to the glamorous effect to pornography, [and] coaxing other
women into doing the same thing because I was a strong
woman. Coming from a woman it sounds better, it comes
across better, and I didn’t realize I was doing it until I got the
chance to do some healing. In the long run I was being tricked
into it just like every other woman out there. ”
What does it mean if you cal yourself a feminist, have the
education, and act like a designer-special armed guard to keep
women prostituting?
It is true, I think, that at the beginning, in the early years,
feminists did not and could not imagine women hurting other
women on purpose - being so morally or politically cor upt.
The naivete was stunning; betrayal is always an easier choice.
One follows the patriarchal nar ative by blaming the incest-
mothers, the Chinese mothers who bound their daughters’
feet, the bad mothers in the fairy tales. One did not want to
fol ow the patriarchal nar ative. But is it not the political
responsibility of feminists to figure out the role of female-to-
female betrayal in upholding male supremacy? Isn’t that
necessary? And how can one do what is necessary if one is too
cowardly to face the truth?
The truth of a bad or incapacitated mother is a hard truth
to face. As one woman said, “I was forced to be the head of
the family because my mother couldn’t do it. She was in a
mental institution. ” Another woman said, “My mother was
153
Heartbreak
scared for men to be around [because] al my sisters were al
molested by this man, and so she protected us from him, but
a lady came in my life who seduced me and molested me also.
I was twelve, and I thought I was safe. ” So there she was, the
bad mother or the betraying mother or the incapacitated
mother or the unknowing mother; and each had her own sadness or ter or.
Not too many prostituting women got past twelve without
being sexual y abused, and not too many were childless, and
not too many lived lives as teenagers and adults without men
abusing them: “I was into drugs, in the limelights and the
glamorous life, and thought I was bet er than the whores on
the streets ’cause what I did was drove fancy cars and travel
around in airplanes, al this shit, but I was stil in the same pain
as everybody else, [and] instead of using men I started using
women for whatever my needs was. ” The media antifeminists
are not unlike the woman-using prostitutes and the strung-out
mothers - their venom goes in the direction of other women
because it is easier than taking on men. Is this ever going to
stop?
154
Immoral
People play life as if it’s a game, whereas each step is a real
step. The shock of being unable to control what happens,
especially the tragedies, overwhelms one. Someone dies;
someone leaves; someone lies. There is sickness, misery, loneliness, betrayal. One is alone not just at the end but al the time. One tries to camouflage pain and failure. One wants
to believe that poverty can be cured by wealth, cruelty by
kindness; but neither is true. The orphan is always an orphan.
The worst immorality is in apathy, a deadening of caring
about others, not because they have some special claim but
because they have no claim at al .
The worst immorality is in disinterest, indifference, so that
the lone person in pain has no importance; one need not feel
an urgency about rescuing the suffering person.
The worst immorality is in dressing up to go out in order
not to have to think about those who are hungry, without
shelter, without protection.
The worst immorality is in living a trivial life because one
is afraid to face any other kind of life - a despairing life or an
anguished life or a twisted and difficult life.
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Heartbreak
The worst immorality is in living a mediocre life, because
kindness rises above mediocrity always, and not to be kind
locks one into an ethos of boredom and stupidity.
The worst immorality is in imitating those who give nothing.
The worst immorality is in conforming so that one fits in,
smart or fashionable, mock-heroic or the very best of the very
same.
The worst immorality is accepting the status quo because
one is afraid of gossip against oneself.
The worst immorality is in selling out simply because one
is afraid.
The worst immorality is a studied ignorance, a purposeful
refusal to see or know.
The worst immorality is living without ambition or work
or pushing the rest of us along.
The worst immorality is being timid when there is no
threat.
The worst immorality is refusing to push oneself where one
is afraid to go.
The worst immorality is not to love actively.
The worst immorality is to close down because heartbreak
has worn one down.
The worst immorality is to live according to rituals, rites of
passage that are predetermined and impersonal.
The worst immorality is to deny someone else dignity.
The worst immorality is to give in, give up.
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Immoral
The worst immorality is to follow a road map of hate
drawn by white supremacists and male supremacists.
The worst immorality is to use another person’s body in the
passing of time.
The worst immorality is to inflict pain.
The worst immorality is to be careless with another
person’s heart and soul.
The worst immorality is to be stupid, because it’s easy
The worst immorality is to repudiate one’s own uniqueness
in order to fit in.
The worst immorality is to set one’s goals so low that one
must crawl to meet them.
The worst immorality is to hurt children.
The worst immorality is to use one’s strength to dominate
or control.
The worst immorality is to sur ender the essence of oneself
for love or money.
The worst immorality is to believe in nothing, do nothing,
achieve nothing.
The worst immoralities are but one, a single sin of human
nothingness and stupidity. “Do no harm” is the counterpoint
to apathy, indifference, and passive aggression; it is the fundamental moral imperative. “Do no harm” is the opposite of immoral. One must do something and at the same time do no
harm. “Do no harm” remains the hardest ethic.
157
Memory
Memory became political on the global scale when Holocaust
survivors had to remember in order to testify against Nazi war
criminals. It had always been political to articulate a crime
that had happened to one and name the criminal, but that had
been on a small scale: the family, the village, the local legal
system. Sometimes one remembered but made no accusation.
This was true with pogroms as well as rapes.
There have been Holocaust survivors who refused to