and civil law— all embody the given reality and enforce it on
us. The given reality is, of course, that there are two sexes,
male and female; that these two sexes are opposite from each
other, polar; that the male is inherently positive and the female inherently negative; and that the positive and negative poles of human existence unite naturally into a harmonious
whole.
Truth, on the other hand, is not nearly so accessible as
reality. In my view, truth is absolute in that it does exist and it
can be found. Radium, for instance, always existed; it was
always true that radium existed; but radium did not figure in
the human notion of reality until Marie and Pierre Curie isolated it. When they did, the human notion of reality had to change in fundamental ways to accommodate the truth of
radium. Similarly, the earth was always a sphere; this was
always true; but until Columbus sailed west to find the East, it
was not real. We might say that truth does exist, and that it is
the human project to find it so that reality can be based on
it.
I have made this distinction between truth and reality in
order to enable me to say something very simple:
that there are two sexes which are discrete and opposite, which
are polar, which unite naturally and self-evidently into a harmonious whole. It is not true that the male embodies both positive and neutral human qualities and potentialities in contrast to the female who is female, according to Aristotle and all of male culture, “by virtue of a certain
And once we do not accept the notion that men are positive
and women are negative, we are essentially rejecting the notion that there are men and women at all. In other words, the system based on this polar model of existence is absolutely
real; but the model itself is not true. We are living imprisoned
inside a pernicious delusion, a delusion on which all reality as
we know it is predicated.
In my view, those of us who are women inside this system of
reality will never be free until the delusion of sexual polarity is
destroyed and until the system of reality based on it is eradicated entirely from human society and from human memory.
This is the notion of cultural transformation at the heart of
feminism. This is the revolutionary possibility inherent in the
feminist struggle.
As I see it, our revolutionary task is to destroy phallic identity in men and masochistic nonidentity in women—that is, to destroy the polar realities of men and women as we now know
them so that this division of human flesh into two camps— one
an armed camp and the other a concentration camp— is no
longer possible. Phallic identity is real and it must be destroyed. Female masochism is real and it must be destroyed.
The cultural institutions which embody and enforce those interlocked aberrations— for instance, law, art, religion, nationstates, the family, tribe, or commune based on father-right—
these institutions are real and they must be destroyed. If they
are not, we will be consigned as women to perpetual inferiority and subjugation.
I believe that freedom for women must begin in the repudiation of our own masochism. I believe that we must destroy in ourselves the drive to masochism at its sexual roots. I believe
that we must establish our own authenticity, individually and
