process o f writing, for writing as a way o f discovering
meaning and truth, and for reading as a piece of that
same process, we destroy with regularity the few serious
Introduction
25
writers we have. We turn them into comic-book figures,
bleed them o f all privacy and courage and common
sense, exorcise their vision from them as sport, demand
that they entertain or be ignored into oblivion. And it
is a great tragedy, for the work o f the writer has never
been more important than it is now in Amerika.
Many see that in this nightmared land, language has
no meaning and the work o f the writer is ruined. Many
see that the triumph o f authoritarian consciousness is
its ability to render the spoken and written word meaningless—so that we cannot talk or hear each other speak.
It is the work o f the writer to reclaim the language from
those who use it to justify murder, plunder, violation.
T h e writer can and must do the revolutionary work o f
using words to communicate, as community.
Those o f us who love reading and writing believe
that being a writer is a sacred trust. It means telling the
truth. It means being incorruptible. It means not being
afraid, and never lying. Those o f us who love reading
and writing feel great pain because so many people
who write books have become cowards, clowns, and
liars. Those o f us who love reading and writing begin
to feel a deadly contempt for books, because we see
writers being bought and sold in the market place — we
see them vending their tarnished wares on every street
corner. T oo many writers, in keeping with the Am erikan way o f life, would sell their mothers for a dime.
T o keep the sacred trust o f the writer is simply to
respect the people and to love the community. T o violate that trust is to abuse oneself and do damage to others. I believe that the writer has a vital function in
the community, and an absolute responsibility to the
26
Woman Hating
people. I ask that this book be judged in that context.
Specifically
men, the roles they play, the violence between them.
We begin with fairy tales, the first scenarios of women
and men which mold our psyches, taught to us before we can know differently. We go on to pornography, where we find the same scenarios, explicitly sexual and now more recognizable, ourselves, carnal
women and heroic men. We go on to herstory —the
binding of feet in China, the burning o f witches in
Europe and Amerika. There we see the fairy-tale and
