useless. We must destroy the very structure of culture as we
know it, its art, its churches, its laws; we must eradicate from
consciousness and memory all of the images, institutions, and
structural mental sets that turn men into rapists by definition
and women into victims by definition. Until we do, rape will
remain our primary sexual model and women will be raped by
men.
As women, we must begin this revolutionary work. When
we change, those who define themselves over and against us
will have to kill us all, change, or die. In order to change, we
must renounce every male definition we have ever learned; we
must renounce male definitions and descriptions of our lives,
our bodies, our needs, our wants, our worth—we must take
for ourselves the power of naming. We must refuse to be com-
plicit in a sexual-social system that is built on our labor as an
inferior slave class. We must unlearn the passivity we have
been trained to over thousands of years. We must unlearn the
masochism we have been trained to over thousands of years.
And, most importantly, in freeing ourselves, we must refuse to
imitate the phallic identities of men. We must not internalize
their values and we must not replicate their crimes.
In 1870, Susan B. Anthony wrote to a friend:
So while I do not pray for anybody or any party to commit outrages, still I do pray, and that earnestly and constantly, for some terrific shock to startle the women of this nation into a self-respect which will compel them to see the abject degradation of
their present position; which will force them to break their yoke
of bondage, and give them faith in themselves; which will make
them proclaim their allegiance to woman first; which will enable
them to see that man can no more feel, speak, or act for woman
than could the old slaveholder for his slave. The fact is, women
are in chains, and their servitude is all the more debasing because they do not realize it. 0, to compel them to see and feel, and to give them the courage and conscience to speak and act for
their own freedom, though they face the scorn and contempt of
all the world for doing it. 41
Isn’t rape the outrage that will do this, sisters, and isn’t it
time?
5
The Sexual P o litics of Fear and Courage
(For my mother)
( i )
I want to talk to you about fear and courage—what each is,
how they are related to each other, and what place each has in
a woman’s life.
When I was trying to think through what to say here today,
I thought that I might just tell stories—stories of the lives of
very brave women. There are many such stories to tell, and I
am always inspired by these stories, and I thought that you
