THE monstrous regiment of women were on the march on Wednesday. It was International Women's Day and their artillery pounded media positions mercilessly. Images of Legislative Councillor and icon Anna Wu Hung-yuk, in red bandana with a bandolier of bullets across her chest and clenching her Equal Opportunities Bill high above her head, invaded the mind's eye.
Quick to fall to the attack was RTHK's Today programme, subverted from within by fifth-columnist presenter Lorna Workman who is, in fact, a woman, but who manoeuvred her way into the show last week, un-selected. She opened the studio doors from the inside to a SWAT team of chattering chicks, including representatives of Amnesty and a local holy synod of women.
Workman, cover blown, was keen to draw the women deep into the region, to situations in which women were systematically prevented from knowing things - namely Islam. There was a palpable nervousness over the air, a fear of counter-attack perhaps. The women dived for cover behind generalisations and waded off into the marshy vagueness of 'China' and 'the villages' and the batterings and assorted cruelties that must surely go on among those that know not the Guardian.
The wives and mothers I knew from a week's stay in a Guangdong village seemed a great deal happier and more purposeful than the ones I know in English suburbs who develop facial ticks watching Neighbours on afternoon television.
The United Nations had whistled up International Women's Day (I am waiting for one for cross-dressers), so not much could be expected in the way of reality. In this, the UN plays the role of aggressor rather than the more familiar part of hapless peacekeeper: with the stubbornness of a drunken Serb, it will not be dissuaded from coming up with these global, day-long gymkhanas.
It has been pointed out to them that the cost of running one of these babble-and-bunting shindigs is mammoth in comparison to that spent keeping UN troops in the field. If middle-class women worldwide could forego their day's earnestness and see the money shifted to putting blue berets on the ground, then more women who had lost their dressing tables to shell-fire might at least stand a better chance of not being battered and raped by men who were not their husbands.