Our Blood: Prophecies and Discourses on Sexual Politics

only chance.

The editor who decided to publish Our Blood did not

particularly like my politics, but she did like my prose. I was

happy to be appreciated as a writer. The company was the

only unionized publishing house in New York and it also

had an active women’s group. The women employees were

universally wonderful to me—vitally interested in feminism,

moved by my work, conscious and kind. They invited me to

address the employees of the company on their biennial

women’s day, shortly before the publication of Our Blood. I

discussed the systematic presumption of male ownership of

women’s bodies and labor, the material reality of that

ownership, the economic degrading of women’s work. (The

talk was subsequently published in abridged form under the

title “Phallic Imperialism” in Ms., December 1976. ) Some

men in suits sat dourly through it, taking notes. That,

needless to say, was the end of Our Blood. There was one

other telling event: a highly placed department head threw

the manuscript of Our Blood at my editor across a room. I

did not recognize male tenderness, he said. I don’t know

whether he made the observation before or after he threw

the manuscript.

Our Blood was published in cloth in 1976. The only

review of it in a major periodical was in Ms. many months

after the book was out of bookstores. It was a rave.

Otherwise, the book was ignored: but purposefully, maliciously. Gloria Steinem, Robin Morgan, and Karen DeCrow tried to review the book to no avail. I contacted

nearly a hundred feminist writers, activists, editors. A large

majority made countless efforts to have the book reviewed.

Some managed to publish reviews in feminist publications,

but even those who frequently published elsewhere were

unable to place reviews. No one was able to break the larger

silence.

Our Blood was sent to virtually every paperback publisher in the United States, sometimes more than once, over a period of years. None would publish it. Therefore, it is

with great joy, and a shaky sense of victory, that I welcome

its publication in this edition. I have a special love for this

book. Most feminists I know who have read Our Blood

have taken me aside at one time or another to tell me that

they have a special affection and respect for it. There is, I

believe, something quite beautiful and unique about it.

Perhaps that is because it was written for a human voice.

Perhaps it is because I had to fight so hard to say what is in

it. Perhaps it is because Our Blood has touched so many

women’s lives directly: it has been said over and over again

to real women and the experience of saying the words has

informed the writing of them. Woman Hating was written

by a younger writer, one more reckless and more hopeful