Our Blood: Prophecies and Discourses on Sexual Politics

were defined, by themselves and all the organs of their culture,

as supreme. We did not know that we had been trained all our

lives to be victims—inferior, submissive, passive objects who

could lay no claim to a discrete individual identity. We did not

know that because we were women our labor would be exploited wherever we worked—in jobs, in political movements

—by men for their own self-aggrandizement. We did not

know that all our hard work in whatever jobs or political

movements would never advance our responsibilities or our

rewards. We did not know that we were there, wherever, to

cook, to do menial labor, to be fucked.

I tell you this now because this is what I remembered

when I knew I would come here to speak tonight. I imagine

that in some ways it is different for you. There is an astounding feminist literature to educate you even if your professors will not. There are feminist philosophers, poets, comedians,

herstorians, and politicians who are creating feminist culture.

There is your own feminist consciousness, which you must

nurture, expand, and deepen at every opportunity.

As of now, however, there is no women’s study program

here. The development of such a program is essential to you as

women. Systematic and rigorous study of woman’s place in

this culture will make it possible for you to understand the

world as it acts on and affects you. Without that study, you

will leave here as I left Bennington— ignorant of what it

means to be a woman in a patriarchal society— that is, in a

society where women are systematically defined as inferior,

where women are systematically despised.

I am here tonight to try to tell you as much as I can about

what you are up against as women in your efforts to live decent, worthwhile, and productive human lives. And that is why I chose tonight to speak about rape which is, though no

contemporary Amerikan male writer will tell you so, the dirtiest four-letter word in the English language. Once you understand what rape is, you will understand the forces that systematically oppress you as women. Once you understand what rape is, you will be able to begin the work of changing the

values and institutions of this patriarchal society so that you

will not be oppressed anymore. Once you understand what

rape is, you will be able to resist all attempts to mystify and

mislead you into believing that the crimes committed against

you as women are trivial, comic, irrelevant. Once you understand what rape is, you will find the resources to take your lives as women seriously and to organize as women against the

persons and institutions which demean and violate you.

The word rape comes from the Latin word rapere, which

means “to steal, seize, or carry away. ”

The first definition of rape in The Random House Dictionary is still “the act of seizing and carrying off by force. ”

The second definition, with which you are probably familiar,

defines rape as “the act of physically forcing a woman to

have sexual intercourse. ”

For the moment, I will refer exclusively to the first definition of rape, that is, “the act of seizing and carrying off by force. ”