Our Blood: Prophecies and Discourses on Sexual Politics Read online

about commitment to life, we know it. Whatever it takes to

  make that commitment under patriarchy, we have it.

  It is time now to repudiate patriarchy by valuing our own

  lives as fully, as seriously, as resolutely, as we have valued

  other lives. It is time now to commit ourselves to the nurtur-

  ance and protection of each other.

  We must establish values which originate in sisterhood. We

  must establish values which repudiate phallic supremacy,

  which repudiate phallic aggression, which repudiate all relationships and institutions based on male dominance and female submission.

  It will not be easy for us to establish values which originate

  in sisterhood. For centuries, we have had male values

  slammed down our throats and slammed up our cunts. We are

  the victims of a violence so pervasive, so constant, so relentless

  and unending, that we cannot point to it and say, “There it

  begins and there it ends. ” All of the values which we might

  defend as a consequence of our allegiances to men and their

  ideas are saturated with the fact or memory of that violence.

  We know more about violence than any other people on the

  face of this earth. We have absorbed such quantities of it— as

  women, and as Jews, blacks, Vietnamese, native Americans,

  etc. — that our bodies and souls are seared through with the

  effects of it.

  I suggest to you that any commitment to nonviolence which

  is real, which is authentic, must begin in the recognition of the

  forms and degrees of violence perpetrated against women by

  the gender class men. I suggest to you that any analysis of

  violence, or any commitment to act against it, which does not

  begin there is hollow, meaningless— a sham which will have,

  as its direct consequence, the perpetuation of your servitude. I

  suggest to you that any male apostle of so-called nonviolence

  who is not committed, body and soul, to ending the violence

  against you is not trustworthy. He is not your comrade, not

  your brother, not your friend. He is someone to whom your

  life is invisible.

  As women, nonviolence must begin for us in the refusal to

  be violated, in the refusal to be victimized. We must find alternatives to submission, because our submission—to rape, to assault, to domestic servitude, to abuse and victimization of

  every sort—perpetuates violence.

  The refusal to be a victim does not originate in any act of

  resistance as male-derived as killing. The refusal of which I

  speak is a revolutionary refusal to be a victim, any time, any

  place, for friend or foe. This refusal requires the conscientious

  unlearning of all the forms of masochistic submission which

  are taught to us as the very content of womanhood. Male

  aggression feeds on female masochism as vultures feed on carrion. Our nonviolent project is to find the social, sexual, political, and cultural forms which repudiate our programmed submissive behaviors, so that male aggression can find no dead

  flesh on which to feast.

  When I say that we must establish values which originate in

  sisterhood, I mean to say that we must not accept, even for a

  moment, male notions of what nonviolence is. Those notions

  have never condemned the systematic violence against us. The

  men who hold those notions have never renounced the male

  behaviors, privileges, values, and conceits which are in and of

  themselves acts of violence against us.

  We will diminish violence by refusing to be violated. We

  will repudiate the whole patriarchal system, with its sadomasochistic institutions, with its social scenarios of dominance and submission all based on the male-over-female model,

  when we refuse conscientiously, rigorously, and absolutely to

  be the soil in which male aggression, pride, and arrogance can

  grow like wild weeds.

  7

  L esb ian P rid e

  For me, being a lesbian means three things—

  First, it means that I love, cherish, and respect women in

  my mind, in my heart, and in my soul. This love of women is

  the soil in which my life is rooted. It is the soil of our common

  life together. My life grows out of this soil. In any other soil, I

  would die. In whatever ways I am strong, I am strong because

  of the power and passion of this nurturant love.

  Second, being a lesbian means to me that there is an erotic

  passion and intimacy which comes of touch and taste, a wild,

  salty tenderness, a wet sweet sweat, our breasts, our mouths,

  our cunts, our intertangled hairs, our hands. I am speaking

  here of a sensual passion as deep and mysterious as the sea, as

  strong and still as the mountain, as insistent and changing as

  the wind.

  Delivered at a rally for Lesbian Pride Week, Central Park, New York City,

  June 28, 1975.

  Third, being a lesbian means to me the memory of the

  mother, remembered in my own body, sought for, desired,

  found, and truly honored. It means the memory of the womb,

  when we were one with our mothers, until birth when we were

  torn asunder. It means a return to that place inside, inside her,

  inside ourselves, to the tissues and membranes, to the moisture and blood.

  There is a pride in the nurturant love which is our common

  ground, and in the sensual love, and in the memory of the

  mother— and that pride shines as bright as the summer sun at

  noon. That pride cannot be degraded. Those who would degrade it are in the position of throwing handfuls of mud at the sun. Still it shines, and those who sling mud only dirty their

  own hands.

  Sometimes the sun is covered by dense layers of dark clouds.

  A person looking up would swear that there is no sun. But

  still the sun shines. At night, when there is no light, still the

  sun shines. During rain or hail or hurricane or tornado, still

  the sun shines.

  Does the sun ask itself, “Am I good? Am I worthwhile? Is

  there enough of me? ” No, it bums and it shines. Does the sun

  ask itself, “What does the moon think of me? How does Mars

  feel about me today? ” No, it bums, it shines. Does the sun ask

  itself, “Am I as big as other suns in other galaxies? ” No, it

  bums, it shines.

  In this country in the coming years, I think that there will

  be a terrible storm. I think that the skies will darken beyond

  all recognition. Those who walk the streets will walk them in

  darkness. Those who are in prisons and mental institutions

  will not see the sky at all, only the dark out of barred windows. Those who are hungry and in despair may not look up at all. They will see the darkness as it lies on the ground in

  front of their feet. Those who are raped will see the darkness

  as they look up into the face of the rapist. Those who are

  assaulted and brutalized by madmen will stare intently into

  the darkness to discern who is moving toward them at every

  moment. It will be hard to remember, as the storm is raging,

  that still, even though we cannot see it, the sun shines. It will

  be hard to remember that still, even though we cannot see it,

  the sun burns. We will try to see it and we will try to feel it,

  and we will forget that it warms
us still, that if it were not

  there, burning, shining, this earth would be a cold and desolate and barren place.

  As long as we have life and breath, no matter how dark the

  earth around us, that sun still bums, still shines. There is no

  today without it. There is no tomorrow without it. There was

  no yesterday without it. That light is within us— constant,

  warm, and healing. Remember it, sisters, in the dark times to

  come.

  8

  Our Blood:

  The Slavery of Women ia A m erika

  (In memory of Sarah Grimke, 1792-1873,

  and Angelina Grimke, 1805-1879)

  ( 1 )

  In her introduction to Felix Holt (1866), George Eliot wrote:

  . . . there is much pain that is quite noiseless; and vibrations that

  make human agonies are often a mere whisper in the roar of

  hurrying existence. There are glances of hatred that stab and

  raise no cry of murder; robberies that leave man or woman for

  ever beggared of peace and joy, yet kept secret by the sufferer—

  committed to no sound except that of low moans in the night,

  seen in no writing except that made on the face by the slow

  months of suppressed anguish and early morning tears. Many

  an inherited sorrow that has marred a life has been breathed

  into no human ear. 1

  I want to speak to you tonight about the “inherited sorrows” of women on this Amerikan soil, sorrows which have Delivered for the National Organization for Women, Washington, D. C., on

  August 23, 1975, to commemorate the fifty-fifth anniversary of women's

  suffrage; The Community Church of Boston, November 9, 1975.

  marred millions upon millions of human lives, sorrows which

  have “been breathed into no human ear, ” or sorrows which

  were breathed and then forgotten.

  This nation’s history is one of spilled blood. Everything that

  has grown here has grown in fields irrigated by the blood of

  whole peoples. This is a nation built on the human carrion of

  the Indian nations. This is a nation built on slave labor,

  slaughter, and grief. This is a racist nation, a sexist nation, a

  murderous nation. This is a nation pathologically seized by the

  will to domination.

  Fifty-five years ago, we women became citizens of this nation. After seventy years of fierce struggle for suffrage, our kindly lords saw fit to give us the vote. Since that time, we

  have been, at least in a ceremonial way, participants in the

  blood-letting of our government; we have been implicated

  formally and officially in its crimes. The hope of our foremothers was this: that when women had the vote, we would use it to stop the crimes of men against men and of men

  against women. Our foremothers believed that they had given

  us the tool which would enable us to transform a corrupt

  nation into a nation of righteousness. It is a bitter thing to say

  that they were deluded. It is a bitter thing to say that the vote

  became the tombstone over their obscure graves.

  We women do not have many victories to celebrate. Everywhere, our people are in chains— designated as biologically inferior to men; our very bodies controlled by men and male

  law; the victims of violent, savage crimes; bound by law, custom, and habit to sexual and domestic servitude; exploited mercilessly in any paid labor; robbed of identity and ambition

  as a condition of birth. We want to claim the vote as a victory.

  We want to celebrate. We want to rejoice. But the fact is that

  the vote was only a cosmetic change in our condition. Suffrage

  has been for us the illusion of participation without the reality

  of self-determination. We are still a colonialized people, subject to the will of men. And, in fact, behind the vote there is the story of a movement that betrayed itself by abandoning its

  own visionary insights and compromising its deepest principles. August 26, 1920, signifies, most bitterly, the death of the first feminist movement in Amerika.

  How do we celebrate that death? How do we rejoice in the

  demise of a movement that set out to salvage our lives from

  the wreck and ruin of patriarchal domination? What victory is

  there in the dead ash of a feminist movement burned out?

  The meaning of the vote is this: that we had better flesh out

  our invisible past, so that we can understand how and why so

  much ended in so little; that we had better resurrect our dead,

  to study how they lived and why they died; that we had better

  find a cure for whatever disease wiped them out, so that it will

  not decimate us.

  Many women, I think, resist feminism because it is an

  agony to be fully conscious of the brutal misogyny which

  permeates culture, society, and all personal relationships. It is

  as if our oppression were cast in lava eons ago and now it is

  granite, and each individual woman is buried inside the stone.

  Women try to survive inside the stone, buried in it. Women

  say, I like this stone, its weight is not too heavy for me.

  Women defend the stone by saying that it protects them from

  rain and wind and fire. Women say, all I have ever known is

  this stone, what is there without it?

  For some women, being buried in the stone is unbearable.

  They want to move freely. They exert all their strength to claw

  away at the hard rock that encases them. They rip their fingernails, bruise their fists, tear the skin on their hands until it is raw and bleeding. They rip their lips open on the rock, and

  break their teeth, and choke on the granite as it crumbles into

  their mouths. Many women die in this desperate, solitary battle against the stone.

  But what if the impulse to freedom were to be bom in all of

  the women buried in the stone? What if the material of the

  rock itself had become so saturated with the stinking smell of

  women’s rotting bodies, the accumulated stench of thousands

  of years of decay and death, that no woman could contain her

  repulsion? What would those women do if, finally, they did

  want to be free?

  I think that they would study the stone. I think that they

  would use every mental and physical faculty available to them

  to analyze the stone, its structure, its qualities, its nature, its

  chemical composition, its density, the physical laws which determine its properties. They would try to discover where it was eroded, what substances could decompose it, what kind of

  pressure was required to shatter it.

  This investigation would require absolute rigor and honesty. Any lie that they told themselves about the nature of the stone would impede their liberation. Any lie that they told

  themselves about their own condition inside the stone would

  perpetuate the very situation that had become intolerable to

  them.

  I think that we do not want to be buried inside the stone

  anymore. I think that the stench of decaying female carcasses

  has at last become so vile to us that we are ready to face the

  truth— about the stone, and about ourselves inside it.

  (2 )

  The slavery of women originates thousands of years ago, in a

  prehistory of civilization which remains inaccessible to us.

  How women came to be slaves, owned by men, we do not

  know. We do know that the slavery of women to men is the

  oldest known form of slav
ery in the history of the world.

  The first slaves brought to this country by Anglo-Saxon

  imperialists were women— white women. Their slavery was

  sanctified by religious and civil law, reified by custom and

  tradition, and enforced by the systematic sadism of men as a

  slave-owning class.

  The rights of women under English law during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are described in the following paragraph:

  In this consolidation which we call wedlock is a locking together.

  It is true, that man and wife are one person; but understand in

  what manner. When a small brooke or little river incorporateth

  with. . . the Thames, the poor rivulet looseth her name; it is

  carried and recarried with the new associate; it beareth no sway;

  it possesseth nothing. . . A woman as soon as she is married, is

  called covert [covered]; in Latine nupta, that is, “veiled”; as it

  were, clouded and overshadowed; she hath lost her streame.. . .

  Her new self is her superior; her companion, her master. . . Eve,

  because she helped to seduce her husband, had inflicted upon her

  a special bane. See here the reason. . . that women have no voice

  in Parliament. They make no laws, they consent to none, they

  abrogate none. All of them are understood either married, or to

  be married, and their desires are to their husbands.. . . The common laws here shaketh hand with divinitye. 2

  English law obtained in the colonies. There was no new world

  here for women.

  Women were sold into marriage in the colonies, first for the

  price of passage from England; then, as men began to accrue

  wealth, for larger sums, paid to merchants who sold women as

  if they were potatoes.

  Women were imported into the colonies to breed. Just as a

  man bought land so that he could grow food, he bought a wife

  so that he could grow sons.

  A man owned his wife and all that she produced. Her crop

  came from her womb, and this crop was harvested year after

  year until she died.

  According to law, a man even owned a woman’s unborn

  children. He also owned any personal property she might have