was the height of female fashion, the ideal of feminine beauty,
the erotic touchstone of female identity.
In Amerika as elsewhere, physical bondage was the real
purpose of high feminine fashion. The lady’s costume was a
sadistic invention designed to abuse her body. Her ribs were
pushed up and in; her waist was squeezed to its tiniest possible
size so that she would resemble an hourglass; her skirts were
wide and very heavy. The movements that she could make in
this constraining and often painful attire were regarded as the
essence of feminine grace. Ladies fainted so often because
they could not breathe. Ladies were so passive because they
could not move.
Also, of course, ladies were trained to mental and moral
idiocy. Any display of intelligence compromised a lady’s value
as an ornament. Any assertion of principled will contradicted
her master’s definition of her as a decorative object. Any rebellion against the mindless passivity which the slave-owning class had articulated as her true nature could incur the wrath
of her powerful owner and bring on her censure and ruin.
The expensive gowns which adorned the lady, her leisure,
and her vacuity have obscured for many the cold, hard reality
of her status as carnal chattel. Since her function was to signify male wealth, it is often assumed that she possessed that wealth. In fact, she was a breeder and an ornament, with no
private or political rights, with no claim either to dignity or
freedom.
The genius of any slave system is found in the dynamics
which isolate slaves from each other, obscure the reality of a
common condition, and make united rebellion against the
oppressor inconceivable. The power of the master is absolute
and incontrovertible. His authority is protected by civil law,
armed force, custom, and divine and/or biological sanction.
Slaves characteristically internalize the oppressor’s view of
them, and this internalized view congeals into a pathological
self-hatred. Slaves typically learn to hate the qualities and
behaviors which characterize their own group and to identify
their own self-interest with the self-interest of their oppressor.
The master’s position at the top is invulnerable; one aspires to
become the master, or to become close to the master, or to be
recognized by virtue of one’s good service to the master. Resentment, rage, and bitterness at one’s own powerlessness cannot be directed upward against him, so it is all directed
against other slaves who are the living embodiment of one’s
own degradation.
Among women, this dynamic works itself out in what Phyllis Chesler has called “harem politics. ”3 The first wife is tyrant over the second wife who is tyrant over the third wife, etc.
The authority of the first wife, or any other woman in the
harem who has prerogatives over other women, is a function
of her powerlessness in relation to the master. The labor that
she does as a fuck and as a breeder can be done by any other
woman of her gender class. She, in common with all other
women of her abused class, is instantly replaceable. This
