Our Blood: Prophecies and Discourses on Sexual Politics Page 12

— her clothing, hairbrushes, all personal effects however insignificant. He also, of course, had the right to her labor as a domestic, and owned all that she made with her hands— food,

  clothing, textiles, etc.

  A man had the right of corporal punishment, or “chastisement” as it was then called. Wives were whipped and beaten for disobedience, or on whim, with the full sanction of law and

  custom.

  A wife who ran away was a fugitive slave. She could be

  hunted down, returned to her owner, and brutally punished by

  being jailed or whipped. Anyone who aided her in her escape,

  or who gave her food or shelter, could be prosecuted for robbery.

  Marriage was a tomb. Once inside it, a woman was civilly

  dead. She had no political rights, no private rights, no personal rights. She was owned, body and soul, by her husband.

  Even when he died, she could not inherit the children she had

  birthed; a husband was required to bequeath his children to

  another male who would then have the full rights of custody

  and guardianship.

  Most white women, of course, were brought to the colonies

  as married chattel. A smaller group of white women, however,

  were brought over as indentured servants. Theoretically, indentured servants were contracted into servitude for a specified amount of time, usually in exchange for the price of passage. But, in fact, the time of servitude could be easily extended by the master as a punishment for infraction of rules

  or laws. For example, it often happened that an indentured

  servant, who had no legal or economic means of protection by

  definition, would be used sexually by her master, impregnated,

  then accused of having borne a bastard, which was a crime.

  The punishment for this crime would be an additional sentence of service to her master. One argument used to justify this abuse was that pregnancy had lessened the woman’s usefulness, so that the master had been cheated of labor. The woman was compelled to make good on his loss.

  Female slavery in England, then in Amerika, was not structurally different from female slavery anywhere else in the world. The institutional oppression of women is not the

  product of a discrete historical time, nor is it derived from a

  particular national circumstance, nor is it limited to Western

  culture, nor is it the consequence of a particular economic

  system. Female slavery in Amerika was congruent with the

  universal character of abject female subjugation: women were

  carnal chattel; their bodies and all their biological issue were

  owned by men; the domination of men over them was systematic, sadistic, and sexual in its origins; their slavery was the base on which all social life was built and the model from

  which all other forms of social domination were derived.

  The atrocity of male domination over women poisoned the

  social body, in Amerika as elsewhere. The first to die from this

  poison, of course, were women—their genius destroyed; every

  human potential diminished; their strength ravaged; their bodies plundered; their will trampled by their male masters.

  But the will to domination is a ravenous beast. There are

  never enough warm bodies to satiate its monstrous hunger.

  Once alive, this beast grows and grows, feeding on all the life

  around it, scouring the earth to find new sources of nourishment. This beast lives in each man who battens on female servitude.

  Every married man, no matter how poor, owned one slave

  — his wife. Every married man, no matter how powerless

  compared to other men, had absolute power over one slave—

  his wife. Every married man, no matter what his rank in the

  world of men, was tyrant and master over one woman— his

  wife.

  And every man, married or not, had a gender class consciousness of his right to domination over women, to brutal and absolute authority over the bodies of women, to ruthless

  and malicious tyranny over the hearts, minds, and destinies of

  women. This right to sexual domination was a birthright,

  predicated on the will of God, fixed by the known laws of

  biology, not subject to modification or to the restraint of law

  or reason. Every man, married or not, knew that he was not a

  woman, not carnal chattel, not an animal put on earth to be

  fucked and to breed. This knowledge was the center of his

  identity, the source of his pride, the germ of his power.

  It was, then, no contradiction or moral agony to begin to

  buy black slaves. The will to domination had battened on

  female flesh; its muscles had grown strong and firm in subju­

  gating women; its lust for power had become frenzied in the

  sadistic pleasure of absolute supremacy. Whatever dimension

  of human conscience must atrophy before men can turn other

  humans into chattel had become shriveled and useless long

  before the first black slaves were imported into the English

  colonies. Once female slavery is established as the diseased

  groundwork of a society, racist and other hierarchical pathologies inevitably develop from it.

  There was a slave trade in blacks which pre-dated the English colonialization of what is now the eastern United States.

  During the Middle Ages, there were black slaves in Europe in

  comparatively small numbers. It was the Portuguese who first

  really devoted themselves to the abduction and sale of blacks.

  They developed the Atlantic slave trade. Black slaves were

  imported in massive quantities into Portuguese, Spanish,

  French, Dutch, Danish, and Swedish colonies.

  In the English colonies, as I have said, every married man

  had one slave, his wife. As men accrued wealth, they bought

  more slaves, black slaves, who were already being brought

  across the Atlantic to be sold into servitude. A man’s wealth

  has always been measured by how much he owns. A man buys

  property both to increase his wealth and to demonstrate his

  wealth. Black slaves were bought for both these purposes.

  The laws which fixed the chattel status of white women

  were now extended to apply to the black slave. The divine

  right which had sanctioned the slavery of women to men was

  now interpreted to make the slavery of blacks to white men a

  function of God’s will. The malicious notion of biological inferiority, which originated to justify the abject subjugation of women to men, was now expanded to justify the abject subjugation of blacks to whites. The whip, used to cut the backs of white women to ribbons, was now wielded against black flesh

  as well.

  Black men and black women were both kidnapped from

  their African homes and sold into slavery, but their condition

  in slavery differed in kind. The white man perpetuated his

  view of female inferiority in the institution of black slavery.

  The value of the black male slave in the marketplace was

  double the value of the black female slave; his labor in the

  field or in the house was calculated to be worth twice hers.

  The condition of the black woman in slavery was determined first by her sex, then by her race. The nature of her servitude differed from that of the black male because she was

  carnal chattel, a sexual commodity, subject to the sexual will

  of her white master. In the field or in the house, she endured

  the same conditions as the male slave. She worked as hard; she

  worked as long; her food and clothing were
as inadequate; her

  superiors wielded the whip against her as often. But the black

  woman was bred like a beast of burden, whether the stud who

  mounted her was her white master or a black slave of his

  choosing. Her economic worth, always less than that of a

  black male, was measured first by her capacity as a breeder to

  produce more wealth in the form of more slaves for the master; then by her capacities as a field or house slave.

  As black slaves were imported into the English colonies, the

  character of white female slavery was altered in a very bizarre

  way. Wives remained chattel. Their purpose was still to produce sons year after year until they died. But their male masters, in an ecstasy of domination, put their bodies to a new use: they were to be ornaments, utterly useless, utterly passive, decorative objects kept to demonstrate the surplus wealth of the master.

  This creation of woman-as-ornament can be observed in all

  societies predicated on female slavery where men have accumulated wealth. In China, for instance, where for a thousand years women’s feet were bound, the poor woman’s feet were bound loosely— she still had to work; her feet were

  bound, her husband’s were not; that made him superior to her

  because he could walk faster than she could; but still, she had

  to produce the children and raise them, do the domestic labor,

  and often work in the fields as well; he could not afford to

  cripple her completely because he needed her labor. But the

  woman who was wife to the rich man was immobilized; her

  feet were reduced to stumps so that she was utterly useless,

  except as a fuck and a breeder. The degree of her uselessness

  signified the degree of his wealth. Absolute physical crippling

  was the height of female fashion, the ideal of feminine beauty,

  the erotic touchstone of female identity.

  In Amerika as elsewhere, physical bondage was the real

  purpose of high feminine fashion. The lady’s costume was a

  sadistic invention designed to abuse her body. Her ribs were

  pushed up and in; her waist was squeezed to its tiniest possible

  size so that she would resemble an hourglass; her skirts were

  wide and very heavy. The movements that she could make in

  this constraining and often painful attire were regarded as the

  essence of feminine grace. Ladies fainted so often because

  they could not breathe. Ladies were so passive because they

  could not move.

  Also, of course, ladies were trained to mental and moral

  idiocy. Any display of intelligence compromised a lady’s value

  as an ornament. Any assertion of principled will contradicted

  her master’s definition of her as a decorative object. Any rebellion against the mindless passivity which the slave-owning class had articulated as her true nature could incur the wrath

  of her powerful owner and bring on her censure and ruin.

  The expensive gowns which adorned the lady, her leisure,

  and her vacuity have obscured for many the cold, hard reality

  of her status as carnal chattel. Since her function was to signify male wealth, it is often assumed that she possessed that wealth. In fact, she was a breeder and an ornament, with no

  private or political rights, with no claim either to dignity or

  freedom.

  The genius of any slave system is found in the dynamics

  which isolate slaves from each other, obscure the reality of a

  common condition, and make united rebellion against the

  oppressor inconceivable. The power of the master is absolute

  and incontrovertible. His authority is protected by civil law,

  armed force, custom, and divine and/or biological sanction.

  Slaves characteristically internalize the oppressor’s view of

  them, and this internalized view congeals into a pathological

  self-hatred. Slaves typically learn to hate the qualities and

  behaviors which characterize their own group and to identify

  their own self-interest with the self-interest of their oppressor.

  The master’s position at the top is invulnerable; one aspires to

  become the master, or to become close to the master, or to be

  recognized by virtue of one’s good service to the master. Resentment, rage, and bitterness at one’s own powerlessness cannot be directed upward against him, so it is all directed

  against other slaves who are the living embodiment of one’s

  own degradation.

  Among women, this dynamic works itself out in what Phyllis Chesler has called “harem politics. ”3 The first wife is tyrant over the second wife who is tyrant over the third wife, etc.

  The authority of the first wife, or any other woman in the

  harem who has prerogatives over other women, is a function

  of her powerlessness in relation to the master. The labor that

  she does as a fuck and as a breeder can be done by any other

  woman of her gender class. She, in common with all other

  women of her abused class, is instantly replaceable. This

  means that whatever acts of cruelty she commits against other

  women are done as the agent of the master. Her behavior

  inside the harem over and against other women is in the interest of her master, whose dominance is fixed by the hatred of women for each other.

  Inside the harem, removed from all access to real power,

  robbed of any possibility of self-determination, all women

  typically act out on other women their repressed rage against

  the master; and they also act out their internalized hatred of

  their own kind. Again, this effectively secures the master’s

  dominance, since women divided against each other will not

  unite against him.

  In the domain of the owner of black slaves, the white

  woman was the first wife, but the master had many other concubines, actually or potentially—black women slaves. The

  white wife became her husband’s agent against these other

  carnal chattel. Her rage against her owner could only be taken

  out on them, which it was, often ruthlessly and brutally. Her

  hatred of her own kind was acted out on those who, like her,

  were carnal chattel, but who, unlike her, were black. She also,

  of course, aggressed against her own white daughters by binding and shackling them as ladies, forcing them to develop the passivity of ornaments, and endorsing the institution of marriage.

  Black women slaves, on whose bodies the carnage of white

  male dominance was visited most savagely, had lives of unrelieved bitterness. They did backbreaking labor; their children were taken from them and sold; they were the sexual servants

  of their masters; and they often bore the wrath of white

  women humiliated into cruelty by the conditions of their own

  servitude.

  Harem politics, the self-hatred of the oppressed which

  wreaks vengeance on its own kind, and the tendency of the

  slave to identify her own self-interest with the self-interest of

  the master— all conspired to make it impossible for white

  women, black women, and black men to understand the astonishing similarities in their conditions and to unite against their common oppressor.

  Now, there are many who believe that changes occur in

  society because of disembodied processes: they describe

  change in terms of technological advances; or they paint giant

  pictures of abstract forces clashing in thin air. But I think that

  we as women know that the
re are no disembodied processes;

  that all history originates in human flesh; that all oppression is

  inflicted by the body of one against the body of another; that

  all social change is built on the bone and muscle, and out of

  the flesh and blood, of human creators.

  Two such creators were the Grimke sisters of Charleston,

  South Carolina. Sarah, bom in 1792, was the sixth of fourteen

  children; Angelina, bom in 1805, was the last. Their father

  was a rich lawyer who owned numerous black slaves.

  Early in her childhood, Sarah rebelled against her own

  condition as a lady and against the ever-present horror of

  black slavery. Her earliest ambition was to become a lawyer,

  but education was denied her by her outraged father who

  wanted her only to dance, flirt, and marry. “With me learning

  was a passion, ” she wrote later. “My nature [was] denied her

  appropriate nutriment, her course counteracted, her aspirations crushed. ”4 In her adolescence, Sarah conscientiously defled the Southern law that prohibited teaching slaves to

  read. She gave reading lessons in the slave Sunday school until

  she was discovered by her father; and even after that, she

  continued to tutor her own maid. “The light was put out, ” she

  wrote, “the keyhole screened, and flat on our stomachs, before

  the fire, with the spelling-book under our eyes, we defied the

  laws of South Carolina. ”5 Eventually, this too was discovered,

  and understanding that the maid would be whipped for further

  infractions, Sarah ended the reading lessons.

  In 1821, Sarah left the South and went to Philadelphia. She

  renounced her family’s Episcopal religion and became a

  Quaker.

  Angelina, too, could not tolerate black slavery. In 1829, at

  the age of twenty-four, she wrote in her diary: “That system

  must be radically wrong which can only be supported by

  transgressing the laws of God. ”6 In 1828, she too moved to

  Philadelphia.

  In 1835, Angelina wrote a personal letter to William Lloyd

  Garrison, the militant abolitionist. She wrote: “The ground