The real core of the feminist vision, its revolutionary kernel
if you will, has to do with the abolition of all sex roles— that
is, an absolute transformation of human sexuality and the institutions derived from it. In this work, no part of the male sexual model can possibly apply. Equality within the framework of the male sexual model, however that model is reformed or modified, can only perpetuate the model itself and the injustice and bondage which are its intrinsic consequences.
I suggest to you that transformation of the male sexual
model under which we now all labor and “love” begins where
there is a congruence, not a separation, a congruence of feeling and erotic interest; that it begins in what we do know about female sexuality as distinct from male— clitoral touch
and sensitivity, multiple orgasms, erotic sensitivity all over the
body (which needn’t— and shouldn’t—be localized or contained genitally), in tenderness, in self-respect and in absolute mutual respect. For men I suspect that this transformation
begins in the place they most dread— that is, in a limp penis. I
think that men will have to give up their precious erections
and begin to make love as women do together. I am saying
that men will have to renounce their phallocentric personalities, and the privileges and powers given to them at birth as a consequence of their anatomy, that they will have to excise
everything in them that they now value as distinctively “male. ”
No reform, or matching of orgasms, will accomplish this.
I have been reading excerpts from the diary of Sophie Tolstoy, which I found in a beautiful book called Revelations: Diaries of Women, edited by Mary Jane Moffat and Charlotte Painter. Sophie Tolstoy wrote: And the main thing is not to love. See what I have done by loving him so deeply! It is so painful and humiliating; but he thinks that it is merely silly. “You say one thing and always do another. ”
But what is the good of arguing in this superior manner, when
I have nothing in me but this humiliating love and a bad temper;
and these two things have been the cause of all my misfortunes,
for my temper has always interfered with my love. I want nothing but his love and sympathy, and he won’t give it to me; and all my pride is trampled in the mud; I am nothing but a miser
able crushed worm, whom no one wants, whom no one loves, a
useless creature with morning sickness, and a big belly, two rotten teeth, and a bad temper, a battered sense of dignity, and a love which nobody wants and which nearly drives me insane. 2
Does anyone really think that things have changed so much
since Sophie Tolstoy made that entry in her diary on October
25, 1886? And what would you tell her if she came here
today, to her sisters? Would you have handed her a vibrator
and taught her how to use it? Would you have given her the
techniques of fellatio that might better please Mr. Tolstoy?
Would you have suggested to her that her salvation lay in
becoming a “sexual athlete”? Learning to cruise? Taking as
many lovers as Leo did? Would you tell her to start thinking
of herself as a “person” and not as a woman?
Or might you have found the courage, the resolve, the conviction to be her true sisters—to help her to extricate herself from the long darkness of Leo’s shadow; to join with her in
changing the very organization and texture of this world, still
constructed in 1974 to serve him, to force her to serve him?
I suggest to you that Sophie Tolstoy is here today, in the
bodies and lives of many sisters. Do not fail her.
3
R em em bering the W itches
I dedicate this talk to Elizabeth Gould Davis, author of The
First Sex, who several months ago killed herself and who toward the end of her life was a victim of rape; to Anne Sexton, poet, who killed herself on October 4, 1974; to Inez Garcia,
thirty years old, wife and mother, who was a few weeks ago
sentenced in California to five years to life imprisonment for
killing the three-hundred-pound man who held her down while
another man raped her; and to Eva Diamond, twenty-six years
old, whose child was taken from her five years ago when she
was declared an unfit mother because she was convicted of
welfare fraud and who several months ago was sentenced in
Minnesota to fifteen years in prison for killing her husband of
one year while he was attempting to beat her to death.
Delivered at New York City chapter meeting of the National Organization
for Women, October 3 1 , 1974.
We are here tonight to talk about gynocide. Gynocide is the
systematic crippling, raping, and/or killing of women by men.
Gynocide is the word that designates the relentless violence
perpetrated by the gender class men against the gender class
women.
For instance, Chinese footbinding is an example of gynocide. For one thousand years in China all women were systematically crippled so that they would be passive, erotic objects for men; so that they were carnal property; so that they were entirely dependent on men for food, water, shelter, and
clothing; so that they could not walk, or walk away, or unite
against the sadism of their male oppressors.
Another example of gynocide is the systematic rape of the
women of Bangladesh. There, the rape of women was part of
the military strategy of the male invading armies. As many of
you know, it is estimated that between 200, 000 and 400, 000
women were raped by the invading soldiers and when the war
was over, those women were considered unclean by their husbands, brothers, and fathers, and were left to whore, starve, and die. The Bangladesh gynocide was perpetrated first by the
men who invaded Bangladesh, and then by those who lived
there— the husbands, brothers, and fathers: it was perpetrated
by the gender class men against the gender class women.
Tonight, on Halloween, we are here to remember another
gynocide, the mass slaughter of the nine million women who
were called witches. These women, our sisters, were killed
over a period of three hundred years in Germany, Spain, Italy,
France, Holland, Switzerland, England, Wales, Ireland, Scotland, and Amerika. They were killed in the name of God the Father and His only Son, Jesus Christ.
The organized persecution of the witches began officially on
December 9, 1484. Pope Innocent VIII named two Dominican monks, Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger, as Inquisitors and asked the good fathers to define witchcraft, to isolate the modus operandi of the witches, and to standardize trial