The second solution is offered by feminists. It proposes, in the
words of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, “the individuality of each human soul. . . In discussing the rights of woman, we are to consider, first, what belongs to her as an individual, in a world of her own, the arbiter of her own destiny. . . ” 13 This is simply a recognition of the human condition, in which women are included. It is also the precondition for the realization of Marx’s greatest ethical
idea: from each according to her ability, to each according to her
need. It is the imposition of the sex-class definition of women on
women—by any means necessary—that devastates the human capacities of women, making them men’s subordinates, making them
“women. ” Feminists have a vision of women, even women, as indi
vidual human beings; and this vision annihilates the system of gender polarity in which men are superior and powerful. T his is not a bourgeois notion of individuality; it is not a self-indulgent notion of
individuality; it is the recognition that every human being lives a
separate life in a separate body and dies alone. In proposing “the
individuality of each human soul, ” feminists propose that women
are not their sex; nor their sex plus some other little thing— a liberal additive of personality, for instance; but that each life— including each woman’s life— must be a person’s own, not predetermined before her birth by totalitarian ideas about her nature and her function, not subject to guardianship by some more powerful class, not determined in the aggregate but worked out by herself, for herself.
Frankly, no one much knows what feminists mean; the idea of
women not defined by sex and reproduction is anathema or baffling. It is the simplest revolutionary idea ever conceived, and the most despised.
In the face of advancing reproductive technology, there w ill be
even fewer women who dare claim their right to human life, human dignity, and human struggle as unique and necessary individuals, fewer and fewer women who will fight against the categorical disposition of women. Instead, more and more women w ill see
protection for themselves as women in religious and devotional ideologies that formally honor the special sanctity of motherhood.
This is the only claim that women can make under the sex-class
system to a sacred nature; and religion is the best w ay to make that
claim— the best available w ay. Against the secular power of male
scientists women w ill try to pit the political power of misogynist
males in religion. Women w ill try to use male theology and religious tradition wherever and however it sanctifies the mother giving birth. Women w ill hide behind theology; women w ill hide behind orthodox religious men; women w ill use conservative religious ideas against the science that w ill make women less necessary than they have ever been.
The power of the reproductive scientists w ill be advanced, how
ever, precisely through the political and legislative initiatives of the
theocrats: prohibiting abortion and then mandating forced sterilization will establish absolute state control of the uterus. The clash between reproductive scientists and male theocrats in terms of absolute values—especially the orthodox formulation of what constitutes the family—only appears to be irresolvable. When these two schools of unconditional male power over women have to negotiate public policy to the mutual benefit of both, the men of theology, with that remarkable resourcefulness that allowed for the
burning of the witches, will find great virtue in any program in
which fertilized eggs truly do supersede women in importance.
They will also enjoy having both sex and reproduction on their
own terms: being God in the concrete rather than worshiping him
in the abstract. They will also enjoy— for its own sake—the extraordinary control they will have over women: more than Leviticus gives; more than Christ mandates; more than men have ever had, though no doubt still less than men deserve. Women will argue like the true believers they are for that old-time religion, but male theocrats will discover that God intended men to be the sole
creators of life all along: did not God himself create Adam without
female help and is not baptism the religious equivalent of being
born of a male God? This is not farfetched for those who justify
the subordination of women to men on the ground that God is a
boy.
