no
matter how superficial the violations. Some become antagonistic to
ethnic groups other than their own or to religious groups other
than their own, or they develop a hatred of those political convictions that contradict their own. Women cling to irrational hatreds, focused particularly on the unfamiliar, so that they will not murder
their fathers, husbands, sons, brothers, lovers, the men with whom
they are intimate, those who do hurt them and cause them grief.
Fear of a greater evil and a need to be protected from it intensify
the loyalty of women to men who are, even when dangerous, at
least known quantities. Because women so displace their rage, they
are easily controlled and manipulated haters. Having good reason
to hate, but not the courage to rebel, women require symbols of
danger that justify their fear. The Right provides these symbols
of danger by designating clearly defined groups of outsiders as
sources of danger. The identities of the dangerous outsiders can
change over time to meet changing social circumstances—for ex
ample, racism can be encouraged or contained; anti-Semitism can
be provoked or kept dormant; homophobia can be aggravated or
kept under the surface— but the existence of the dangerous outsider alw ays functions for women simultaneously as deception, diversion, pain-killer, and threat.
The tragedy is that women so committed to survival cannot recognize that they are committing suicide. The danger is that self-sacrificing women are perfect foot soldiers who obey orders, no
matter how criminal those orders are. The hope is that these
women, upset by internal conflicts that cannot be stilled by manipulation, challenged by the clarifying drama of public confrontation and dialogue, w ill be forced to articulate the realities of their own
experiences as women subject to the w ill of men. In doing so, the
anger that necessarily arises from a true perception of how t hey
have been debased may move them beyond the fear that transfixes
them to a meaningful rebellion against the men who in fact dim inish, despise, and terrorize them. This is the common struggle of all women, whatever their male-defined ideological origins; and this
struggle alone has the power to transform women who are enemies
against one another into allies fighting for individual and collective
survival that is not based on self-loathing, fear, and humiliation,
but instead on self-determination, dignity, and authentic integrity.
2
The Politics of Intelligence
Why is life so tragic; so like a little strip of pavement over an abyss. I look down; I feel giddy; I wonder how I am ever to walk to the end.. . . It’s a
feeling of impotence: of cutting no ice.
Virginia Woolf, her diary,
October 25, 1920
Men hate intelligence in women. It cannot flame; it cannot burn; it
cannot burn out and end up in ashes, having been consumed in
adventure. It cannot be cold, rational, ice; no warm womb would
tolerate a cold, icy, splendid mind. It cannot be ebullient and it
cannot be morbid; it cannot be anything that does not end in reproduction or whoring. It cannot be what intelligence is: a vitality of mind that acts directly in and on the world, without mediation.
“Indeed, ” wrote Norman M ailer, “I doubt if there w ill be a really
exciting woman w riter until the first whore becomes a call girl and
