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
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