of the brothel model. T his change-over— applying the brothel
model to reproduction— is just beginning. It is beyond the scope of
this book to explore or explain all the new technological intrusions
into conception, gestation, and birth, * except to say that reproduction w ill become the kind of commodity that sex is now. Artificial insemination, in vitro fertilization, sex selection, genetic engineering, fetal monitoring, artificial wombs that keep the fetus alive outside the mother’s body, fetal surgery, embryo transplants, and eventual cloning (some experts predict that human cloning w ill be
accomplished within twenty-five years; however long it takes, it
will be done)— all these reproductive intrusions make the womb
the province of the doctor, not the woman; all make the womb
extractable from the woman as a whole person in the same w ay the
vagina (or sex) is now; some make the womb extraneous altogether
or eventually extraneous; all make reproduction controllable by
men on a scale heretofore unimaginable. The issue is not the particular innovation itself—whether it is intrinsically good or bad; the issue is how it w ill be used in a system in which women are
sexual and reproductive commodities already, exploited, with lives
that are worthless when not serving a specific sexual or reproduc
*See Gena Corea,
explain the reproductive technologies, the experiments being done on
women and animals to develop the technologies, and the view of women
central to both the experimentation and the technologies.
tive purpose. For instance, cesarean sections saved women’s lives
when used in orthodox medical emergencies; but now doctors use
them because they give doctors dominion over labor, because they
involve cutting into the female body—a male pleasure—and so
that the natural process of birth can be circumvented for the social
convenience of the doctor. Cesarean sections are now used to express endemic male contempt for women. So it will be with reproductive technology or other medically sophisticated intrusions into reproduction. The ideology of male control of reproduction
will stay what it is; the hatred of women will stay what it is; what
will change will be the means of expressing both the ideology and
the hatred. The means will give conception, gestation, and birth
over to men—eventually, the whole process of the creation of life
will be in their hands. The new means will enable men—at last—
really to have women for sex and women for reproduction, both
controlled with sadistic precision by men.
And there will be a new kind of holocaust, as unimaginable now
as the Nazi one was before it happened: something no one believes
“mankind” capable of. Using now available or soon to be available
reproductive technology in conjunction with racist programs of
forced sterilization, men finally will have the means to create and
control the kind of women they want: the kind of women they
have always wanted. To paraphrase Ernst Lubitsch’s Ninotchka
when she is defending Stalin’s purges, there will be fewer but better women. There will be domestics, sex prostitutes, and reproductive prostitutes. Is there any reason to think that this projected future does not reflect the commonly accepted devaluation of
women with which we live with relative complacency? Look again
at what we have done—are doing now—to the old, those in nursing homes, the drugged, the prostituted, those on welfare, and to those bastions of female worth, wives and mothers, whose rape the
law protects, whose battery the society invites, whose uteruses the
state wants.
