Before the advent of any reproductive technologies, the farming
model used to be very distinct from the brothel model. Even
though the woman was not human—the land—or was less than
human—a cow—farming had the symbolic overtones of old-fash-
ioned agrarian romance: plowing the land was loving it, feeding the
cow was tending it. In the farming model, the woman was owned
privately; she was the homestead, not a public thoroughfare. One
farmer worked her. The land was valued because it produced a
valuable crop; and in keeping with the mystique of the model itself, sometimes the land was real pretty, special, richly endowed; a man could love it. The cow was valued because of what she produced: calves, milk; sometimes she took a prize. There was nothing actually idyllic in this. As many as one quarter of all acts of battery
may be against pregnant women; and women die from pregnancy
even without the intervention of a male fist. But farming implied a
relationship of some substance between the farmer and what was
his: and it is grander being the earth, being nature, even being a
cow, than being a cunt with no redeeming mythology. Motherhood ensconced a woman in the continuing life of a man: how he used her was going to have consequences for him. Since she was
his, her state of being reflected on him; and therefore he had a
social and psychological stake in her welfare as well as an economic
one. Because the man farmed the woman over a period of years,
they developed a personal relationship, at least from her point of
view: one limited by his notions of her sex and her kind; one
strained because she could never rise to the human if it meant
abandoning the female; but it was her best chance to be known, to
be regarded with some tenderness or compassion meant for her,
one particular woman. Nevertheless, the archaic meaning of the
verb
There is not a lot of room for tenderness or compassion in that.
Still, it is no wonder that women hang on possessively to any generic associations of women as such or “the female” with the land, nature, earth, the environment, even though those culturally sane-
tioned associations posit a female nature that is not fully human
and perpetuate a hard and mean tradition of exploitation: there is
some splendor and some honor in the association. The association
has a deep resonance for men too, though not the same sentimental
meaning: they after all did the plowing. The cultural and sexual
intersection of women and earth is potent for men when they
bomb “her, ” strip-mine “her, ” scorch “her, ” torch “her, ” denude
“her, ” defoliate “h er, ” pollute “her, ” despoil “her, ” rape “her, ”
plunder “h er, ” overcome, manipulate, dominate, conquer, or destroy “her. ” The significance of the farming model is both wide and deep. It has been the major w ay of using women— as mothers
to produce children; metaphorically speaking, men have used the
earth as if it were female, a huge fertile female that— one w ay or
another— they w ill fuck to death. There are limits to how much
the land can endure and produce, plowed so much, respected so
little.
Both the farming model and the brothel model dispose of women
as women: they are paradigms for the mass use of a whole class; in
