Our Blood: Prophecies and Discourses on Sexual Politics

Needless to say, two like poles brought into proximity are

supposed to repel each other.

The male sex, in keeping with its positive designation, has

positive qualities; and the female sex, in keeping with its negative designation, does not have any of the positive qualities attributed to the male sex. For instance, according to this

model, men are active, strong, and courageous; and women

are passive, weak, and fearful. In other words, whatever men

are, women are not; whatever men can do, women cannot do;

whatever capacities men have, women do not have. Man is the

positive and woman is his negative.

Apologists for this model claim that it is moral because it is

inherently egalitarian. Each pole is supposed to have the dignity of its own separate identity; each pole is necessary to a harmonious whole. This notion, of course, is rooted in the

conviction that the claims made as to the character of each sex

are true, that the essence of each sex is accurately described.

In other words, to say that man is the positive and woman is

the negative is like saying that sand is dry and water is wet—

the characteristic which most describes the thing itself is

named in a true way and no judgment on the worth of these

differing characteristics is implied. Simone de Beauvoir exposes the fallacy of this “separate but equal” doctrine in the preface to The Second Sex:

In actuality the relation of the two sexes is not. . . like that of

two electrical poles, for man represents both the positive and the

neutral, as is indicated by the common use of man to designate

human beings in general; whereas woman represents only the

negative, defined by limiting criteria, without reciprocity.. . .

“The female is a female by virtue of a certain lack of qualities, ”

said Aristotle; “we should regard the female nature as afflicted

with a natural defectiveness. ” And St. Thomas for his part pro­

nounced woman to be “an imperfect man, ” an “incidental”

being. . .

Thus, humanity is male and man defines woman not in herself but as relative to him; she is not regarded as an autonomous being. 1

This diseased view of woman as the negative of man, “female by virtue of a certain lack of qualities, ” infects the whole of culture. It is the cancer in the gut of every political and

economic system, of every social institution. It is the rot which

spoils all human relationships, infests all human psychological

reality, and destroys the very fiber of human identity.

This pathological view of female negativity has been enforced on our flesh for thousands of years. The savage mutilation of the female body, undertaken to distinguish us absolutely from men, has occurred on a massive scale. For instance, in China, for one thousand years, women’s feet were

reduced to stumps through footbinding. When a girl was seven

or eight years old, her feet were washed in alum, a chemical

that causes shrinkage. Then, all toes but the big toes were bent

into the soles of her feet and bandaged as tightly as possible.

This procedure was repeated over and over again for approximately three years. The girl, in agony, was forced to walk on her feet. Hard calluses formed; toenails grew into the skin;

the feet were pus-filled and bloody; circulation was virtually

stopped; often the big toes fell off. The ideal foot was three

inches of smelly, rotting flesh. Men were positive and women

were negative because men could walk and women could not.