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 slavery 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
— 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.