Dear Schopenhauer,
You had a lot to say about women. Most of it said more about your fear of losing authority than about women themselves.
So let’s ask the question plainly.
Would a woman wage war?
History answers with a cautious sometimes. But the more important question is why war happens so reliably under systems built by and for men who equate power with dominance, strength with control, and leadership with conquest.
This isn’t a biological argument. It’s a cultural one.
For centuries, leadership has been defined through aggression. Decisiveness mistaken for ruthlessness. Authority confused with the ability to coerce. And when those traits become the standard, war stops being a last resort and starts looking like a résumé builder.
Sexism and misogyny don’t just harm women. They limit the entire imagination of leadership. When empathy is dismissed as weakness, collaboration as softness, and care as secondary, we build systems that solve conflict with force instead of foresight.
And here’s the irony.
The traits most often devalued as “feminine” – listening, nurturing, long-term thinking, relational awareness – are exactly the traits needed to prevent conflict, manage complexity, and sustain societies. When those voices are excluded from power, the results are predictable.
So the real question isn’t whether a woman would wage war.
It’s whether a system that finally values cooperation over domination would need to.
Dear reader, pause here.
Who do we reward as “strong”?
What qualities do we trust with power?
And what kind of leadership might emerge if we stopped confusing masculinity with authority?
Still questioning inherited myths,
~ The Radical Left