Woman Hating: A Radical Look at Sexuality

Chicana sisters —and the men who in turn oppressed

them. This closely interwoven fabric o f oppression,

which is the racist class structure o f Amerika today,

assured that wherever one stood, it was with at least one

foot heavy on the belly o f another human being.

As white, middle-class women, we lived in the house

o f the oppressor-of-us-all who supported us as he

abused us, dressed us as he exploited us, “treasured”

us in payment for the many functions we performed.

We were the best-fed, best-kept, best-dressed, most

willing concubines the world has ever known. We had

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Woman Hating

no dignity and no real freedom, but we did have good

health and long lives.

The women’s movement has not dealt with this

bread-and-butter issue, and that is its most awful

failure. There has been little recognition that the destruction of the middle- class lifestyle is crucial to the development of decent community forms in which all

people can be free and have dignity. T here is certainly

no program to deal with the realities of the class system

in Amerika. On the contrary, most of the women’s

movement has, with appalling blindness, refused to take

that kind o f responsibility. Only the day-care movement

has in any way reflected, or acted pragmatically on, the

concrete needs of all classes of women. The anger at

the Nixon administration for cutting day-care funds is

naive at best. Given the structure o f power politics and

capital in Amerika, it is ridiculous to expect the federal

government to act in the interests o f the people. The

money available to middle-class women who identify

as feminists must be channeled into the programs we

want to develop, and we must develop them. In general,

middle-class women have absolutely refused to take any

action, make any commitment which would interfere

with, threaten, or significantly alter a lifestyle, a living

standard, which is moneyed and privileged.

The analysis of sexism in this book articulates

clearly what the oppression o f women is, how it functions, how it is rooted in psyche and culture. But that analysis is useless unless it is tied to a political consciousness and commitment which will totally redefine community. One cannot be free, never, not ever, in an

unfree world, and in the course o f redefining family,

Introduction

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church, power relations, all the institutions which inhabit and order our lives, there is no way to hold onto privilege and comfort. T o attempt to do so is destructive, criminal, and intolerable.

T h e nature o f women’s oppression is unique: women