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