they are often in their individual lives victimized by women—
by mothers, wives, and “girlfriends. ” They tell us that women
provoke acts of violence through our carnality, or malice, or
avarice, or vanity, or stupidity. They tell us that their violence
originates in us and that we are responsible for it. They tell us
that their lives are full of pain, and that we are its source.
They tell us that as mothers we injure them irreparably, as
wives we castrate them, as lovers we steal from them semen,
youth, and manhood— and never, never, as mothers, wives, or
lovers do we ever give them enough.
And what are we to think? Because if we begin to piece
together all of the instances of violence— the rapes, the assaults, the cripplings, the killings, the mass slaughters; if we read their novels, poems, political and philosophical tracts and
see that they think of us today what the Inquisitors thought of
us yesterday; if we realize that historically gynocide is not
some mistake, some accidental excess, some dreadful fluke,
but is instead the logical consequence of what they believe to
be our god-given or biological natures; then we must finally
understand that under patriarchy gynocide is the ongoing
reality of life lived by women. And then we must look to each
other— for the courage to bear it and for the courage to
change it.
The struggle of women, the feminist struggle, is not a struggle for more money per hour, or for equal rights under male law, or for more women legislators who will operate within
the confines of male law. These are all emergency measures,
designed to save women’s lives, as many as possible, now,
today. But these reforms will not stem the tide of gynocide;
these reforms will not end the relentless violence perpetrated
by the gender class men against the gender class women. These
reforms will not stop the increasing rape epidemic in this
country, or the wife-beating epidemic in England. They will
not stop the sterilizations of black and poor white women who
are the victims of male doctors who hate female carnality.
These reforms will not empty mental institutions of women
put into them by male relatives who hate them for rebelling
against the limits of the female role, or against the conditions
of female servitude. They will not empty prisons filled with
women who, in order to survive, whored; or who, after being
raped, killed the rapist; or who, while being beaten, killed the
man who was killing them. These reforms will not stop men
from living off exploited female domestic labor, nor will these
reforms stop men from reinforcing male identity by psychologically victimizing women in so-called “love” relationships.
And no personal accommodation within the system of
patriarchy will stop this relentless gynocide. Under patriarchy,
no woman is safe to live her life, or to love, or to mother
children. Under patriarchy, every woman is a victim, past,
present, and future. Under patriarchy, every woman’s daughter is a victim, past, present, and future. Under patriarchy, every woman’s son is her potential betrayer and also the inevitable rapist or exploiter of another woman.
