War on Terror: Women - Talk of war has sidelined women. That's because they don't see the world in black and white, argues Suzanne Moore

Which side are you on, boys? Which side are you on? There is no point in asking us shilly-shallying girlies whose side we are on, because obviously, when it come to war, we just don't have the stomach. Women and effeminate lefties - I note Peter Hain used the word effete - tend to be less gung-ho than proper men about the forthcoming war. Appeasers, anti-Americans, lily-livered liberals, Clare Short and all other kinds of mad cows: what a coalition we are building. While Tony Blair strides about blazing moral certainty in his recruitment drive for endless war, we are being asked to accept that something immensely complex can be reduced to something incredibly simple.

This troubles many women of all political persuasions. We can discuss at length whether women are more naturally peace-loving because they give birth; or whether it is the single-minded mentality required to wage a war, which calls for a huge suspension of disbelief, that is alien to many women; or, finally, whether women just can't get excited about the media narratives, with their Boys' Own tales of SAS superiority and countless spies. And what of all those maps and helpful diagrams, which signify absolutely nothing, but make you feel as though you might actually know something that you don't? How about a map of the cave where Bin Laden is hiding with his fax machine?

The contrast between our heart-stopping knowledge of the specifics of the attack, and the vagueness of what is being proposed, is deeply worrying. Language, always one of the first casualties of war, is now being deployed to obscure rather than convey meaning. Asymmetrical warfare against non-state actors, anyone?

Yet when we see the list of the terrorist groups that we are all apparently fighting, the international war on terrorism suddenly looks suspiciously like a war against whomever America decides must be humbled. When we ask what would happen to the men inspired by Bin Laden, even in the unlikely event that his head was brought on a platter to George Bush, we are silenced by talk of the suppression of such networks in the future. When we see, as we will increasingly, pictures of malnourished Afghan children and of a desperate people whose idea of sanctuary is now the hell-hole of a refugee camp; when we see entire villages cut off by winter, what then? If nearly 7,000 people die, will that be a proportionate response? What if it's not the right 7,000? What if these people do not support Bin Laden or the Taliban?

And what if some of the fatalities are soldiers from our country? Not crack SAS troops, but troubled boys like my daughter's friend, who has just signed up because he flunked all his exams and is being promised an "education"?

To ask these questions is not to defile the memory of those who died so tragically in America. It is not somehow supportive of terrorism or the monstrous Taliban. It is not to say that we should do nothing beyond distribute a few groceries to the starving peasants of a distant land. But it is to refuse the war-porn imagery and ugly rhetoric of "you're either for us or against us". It is to acknowledge that the world has changed, and we have to change with it instead of relying on old black and white formulas.

The terrorist act itself - supremely wrong, evil and immoral as it was - stems from a fundamentalism that cannot allow connectedness, complexity, or humanity itself into its thinking. Our response cannot merely mirror this fundamentalism in the form of an American jihad.

If women on the whole are more wary of the consequences of war, perhaps it comes down to simply this: we are used to doing more than one thing at a time and used to thinking more than one thing at time. The choice that we are being asked to make here is a very limited one - war or no war. No one I know wants a war. No one I know thinks that nothing should be done at all. Where is the Third Way? Where is the joined-up thinking?

We understand, by and large, that a display of military might will be necessary - a "demonstration", as Max Hastings, the editor of the London Evening Standard, tellingly referred to it on BBC's Newsnight. Yet it is still not clear who this demonstration is for. The terrorists already know about US firepower, which is why they employ methods of terror against civilians - because they cannot match it. If America needs to "demonstrate" something to itself, then why should we all have to applaud?

Such sentiments will be deemed anti-American. But what will happen when similar words start to come from within the US itself? What can be said about the polls that show nearly a quarter of those interviewed agreeing with the proposition that "America brought these attacks on itself"? What shall we do with the continuing denial that US foreign policy had anything at all to do with the attacks? Will we demand that certain connections be made, or will we further retreat into the language of good v evil, of an international coalition against the one man we can name as responsible for everything bad in the world?

In such uncertain times, if more women than men oppose the war, then let us listen to them. All the current opinion polls show that the public supports a vigorous debate - it wants to hear all sides of the argument. To date, we have heard so much more from men than women. In times of war, it as if the advances of feminism melt away and public life becomes once more a Men Only zone. Eventually, however, Blair will have to win over far more female support than he has managed so far. Whose side are you on, girls? Speak up now. Otherwise you will be spoken for.

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