Our Blood: Prophecies and Discourses on Sexual Politics Read online

  indicators of “male” and “female. ”

  As we are destroying the structure of culture, we will have

  to build a new culture— nonhierarchical, nonsexist, noncoer-

  cive, nonexploitative—in other words, a culture which is not

  based on dominance and submission in any way.

  As we are destroying the phallic identities of men and the

  masochistic identities of women, we will have to create, out of

  our own ashes, new erotic identities. These new erotic identities will have to repudiate at their core the male sexual model: that is, they will have to repudiate the personality structures

  dominant-active (“male”) and submissive-passive (“female”);

  they will have to repudiate genital sexuality as the primary

  focus and value of erotic identity; they will have to repudiate

  and obviate all of the forms of erotic objectification and alienation which inhere in the male sexual model. 9

  How can we, women, who have been taught to be afraid of

  every little noise in the night, dare to imagine that we might

  destroy the world that men defend with their armies and their

  lives? How can we, women, who have no vivid memory of

  ourselves as heroes, imagine that we might succeed in building

  a revolutionary community? Where can we find the revolutionary courage to overcome our slave fear?

  Sadly, we are as invisible to ourselves as we are to men. We

  learn to see with their eyes— and they are near blind. Our first

  task, as feminists, is to learn to see with our own eyes.

  If we could see with our own eyes, I believe that we would

  see that we already have, in embryonic form, the qualities

  required to overturn the male supremacist system which oppresses us and which threatens to destroy all life on this planet.

  We would see that we already have, in embryonic form, values

  on which to build a new world. We would see that female

  strength and courage have developed out of the very circumstances of our oppression, out of our lives as breeders and domestic chattel. Until now, we have used those qualities to

  endure under devastating and terrifying conditions. Now we

  must use those qualities of female strength and courage which

  developed in us as mothers and wives to repudiate the very

  slave conditions from which they are derived.

  If we were not invisible to ourselves, we would see that

  since the beginning of time, we have been the exemplars of

  physical courage. Squatting in fields, isolated in bedrooms, in

  slums, in shacks, or in hospitals, women endure the ordeal of

  giving birth. This physical act of giving birth requires physical

  courage of the highest order. It is the prototypical act of authentic physical courage. One’s life is each time on the line.

  One faces death each time. One endures, withstands, or is

  consumed by pain. Survival demands stamina, strength, concentration, and will power. No phallic hero, no matter what he does to himself or to another to prove his courage, ever

  matches the solitary, existential courage of the woman who

  gives birth.

  We need not continue to have children in order to claim the

  dignity of realizing our own capacity for physical courage. This

  capacity is ours; it belongs to us, and it has belonged to us

  since the beginning of time. What we must do now is to reclaim this capacity— take it out of the service of men; make it visible to ourselves; and determine how to use it in the service

  of feminist revolution.

  If we were not invisible to ourselves, we would also see that

  we have always had a resolute commitment to and faith in

  human life which have made us heroic in our nurturance and

  sustenance of lives other than our own. Under all circum­

  stances—in war, sickness, famine, drought, poverty, in times

  of incalculable misery and despair—women have done the

  work required for the survival of the species. We have not

  pushed a button, or organized a military unit, to do the work

  of emotionally and physically sustaining life. We have done it

  one by one, and one to one. For thousands of years, in my

  view, women have been the only exemplars of moral and spiritual courage—we have sustained life, while men have taken it. This capacity for sustaining life belongs to us. We must

  reclaim it—take it out of the service of men, so that it will

  never again be used by them in their own criminal interests.

  Also, if we were not invisible to ourselves, we would see

  that most women can bear, and have for centuries borne, any

  anguish—physical or mental—for the sake of those they love.

  It is time to reclaim this kind of courage too, and to use it for

  ourselves and each other.

  For us, historically, courage has always been a function of

  our resolute commitment to life. Courage as we know it has

  developed from that commitment. We have always faced

  death for the sake of life; and even in the bitterness of our

  domestic slavery, we were sustained by the knowledge that we

  were ourselves sustaining life.

  We are faced, then, with two facts of female existence

  under patriarchy: (1) that we are taught fear as a function of

  femininity; and (2) that under the very slave conditions which

  we must repudiate, we have developed a heroic commitment

  to sustaining and nurturing life.

  In our lifetimes, we will not be able to eradicate that first

  fact of female existence under patriarchy: we will continue to

  be afraid of the punishments which are inevitable as we challenge male supremacy; we will find it hard to root out the masochism which is so deeply embedded within us; we will

  suffer ambivalence and conflict, most of us, throughout our

  lives as we advance our revolutionary feminist presence.

  But, if we are resolute, we will also deepen and expand that

  heroic commitment to sustaining and nurturing life. We will

  deepen it by creating visionary new forms of human community; we will expand it by including ourselves in it— by learning to value and cherish each other as sisters. We will

  renounce all forms of male control and male domination; we

  will destroy the institutions and cultural valuations which imprison us in invisibility and victimization; but we will take with us, out of our bitter, bitter past, our passionate identification with the worth of other human lives.

  I want to end by saying that we must never betray the

  heroic commitment to the worth of human life which is the

  source of our courage as women. If we do betray that commitment, we will find ourselves, hands dripping with blood, equal heroes to men at last.

  6

  R ed efin in g N onviolence

  . . . and finally I twist my heart round again, so that the

  bad is on the outside and the good is on the inside and

  keep on trying to find a way of becoming what I would

  so like to be, and I could be, if. . . there weren’t any other

  people living in the world.

  Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl,

  August 1, 1944, three days before her arrest

  ( i )

  Feminism, according to The Random House Dictionary, is

  defined as “the doctrine advocating social and political rights

  of women equal to those of men. ” This is one tenet of feminism, and I urge you not to sneer at it, not to deride it as reformist, not to dismiss it with
what you might consider left-wing radical purity.

  Some of you fought with all your heart and soul for civil

  rights for blacks. You understood that to sit at a dirty lunch

  counter and eat a rotten hamburger had no revolutionary validity at all— and yet you also understood the indignity, the demeaning indignity, of not being able to do so. And so you, and others like you, laid your lives on the line so that blacks would

  not be forced to suffer systematic daily indignities of exclusion

  from institutions which, in fact, you did not endorse. In all the

  Delivered at Boston College, at a conference on Alternatives to the Military-

  Corporate System, in a panel on “Defending Values Without Violence, ”

  April 5, 1975.

  years of the civil rights movement, I never heard a white male

  radical say to a black man— “Why do you want to eat there, it’s

  so much nicer eating grits at home. ” It was understood that

  racism was a festering pathology, and that that pathology had

  to be challenged wherever its dread symptoms appeared: to

  check the growth of the pathology itself; to diminish its debilitating effects on its victims; to try to save black lives, one by one if necessary, from the ravages of a racist system which

  condemned those lives to a bitter misery.

  And yet, when it comes to your own lives, you do not make

  the same claim. Sexism, which is properly defined as the systematic cultural, political, social, sexual, psychological, and economic servitude of women to men and to patriarchal institutions, is a festering pathology too. It festers in every house, on every street, in every law court, in every job situation, on

  every television show, in every movie. It festers in virtually

  every transaction between a man and a woman. It festers

  in every encounter between a woman and the institutions of this

  male-dominated society. Sexism festers when we are raped, or

  when we are married. It festers when we are denied absolute

  control over our own bodies— whenever the state or any man

  decides in our stead the uses to which our bodies will be put.

  Sexism festers when we are taught to submit to men, sexually

  and/or intellectually. It festers when we are taught and forced

  to serve men in their kitchens, in their beds, as domestics, as

  shit workers in their multifarious causes, as devoted disciples

  of their work, whatever that work may be. It festers when we

  are taught and forced to nourish them as wives, mothers, lovers, or daughters. Sexism festers when we are forced to study male culture but are allowed no recognition of or pride in our

  own. It festers when we are taught to venerate and respect

  male voices, so that we have no voices of our own. Sexism

  festers when, from infancy on, we are forced to restrain every

  impulse toward adventure, every ambition toward achievement or greatness, every bold or original act or idea. Sexism festers day and night, day after day, night after night. Sexism

  is the foundation on which all tyranny is built. Every social

  form of hierarchy and abuse is modeled on male-over-female

  domination.

  I have never heard a white male radical ridicule or denigrate a black man for demanding that the Civil Rights Act be passed, or for recognizing the racist values behind any refusal

  to vote for that act. Yet, many left-wing women have said to

  me, “I can’t quite figure out the politics of the Equal Rights

  Amendment. ” Further discussion always reveals that these

  women have been denigrated by left-wing men for being distressed that the Equal Rights Amendment might not pass this year or in the near future. Let me tell you about “the politics

  of the Equal Rights Amendment”— a refusal to pass it is a

  refusal to recognize women as being sound enough in mind

  and body to exercise the rights of citizenship; a refusal to pass

  it condemns women to lives as nonentities before the law; a

  refusal to pass it is an affirmation of the view that women are

  inferior to men by virtue of biology, as a condition of birth.

  Among political people, it is shameful to be a racist or an anti-

  Semite. No shame attaches to a resolute disregard for the civil

  rights of women.

  In my view, any man who truly recognizes your right to

  dignity and to freedom will recognize that the dread symptoms

  of sexism must be challenged wherever they appear: to check

  the growth of the pathology itself; to diminish its debilitating

  effects on its victims; to try to save women’s lives, one by one

  if necessary, from the ravages of a sexist system which condemns those lives to a bitter misery. Any man who is your comrade will know in his gut the indignity, the demeaning

  indignity, of systematic exclusion from the rights and responsibilities of citizenship. Any man who is your true comrade will be committed to laying his body, his life, on the line so

  that you will be subjected to that indignity no longer. I ask

  you to look to your male comrades on the left, and to determine whether they have made that commitment to you. If they have not, then they do not take your lives seriously, and as

  long as you work for and with them, you do not take your

  lives seriously either.

  (2 )

  Feminism is an exploration, one that has just begun. Women

  have been taught that, for us, the earth is flat, and that if we

  venture out, we will fall off the edge. Some of us have ventured out nevertheless, and so far we have not fallen off. It is my faith, my feminist faith, that we will not.

  Our exploration has three parts. First, we must discover our

  past. The road back is obscure, hard to find. We look for signs

  that tell us: women have lived here. And then we try to see

  what life was like for those women. It is a bitter exploration.

  We find that for centuries, all through recorded time, women

  have been violated, exploited, demeaned, systematically and

  unconscionably. We find that millions upon millions of

  women have died as the victims of organized gynocide. We

  find atrocity after atrocity, executed on such a vast scale that

  other atrocities pale by comparison. We find that gynocide

  takes many forms— slaughter, crippling, mutilation, slavery,

  rape. It is not easy for us to bear what we see.

  Second, we must examine the present: how is society presently organized; how do women live now; how does it work—

  this global system of oppression based on gender which takes

  so many invisible lives; what are the sources of male dominance; how does male dominance perpetuate itself in organized violence and totalitarian institutions? This too is a bitter exploration. We see that all over the world our people,

  women, are in chains. These chains are psychological, social,

  sexual, legal, economic. These chains are heavy. These

  chains are locked by a systematic violence perpetrated against

  us by the gender class men. It is not easy for us to bear what

  we see. It is not easy for us to shed these chains, to find the

  resources to withdraw our consent from oppression. It is not

  easy for us to determine what forms our resistance must take.

  Third, we must imagine a future in which we would be free.

  Only the imagining of this future can energize us so that we do

  not remain victims of our past and our present. Only the imagining of this future can give us the strength to repudiate our slave behavior—to identify it when
ever we manifest it, and to

  root it out of our lives. This exploration is not bitter, but it is

  insanely difficult—because each time a woman does renounce

  slave behavior, she meets the full force and cruelty of her

  oppressor head on.

  Politically committed women often ask the question, “How

  can we as women support the struggles of other people? ” This

  question as a basis for political analysis and action replicates

  the very form of our oppression—it keeps us a gender class of

  helpmates. If we were not women— if we were male workers,

  or male blacks, or male anybodies—it would be enough for

  us to delineate the facts of our own oppression; that alone

  would give our struggle credibility in radical male eyes.

  But we are women, and the first fact of our oppression is

  that we are invisible to our oppressors. The second fact of our

  oppression is that we have been trained— for centuries and

  from infancy on— to see through their eyes, and so we are

  invisible to ourselves. The third fact of our oppression is that

  our oppressors are not only male heads of state, male capitalists, male militarists—but also our fathers, sons, husbands, brothers, and lovers. No other people is so entirely captured,

  so entirely conquered, so destitute of any memory of freedom,

  so dreadfully robbed of identity and culture, so absolutely

  slandered as a group, so demeaned and humiliated as a function of daily life. And yet, we go on, blind, and we ask over and over again, “What can we do for them? ” It is time to ask,

  “What must they do now for us? ” That question must be the

  first question in any political dialogue with men.

  (3)

  Women, for all these patriarchal centuries, have been adamant in the defense of lives other than our own. We died in

  childbirth so that others might live. We sustained the lives of

  children, husbands, fathers, and brothers in war, in famine, in

  every sort of devastation. We have done this in the bitterness

  of global servitude. Whatever can be known under patriarchy