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
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