must use those qualities of female strength and courage which
developed in us as mothers and wives to repudiate the very
slave conditions from which they are derived.
If we were not invisible to ourselves, we would see that
since the beginning of time, we have been the exemplars of
physical courage. Squatting in fields, isolated in bedrooms, in
slums, in shacks, or in hospitals, women endure the ordeal of
giving birth. This physical act of giving birth requires physical
courage of the highest order. It is the prototypical act of authentic physical courage. One’s life is each time on the line.
One faces death each time. One endures, withstands, or is
consumed by pain. Survival demands stamina, strength, concentration, and will power. No phallic hero, no matter what he does to himself or to another to prove his courage, ever
matches the solitary, existential courage of the woman who
gives birth.
We need not continue to have children in order to claim the
dignity of realizing our own capacity for physical courage. This
capacity is ours; it belongs to us, and it has belonged to us
since the beginning of time. What we must do now is to reclaim this capacity— take it out of the service of men; make it visible to ourselves; and determine how to use it in the service
of feminist revolution.
If we were not invisible to ourselves, we would also see that
we have always had a resolute commitment to and faith in
human life which have made us heroic in our nurturance and
sustenance of lives other than our own. Under all circum
stances—in war, sickness, famine, drought, poverty, in times
of incalculable misery and despair—women have done the
work required for the survival of the species. We have not
pushed a button, or organized a military unit, to do the work
of emotionally and physically sustaining life. We have done it
one by one, and one to one. For thousands of years, in my
view, women have been the only exemplars of moral and spiritual courage—we have sustained life, while men have taken it. This capacity for sustaining life belongs to us. We must
reclaim it—take it out of the service of men, so that it will
never again be used by them in their own criminal interests.
Also, if we were not invisible to ourselves, we would see
that most women can bear, and have for centuries borne, any
anguish—physical or mental—for the sake of those they love.
It is time to reclaim this kind of courage too, and to use it for
ourselves and each other.
For us, historically, courage has always been a function of
our resolute commitment to life. Courage as we know it has
developed from that commitment. We have always faced
death for the sake of life; and even in the bitterness of our
domestic slavery, we were sustained by the knowledge that we
were ourselves sustaining life.
We are faced, then, with two facts of female existence
under patriarchy: (1) that we are taught fear as a function of
femininity; and (2) that under the very slave conditions which
