowen, Churchillianly cherubic, might trigger a near-death experience among the young and impressionable. And many, frankly, would prefer a return to war than to see Slab Murphy and Pat Doherty parading nakedly outside Downing Street. Erin go brawn.
But of course nobody would regard men going naked in public as a statement of opinion: exhibitionistic, possibly, and disgusting, probably, but political? Never. So why is it possible that, all over the world, women apparently thought that the war in Iraq would be brought to a swift end if they took off their clothes? After the secret Mullaghmore demo - which of course required the presence of a photographer: you only had to ask, girls, and I'd have taken the pics - they all sat in the sun and had a picnic, and no doubt waited for George Bush to phone and declare he was giving in.
Except they didn't. Not really. They didn't think it was going to change anything at all. If millions of people marching in capitals around the world didn't alter the Bush-Blair determination to overthrow Saddam, it must have seemed unlikely to intelligent women that an invisible nude protest on a hillside in Clare would achieve anything at all. So their conduct prompts two questions. The first is, if some of them really thought US policy could be influenced by such antics, should such creatures be allowed a vote at all? The second is: If they didn't think they were going to change anything, what was the real reason why they stripped naked together?
No, I don't think it was sexual as in "sexual activity": but it's clearly sexual, as in sexualised conduct determined by gender. Did they feel reassured by all that group female nudity, as men would certainly not be by comparable male nudity? And is this a commonplace response by women to nudity?
Moreover, am I wrong to presume that whatever psychological rewards they (presumably) enjoyed from their group nudity are not unrelated to the undeniable truth that all women's glossy magazines are full of photographs of naked females?
Here we are again. We are two different species, with different appetites, different instincts and different ways (though clearly with a shared preference for the female nude, in both popular culture and in high art).
We are built so very differently that the greatest woman athlete ever, Paula Radcliffe (and my heroine) wouldn't have won a single gold medal with her recent world record marathon time in any men's Olympics since 1956. And she would have finished 15th in the men's competition in London on Sunday.
The evidence about our differences is before our eyes, yet we are proceeding remorselessly about a sexual egalitarian agenda as if those differences were not there. Jessica Lynch has already become a popular icon of the US military for the very reason that she is different; yet she is almost certainly going to be represented as an argument that women are suited for combat, when we know the opposite is the case, as she is the living proof.
A soldier friend of mine recently sent me a photograph of him doing a route-run with a group of other soldiers, as droll proof of how fit he was. I noticed that all his fellow soldiers were wearing packs and carrying rifles, except one, a woman. I asked him why she wasn't equally equipped, and he explained that she couldn't keep up if she were fully laden, so the men took turns carrying her gear. (Deep sigh.)
So we should be grateful to the Mullaghmore maids for reminding us of the irresolvable differences between the sexes. I doubt whether you could have got 47 men in the entire country, never mind 47 "artists", to do something so fatuous and secretive on a hillside in Clare and pretend it had real purpose. And even if they did, you could never have persuaded a newspaper to publish a photograph of them.
How did the girls finish the day, I wonder? Did they all get drunk on Chardonnay, weep a little and sing, "I Will Survive"?