are oppressed as women, regardless o f class or race;
some women have access to significant wealth, but that
wealth does not signify power; women are to be found
everywhere, but own or control no appreciable territory; women live with those who oppress them, sleep with them, have their children—we are tangled, hopelessly it seems, in the gut o f the machinery and way o f life which is ruinous to us. And perhaps most importantly, most women have little sense o f dignity or self-
respect or strength, since those qualities are directly
related to a sense o f manhood. In
Huey P. Newton tells us that the Black Panthers did not
use guns because they were symbols o f manhood, but
found the courage to act as they did because they were
men. When we women find the courage to defend ourselves, to take a stand against brutality and abuse, we are violating every notion o f womanhood we have ever
been taught. T h e way to freedom for women is bound
to be torturous for that reason alone.
T h e analysis in this book applies to the life situations o f all women, but all women are not necessarily in a state o f primary emergency as women. What I mean
by this is simple. As a Jew in Nazi Germany, I would be
oppressed as a woman, but hunted, slaughtered, as a
Jew. As a Native American, I would be oppressed as
a squaw, but hunted, slaughtered, as a Native Am erican. That first identity, the one which brings with it as
24
Woman Hating
part of its definition death, is the identity of primary
emergency. This is an important recognition because it
relieves us of a serious confusion. The fact, for instance,
that many Black women (by no means all) experience
primary emergency as Blacks in no way lessens the responsibility of the Black community to assimilate this and other analyses of sexism and to apply it in their own
revolutionary work.
As a writer with a revolutionary commitment, I am
particularly pained by the kinds of books writers are
writing, and the reasons why. I want writers to write
books because they are committed to the content of
those books. I want writers to write books as actions. I
want writers to write books that can make a difference
in how, and even why, people live. I want writers to
write books that are worth being jailed for, worth
fighting for, and should it come to that in this country,
worth dying for.
Books are for the most part in Amerika commercial
ventures. People write them to make money, to become
famous, to build or augment other careers. Most Amerikans do not read books—they prefer television. Academics lock books in a tangled web of mindfuck and abstraction. The notion is that there are ideas, then art,
then somewhere else, unrelated, life. The notion is that
to have a decent or moral idea is to be a decent or moral
person. Because o f this strange schizophrenia, books
and the writing o f them have become embroidery on a
dying way o f life. Because there is contempt for the
