insures that no series of economic or legal reforms will end
male domination. The internal mechanism of female masochism must be rooted out from the inside before women will ever know what it is to be free.
(2 )
Now, the feminist project is to end male domination— to obliterate it from the face of this earth. We also want to end those forms of social injustice which derive from the patriarchal model of male dominance— that is, imperialism, colonialism, racism, war, poverty, violence in every form.
In order to do this, we will have to destroy the structure of
culture as we know it, its art, its churches, its laws; its nuclear
families based on father-right and nation-states; all of the
images, institutions, customs, and habits which define women
as worthless and invisible victims.
In order to destroy the structure of patriarchal culture, we
will have to destroy male and female sexual identities as we
now know them— in other words, we will have to abandon
phallic worth and female masochism altogether as normative,
sanctioned identities, as modes of erotic behavior, as basic
indicators of “male” and “female. ”
As we are destroying the structure of culture, we will have
to build a new culture— nonhierarchical, nonsexist, noncoer-
cive, nonexploitative—in other words, a culture which is not
based on dominance and submission in any way.
As we are destroying the phallic identities of men and the
masochistic identities of women, we will have to create, out of
our own ashes, new erotic identities. These new erotic identities will have to repudiate at their core the male sexual model: that is, they will have to repudiate the personality structures
dominant-active (“male”) and submissive-passive (“female”);
they will have to repudiate genital sexuality as the primary
focus and value of erotic identity; they will have to repudiate
and obviate all of the forms of erotic objectification and alienation which inhere in the male sexual model. 9
How can we, women, who have been taught to be afraid of
every little noise in the night, dare to imagine that we might
destroy the world that men defend with their armies and their
lives? How can we, women, who have no vivid memory of
ourselves as heroes, imagine that we might succeed in building
a revolutionary community? Where can we find the revolutionary courage to overcome our slave fear?
Sadly, we are as invisible to ourselves as we are to men. We
learn to see with their eyes— and they are near blind. Our first
task, as feminists, is to learn to see with our own eyes.
If we could see with our own eyes, I believe that we would
see that we already have, in embryonic form, the qualities
required to overturn the male supremacist system which oppresses us and which threatens to destroy all life on this planet.
We would see that we already have, in embryonic form, values
on which to build a new world. We would see that female
strength and courage have developed out of the very circumstances of our oppression, out of our lives as breeders and domestic chattel. Until now, we have used those qualities to
endure under devastating and terrifying conditions. Now we
