blood o f women implicit in the weaponry and I will make it
explicit; and from this I enunciate another political principle,
which is, The blood o f women is implicit, make it explicit. A
woman I didn’t know with the face o f an angel approached
me. She leaned over. She touched me softly on the shoulder.
She whispered. She had serious and kind eyes. She had a soft
and kind voice. Andrea, she said, it is very important for
women to kill men. I contemplated this, shuddering; I
meditated on it; I breathed in deeply; I drew pictures, stories o f
life with men, with pencils, with crayons; I dreamed; I
understood yes; yes, it is. I enunciated a political principle,
which went as follows: It is very important for women to kill
men. His death, o f course, is unbearable. His death is
intolerable, unspeakable, unfair, insufferable; I agree; I learned
it since the day I was born; terrible; his death is terrible; are you
crazy; are you stupid; are you cruel? He can’t be killed; for
what he did to you? It’s absurd; it’s silly; unjustified; uncivilized; crazed; another madwoman, where’s the attic? He didn’t mean it; or he didn’t do it, not really, or not fully, or not
knowing, or not intending; he didn’t understand; or he
couldn’t help it; or he w on ’t again; certainly he will try not to;
unless; well; he just can’t help it; be patient; he needs help;
sym pathy; over time. Yes, her ass is grass but you can’t expect
miracles, it takes time, she wasn’t perfect either you know; he
needs time, education, help, support; yeah, she’s dead meat;
but you can’t expect someone to change right away, overnight, besides she wasn’t perfect, was she, he needs time, help,
support, education; well, yeah, he was out o f control; listen,
she’s lucky it wasn’t worse, I’m not covering it up or saying
what he did was right, but she’s not perfect, believe me, and he
had a terrible mother; yeah, I know, you had to scrape her o ff
the ground; but you know, she w asn’t perfect either, he’s got a
problem; he’s human, he’s got a problem. Oh, darling, no; he
didn’t have a problem before; now he’s got a problem. I am on
this earth to see that now he has a problem. It is very important
for wom en to kill men; he’s got a problem now. I was in the
courtroom. The walls were brown. The judge wore a long
black dress. G o d ’s name was written on the wall over his head.
There were police everywhere. The rapist smiled; at the
woman. He had kidnapped her. He had held her for nearly
tw o days, or was it four, or were there five o f them, each being
tried separately? He had fucked her over and over, brutally.
He had sliced her with a knife. He had sodomized her. He had
burned her. She shaked; she shivered; she screamed; she cried.
He walked; the ju ry found her guilty. I was in the court. The
walls were gray. He beat the wom an near to death; they were
married; the judge didn’t see the problem; she’s the wife, after
all; the guy walked. T hejudge wore a long black dress. G o d ’s
name was written on the wall above his head. I was in the
courtroom. The walls were green. The judge wore a long
black dress. G od ’s name was written on the wall above his
head. The daddy had raped the kid, over and over, so many
times, she was four, he wanted custody, he got it, it was a
second marriage, the first kid was raped too but the judge
w ouldn’t admit it into evidence, said it was prejudicial, you
know, just because he did it to that one doesn’t prove that he
did it to this one; they keep saying that; with them all; the
beaters and the rapers; just stack the women they did it to
before, the past women, in piles, for garbage collection; don’t
want them to prejudice how we look at him this time, when he
did it to this one w ho’s a slut anyway which isn’t prejudicial
because it is axiomatic; how many times does he get to do it in
his lifetime, to how many, whatever it is he likes doing, a
beater, a raper, o f women, o f children; that’s w hy they don’t
teach girls to count. I want each one followed. I want each one
killed. It is very important for women to kill men. I know girls
sentence on her, she does it to herself, later. I know girls who
been banged by thousands o f men; I am one such girl myself. I
know girls who been cut open and fucked in the hole. I know a
girl who was kidnapped by a bunch o f college boys, a
fraternity, and kept for days; used over and over; beat her to
blood and pus; sliced her throat and dumped her; I know her
and I know another woman raped the same w ay, wasn’t
sliced, she escaped; I know so many girls who been kidnapped
and gang-raped you couldn’t fit them into a ballroom; I know
so many girls who been tortured as children you couldn’t fit
them into a ballroom; I know so many girls who was fucked
by their daddies you couldn’t fit them into a ballroom. N o one
cares; how many times can you say raped; it don’t matter and
no one stops them. I throw rocks through the w indows o f rape
emporiums; I destroy business properties o f men who rape; or
men who beat women; if I find out; sometimes I hear her
screaming; there’s screaming all over the cities; it travels up the
air shafts o f apartment buildings; I spray-paint their w indows;
I spray-paint their cars; I go to the courts; I follow them home;
I follow them to w ork; I have an air rifIe; I break their w indows
with it; I am seeking to blind them; the raped women come out
at night, we convene, there’s rallies, marches, sometimes a
mob, we stomp on the rape magazines or we invade where
they prostitute us, where we are herded and sold, we ruin their
theaters where they have sex on us, we face them, we scream
in their fucking faces, we are the women they have made
scream when they choose, when they like it; do you like it
now? We’re all the same, cunt is cunt is cunt, w e’re facsimiles
o f the ones they done it to, or we are the ones they done it to,
and I can’t tell him from him from him; we set fires, to their
stores, to them when they come outside from the Roman
circuses, inside they are set on fire metaphorically, the pimp
uses the woman to make them burn, she’s torn to pieces and
they get hot, outside we introduce the literal; burn, darling,
using girls is hot; we smash bums and we are ready for Mr.
Wall Street who will follow any piece o f ass down any dark
street; now he’s got a problem; it is very important for women
to kill men. We surge through the sex dungeons where our
kind are kept, the butcher shops where our kind are sold; we
break them loose; Am nesty International will not help us, the
United Nations will not help us, the World Court will not
help us; so at night, ghosts, we convene; to spread justice,
which stands in for law, which has always been merciless,
which is, by its nature, cruel. T hey don’t stop themselves, do
they? T hey get scared, even the bouncers at the rape em poriums, it’s inspiring, they ain’t used to mobs o f girls who surge and kick and smash; let alone that we are almost ethereal, so
ghostly, so frail and fucked out, near to death. Y ou see one o f
the big ones afraid and it will inspire you for a thousand years.
A girl alone or any mass o f girls; kicking, pushing, shoving;
you can tear their prisons down where they keep women
caged in; you must, mustn’t you? I have spent some years
searching for words, writing, wanting to write, and I have
spent some years now, writing a plan, a map with words, a
drawing with songs, a geography o f us here, them there, with
lyrics for how to move, us through them, us over them, us
past them; I published the military plan in haiku— Listen/
Huey killed/M e too— and it was widely understood; among
the raped; who do not exist; except in my mind; because they
are not proven to exist; and it is not proven to happen; but still;
we convene. I map out a plan, which I communicate through
gesture, graphs and charts and poems and a dance I do alone
after dark; a stark and violent dance; on his face; the raped will
hear me. They don’t stop themselves, do they? I enunciate a
fundamental political principle; I write it down, in secret; I
enunciate a plan; Stop them. I have looked for words. I have
read books. I have tried to say some simple things that
happened, with borrowed words, or old words, with sad
words, words tacked together shamefully without art. I have
sobbed for wanting words; because o f wanting to say the
simplest things; what he did and what it was, or what it was
like, as if it would matter if it could be said, or said right; I have
sobbed to him saying stop; I have begged person-to-person;
stop. Walt was a poet o f abundance; he had a surfeit o f words;
the ones I struggled for mean nothing, I looked for raped, was
it real, was it Nazis, could it be; how much did it hurt; what
did it signify; I wanted to say, it destroys freedom, it destroys
love, I want freedom, I want love, freedom first, freedom
now; rape rape rape; fucking 0; I found the word, it’s the right
word; fucking 0; no one cares; enough to stop them; stop
them. I will never have easy words; at my fingertips as they
say; but I will stake m y life on these words: Stop them. They
don’t stop themselves, do they? I’m Andrea, which means
manhood, but I do not rape; it is possible to be manly in your
heart, which I have always been, and not rape, I’ve always
liked girls, I’ve made love with many, I’ve never forced
anyone, don’t tell me you can’t, save it for them that don’t
know what it’s like, being with a girl. I was born in 1946, after
Auschwitz, after the bomb, I never wanted to kill, I had an
abhorrence for killing but it was raped from me, raped from
m y brain; obliterated, like freedom. I’m a veteran o f Birkenau
and Massada and deep throat, uncounted rapes, thousands o f
men, I’m twenty-seven, I don’t sleep. They leave the shell for
reasons o f their own. I have no fear o f any kind, they fucked it
out o f me some time ago, it’s neither here nor there, not good
or bad, except girls without fear scare them. I was born in
Camden, on M ickle Street, down from where Walt Whitman
lived, the great gray poet, a visionary, a prophet o f love; and I
loved, according to his poems. I was poor, I never shied away
from life, and I loved. I had a vision too, like his, but I will
never write a poem like his, a song o f myself, I count the
multitudes and so on, the multitudes passed on top o f me,
sticking it in, I lost count. For the record, Walt was wrong;
only a girl had a chance in hell o f being right. A lot o f men on
the B o w ery resemble Walt; huge, hairy types; I visit him
often. It was the end o f April, still cold, a brilliant, lucid cold.
Y ou could feel summer edging its w ay north. Y ou could smell
spring coming. Y ou would sing; if your throat wasn’t ripped.
Y ou r heart would rise, happy; if you wasn’t raped; in
perpetuity. I went out; at night; to smash a man’s face in; I
declared war. M y nom de guerre is Andrea One; I am reliably
told there are many more; girls named courage who are ready
to kill.
Not Andrea: Epilogue
It is, o f course, tiresome to dwell on sexual abuse. It is also
simple-minded. The keys to a woman’s life are buried in a
context that does not yield its meanings easily to an observer not
sensitive to the hidden shadings, the subtle dynamics, o f a self
that is partly obscured, partly lost, yet still self-determining, still
agentic— willful, responsible, indeed, even wanton. We are
seeking for the analytical tools— rules o f discourse that are
enhanced rather than diminished by ambiguity. We value
nuance. Dogma is anathema to the spirit o f inquiry that animates
women’s biography. The notion that bad things happen is both
propagandistic and inadequate. We want to affirm the spiritual
dignity and the sexual bonding we seek to find in women’s lives.
We want a discourse o f triumph, if you will pardon me for being
rhetorically elegant. I have heard the Grand Inquisitor Dworkin
say that, as we are women, such discourse will have to be
ambiguous. She is a prime example, o f course, o f the simple-
minded demogogue who promotes the proposition that bad
things are bad. This axiom is too reductive to be seriously
entertained, except, o f course, by the poor, the uneducated, the
lunatic fringe that she both exploits and appeals to. It is, for
instance, anti-mythological to perceive rape in moralistic terms
as a bad experience without transformative dimensions to it. We
would then have to ignore or impugn the myth o f Persephone,
in which her abduction and rape led, in the view o f the wise
ancient Greeks, to the establishment o f the seasons, a mythologi-
cal tribute, in fact, to the seasonal character o f the menarche. It
is disparaging and profoundly anti-intellectual to concentrate
on the virtual slave status o f women per se in ancient Greece as
if that in and o f itself rendered their mythological insights into
rape suspect. In fact, intercourse, forced or not, is the
precondition for a fertile, fruitful, multiplied as it were,
abundance o f living things, symbolized by the planting and
harvesting seasons. I am, o f course, not allying m yself either
with the right-wing endorsement o f motherhood or fam ily in
making these essentially keen, neutral, and inescapable observations. We cannot say the Greek philosophers and artists, the
storytellers and poets, were wrong, or dismiss them, simply
because some among us want to say that rape is bad or feels
bad or has some destructive effects. In fact, it has not been
scientifically proven that the effects o f rape are worse than the
effects o f gender-neutral assault and we are not willing to stew
in our stigma. As one distinguished feminist o f our own
school wr
ote some years ago in a left-wing journal o f
socialism, and I am paraphrasing: we should not dwell on rape
at all because to do so negatively valorizes sex; instead we
should actively concentrate on enjoying sex so that, in a sense,
the good can push out the bad; it is sex-negative to continue to
stigmatize an act, a process, an experience, that sometimes has
negative consequences; if we expand sexual pleasure we will,
in fact, be repudiating rape— in consciousness and in practice.
Further, in w om en’s academic circles we reify this perspective
by refusing, for instance, to have cross-cultural or cross-disci-
plinary discussions with those who continue to see themselves
as victims. While we deplore racism and endorse the goals o f
wom en o f color, we do not enter into discussions on the
Holocaust with Je w s or on slavery with Afro-Am ericans
because our theory, applied to their experience, might well be
misunderstood and cause offense. In fact, they will not affirm
the agentic dimensions o f their ow n historical experience,
which, we agree, is essentially an oppressive one. They
denounce and declaim, and we support them in those efforts.
But, as we find transcending affirmative values in wom en’s
experience under patriarchy, so too we can find concrete
examples o f the same dynamic in both Afro-American and
Jew ish experience. Ghetto Jew s from Eastern Europe did,
after all, learn to do physical labor in the concentration
camps— these are skills that have value, especially for those
essentially alien to working-class experience—intellectuals,
scholars, and so on. Jew ish elitism was transformed into a new
physicality, however base and tortured; one can see a foreshadowing o f the new Jew ish state— the shovels and picks o f the stone quarries transposed to the desert. O f course, one
must have some analytical objectivity. Afro-Americans sang
as a creative response to the suffering o f slavery such that
suffering may not be the defining characteristic o f the A fro-
American experience. The creation o f a major and original
musical genre, the blues, came directly out o f the slave