Our Blood: Prophecies and Discourses on Sexual Politics

2

Renouncing Sexual “E q u a lity ”

Equality: 1. the state of being equal; correspondence in

quantity, degree, value, rank, ability, etc. 2. uniform character, as of motion or surface.

Freedom: 1. state of being at liberty rather than in confinement or under physical restraint. . . 2. exemption from external control, interference, regulation, etc. 3.

power of determining one’s or its own action. . . 4.

Philos, the power to make one’s own choices or decisions

without constraint from within or without; autonomy,

self-determination. . . 5. civil liberty, as opposed to subjection to an arbitrary or despotic government. 6. political or national independence. . . 8. personal liberty, as opposed to bondage or slavery. . .

— Syn. f r e e d o m , i n d e p e n d e n c e , l i b e r t y refer to an absence of undue restrictions and an opportunity to exercise one’s rights and powers, f r e e d o m emphasizes the opportunity given for the exercise of one’s rights, powers,

desires, or the like. . . i n d e p e n d e n c e implies not only

lack of restrictions but also the ability to stand alone, unsustained by anything else. . .

— Ant. 1-3. restraint. 5, 6, 8. oppression.

Justice: 1. the quality of being just; righteousness, equitableness, or moral rightness . . . 2. rightfulness or lawfulness. . . 3. the moral principle determining just conduct.

4. conformity to this principle, as manifested in conduct;

just conduct, dealing, or treatment. . .

from The Random House Dictionary

of the English Language

In 1970 Kate Millett published Sexual Politics. In that book

she proved to many of us— who would have staked our lives

Delivered at the National Organization for Women Conference on Sexuality,

New York City, October 12, 1974.

on denying it— that sexual relations, the literature depicting

those relations, the psychology posturing to explain those relations, the economic systems that fix the necessities of those relations, the religious systems that seek to control those relations, are political. She showed us that everything that happens to a woman in her life, everything that touches or molds her, is political. 1

Women who are feminists, that is, women who grasped her

analysis and saw that it explained much of their real existence

in their real lives, have tried to understand, struggle against,

and transform the political system called patriarchy which

exploits our labor, predetermines the ownership of our bodies,

and diminishes our selfhood from the day we are bom. This

struggle has no dimension to it which is abstract: it has

touched us in every part of our lives. But nowhere has it

touched us more vividly or painfully than in that part of our

human lives which we call “love” and “sex. ” In the course of

our struggle to free ourselves from systematic oppression, a

serious argument has developed among us, and I want to bring

that argument into this room.

Some of us have committed ourselves in all areas, including

those called “love” and “sex, ” to the goal of equality, that is,

to the state of being equal; correspondence in quantity, degree, value, rank, ability; uniform character, as of motion or surface. Others of us, and I stand on this side of the argument,

do not see equality as a proper, or sufficient, or moral, or