Marx and Gandhi Were Liberals

I I

MARX AND GANDHI WERE LIBERALS

- FEMINISM AND THE "RADICAL" LEFT

by Andrea Dworkin UNIVEH.SITY Dedicated to the memory of Virginia Wool to breathe that poison and to fight that insect, secretly and without arms fighting the Fascist or Nazi as surely as those who fight him with arms ? And must not that fight wear down her LIBRARY strength and exhaust her spirit? Should we not help her to crush him in our own country before we ask her to help us to They [feminists] were fighting the same crush him abroad? And what right have enemy that you are fighting and for the we, Sir, to trumpet our ideals offreedom same reasons. They were fighting the and justice to other countries when we tyranny of the patriarchal state as you can shake out from our most respectable were fighting the tyranny of the Fascist newspapers any day of the week eggs state And abroad the monster has like these? come more openly to the surface. There is no mistaking him there. He has Virginia Woolf, Three Guineas widened his scope. He is interfering now It is the figure of a man, some say, others with your liberty; he is dictating how deny, that he is Man himself, the quin you shall live; he is making distinctions tessence of virility, the perfect type of not merely between the sexes, but which all the others are imperfect adum between the races. You are feeling in brations. He is a man certainly. His eyes your own persons what your mothers are glazed; his eyes glare. His body, felt when they were shut out, when they which is braced in an unnatural posi were shut up, because they were tion, is tightly cased in a uniform. Upon women. Now you are being shut out, the breast of that unifo·rm are sewn sev you are being shut up, because you are eral medals and other mystic symbols. Jews, because you are democrats, His hand is upon a sword. He is called in becrruse of race, because of religion. German and Italian Fuhrer or Duce; in The whole iniquity of dictatorship, our own language Tyrant or Dictator whether in Oxford or Cambridge, in And behind him lie ruined houses and Whitehall or Downing Street, against dead bodies - men, women, and chil Jews or against women, in England orin dren... It suggests a connection and Germany, in Italy or in Spain, is now for us a very important connection. It apparent to you. suggests that the public and private Virginia Woolf, Three Guineas worlds are inseparably connected; that the tyrannies and servilities of the one "Homes are the real places of the women are the tyrannies and servilities of the who are now compelling men to be idle. other It suggests that we cannot It is time the Government insisted upon dissociate ourselves from that figure but employers giving work to more men, are ourselves that figure . It suggests that thus enabling them to marry the women we are not passive spectators doomed to they cannot now approach." Place unresisting obedience but by our beside it another quotation. "There are thoughts and actions can ourselves two worlds in the life of the nation, the change that figure. world of men and the world of women. Virginia Woolf, Three Guineas Nature has done well to entrust the man with the care of his family and the Three Guineas was published in June nation. The woman's world is her fam 1938. It is the product of a very odd ily, her husband, her children, and her mind and, I think, of a very odd state of home." One is written in English, the mind. It was intended as a continuation other in German. But where is the differ of A Room of One's Own, but it was ence? Are they not both saying the same written in a far less persuasive, a far less thing? Are they not both the voices of playful mood. It was a protest against Dictators, whether they speak English oppression, a genuine protest denounc or German, and are we not all agreed ing real emls and, to the converted, that the Dictator when we meet him Virginia did not preach in vain. A great abroad is a very dangerous as well as a many women wrote to express the·ir very ugly animal? And he is here among enthusiastic approval; but her close us, raising his ugly head, spitting his friends were silent, and if not silent, poison in the heart of England. Is it critical. Vita did not like it, and not from this egg, to quote Mr Wells Maynard Keynes was both angry and again, that "the practical obliteration of contemptuous, it was, he declared, a [our]freedom by Fascists or Nazis" will silly argument and not very well written. spring? And is not the woman who has What really seemed wrong with the hook

Adapted from an article originally published in Ame rican Report. Copyright ©1973 by Andrea Dworkin. All rights 1·eserved by the author ll llllllllll ll llll~~'ij~'~''ml~l~3 2911 02003371,i ~~~~~~~~ 8~ ~~'''lllllllllll t--\Q - and I am speaking here of my own The attitude of the Left nas not changed very \ \S<-\ reactions at the time -was the attempt to much since 1938. Sexism, it is true, is affixed with involve a discussion of women's rights liberal good will onto the tail end of that imposing D 'GL-r~ with the far more agonising and immedi leftist litany: imperialism, colonialism, capitalism, ate question of what we were to do in racism, and, for the ladies, sexism. Woolfs original l 'llO order to meet the ever-growing menace analysis and subsequent feminist analyses go, let us of Fascism and war The connection be polite, ignored, not assimilated, not acted upon. between the two questions seemed tenu The citizens of the male-dominated Left are still ous and the positive suggestions wholly complicit in the institutions which oppress women, inadequate. still accept the phallic identity of dominance (male Quentin Bell, Virginia Woolf A Biography ness) which demands, in order to continue to exist, submission (femaleness); still actively perpetuate I have quoted at some length from Virginia Woolf's the patriarchal forms of husband-wife, family Thre.e Guineas because it is unlikely that those on headed by a father, church, and state; still demand the Left who consider the causes of war and act to privilege and confuse it with freedom. To the en text end it know the book. It was maligned as silly drivel that the Left is committed to patriarchal forms, that by Leftists in 1938 and today it is, let us be polite, is, to a very great extent, it cannot help but perpetu ignored by most political people. ate the values it purports to oppose. To the extent In 1938, Virginia Woolf was a prominent (though that the Left is not consciously and conscientiously endlessly condescended to) artist of the first magni feminist, that is, to a very great extent, it cannot tude. Even though her formal preoccupations allied help but perpetuate the same forms of dominance her with James Joyce, as a woman she was placed and submission that it purports, in other areas, to without effort at the end of a very short list: the oppose. To the extent that Leftists do not recognize Bronte sisters, Austen, the two Georges, Woolf. the real dimension of their patriarchal alliances, Even though her political preoccupations entitled that is, to a very great extent, they cannot help but her to recognition as an original mind, as a serious perpetuate patriarchy, that system of male owner revolutionary thinker, both the quality and the con ship which is the parent form of fascism. tent of her analysis went ignored. In 1938 Woolf was As feminists, we must view the nonfeminist Left 3 years away from her last conscientious act, sui as a reform movement. We must marvel at its moral cide, the last resort of many a prophet without any bankruptcy at the poverty of its revolutionary con real community sciousness. Humankind is still, for that movement, Three Guineas is the first feminist analysis of mankind most literally The Worker is still, or what war is and how to stop it. Woolf is relentless in increasingly, a metaphor for phallic hero muscle, her insistence that war is a male activity not only the center of the leftist preoccupation with images because men make war, but because war is a direct of virility Women are ignored, or patronized. Lib extension of masculine values and behavior She eral gestures of good will are made, when we are outlines, relentlessly, the total exclusion of women shrill enough or where we are fashionable enough, from all the institutions of decision-making and as long as we do not interfere with the "real revolu power in a patriarchy She describe s what tion." Increasingly, we understand that we are the machismo is (though she did not use the word), and real revolution. how its public manifestation in war-making is a somber accurate refl ection of its presence in what she calls " the private house," the house where men rule and women serve. She shows how the hetero 2. Patriarchy and Sexism sexual man-woman model is the basic model for patterns of dominance and submission which we characterize in the public sphere as tyranny. She demonstrates that the Fuhrer and II Duce are Hus Economy is the bone, politics is the flesh bands, violating without conscience nations of watch who they beat and who they eat, women. She insists that the Nazis and the English watch who they relieve themselves on, men who despise them are a brotherhood with a watch who they own. 4) shared appetite for illegitimate power war games, The rest is decoration. C\J 0 uniforms, wealth, conquest: in a word, dominance. 'vi arge Piercy (() 1.0 She says that to stop war men must change the [mi./ nightmare] looks like a village lit f'!') behavior of men. In her analysis, humankind must with blood/where all the .fathers are crying: C\J (() (() f'!') destroy patriarchy itself. My son is mine. IJ') It is no wonder then, that Keynes and other f'!') f'!') Adrienne Rich ro "' prominent Lefties of that time were angry After all, I"') ~ '* a crucial part of the war dynamic is the conviction Wives, submit yourselves unto your hus IJ') ..J I"') that there are good guys and bad guys. Woolf made bands for the husband is the head of "' clear that, in fact, there were bad guys and worse the wife, even as Christ is the head of the ~ >- >- u <:t <:t guys. Life under the bad guys was bad, and under Church. .. .. the worse guys it would be worse. Ephesians 5:23-24 u l:t 1.1.- ro 2 Sexism is a new word, one which has been assim psychologies and behaviors which we call dominant ilated with remarkable ease into common usage. It (master male) and submissive (slave, female), or is meant to refer to systematic cultural, political, aggressor-victim, demands the destruction of the and psychological prejudice against women. It source of those mental sets and behaviors- patri denotes biological differentiation/inferiority, just as archy Ending forever the war of the powerful racism denotes racial differentiation/inferiority It against the powerless and ending the smaller was coined so that we could refer to the general wars of bad men against worse men means dis cultural, political, and psychological conviction that mantling the machinery of patriarchy women are inferior to men, and that womanly or Liberals, god bless them, are against sexism and female, qualities (as a male-supremacist culture for some measure of positive reform. They want the defines them) are inferior to manly, or male, quali bad men to stop fighting worse men here and there; ties. Since in our culture homosexual men are asso they want The Workers, men mostly, to control the ciated with femaleness, or femininity that is , in means of production. Revolutionaries are out to being penetrated they take on female stigma, the destroy that system of oppression, the source of a word "sexism" early on came to denote prejudice million tyrannies, called patriarchy against homosexual men. In fact, the word is used so promiscuously that its meaning has become entirely vague: most often it denotes prejudice 3. Patriarchy and Violence against a person on the basis of gender or sexual orientation, with no intrinsic reference to male I am the center of an atrocity. supremacy or female inferiority. As a result, "I hate Sylvia Plath all men," or "I hate all faggots," or "Women? I guess We are effectively destroying ourselves they ought to exercise Pussy Power "are all in some by violence masquerading as love. sense sexist. R.D. Laing This wonderfully confuses things, and we can begin to understand why the word " sexism" is affixed We talked of the League of Nations without pain to the list of leftist no no's. Properly and the prospects of peace and disanna manipulated, the word is meaningless because it no ment. On this subject he was not so longer makes any reference to the actuality of much militarist as martial. The diffi power Anyone can be against it, and not many are culty to which he could find no answer for it. One can be against it without changing one's was that if permanent peace were ever identity or behavior as the oppressor- which is, of achieved, and armies and navies ceased course, what we mean when .we talk disparagingly to exist, there would be no outlet for the about liberals. Just as liberals are against racism but manly qualities which fighting devel refuse to give up power which derives from their oped, and that human physique and own white supremacy, so Leftists are against sexism human character would deteriorate. but refuse to give up power which derives from from the.biography of Anthony (Viscount their own male supremacy How then do we separ Knebworth) by the Earl of Lytton ate the feminists from the boys? Men are powerful and women are powerless Violence is interwoven into the social fabric because we live in a patriarchy Pater means owner because it is the substance of sexuality as we know possessor or master The basic social unit of patri it. Dominance and submission, he and she. Aggres archy is the family The word "family" comes from sion, conquest, and brutality are the defining mas the Oscan famel which means servant, slave, or culine characteristics. War, feminists believe, is a possession. Paterfamilias means "owner of slaves." function of masculine (phallic) identity The vocab Common fathers and ordinary priests derive their ulary of war- aggression, conquest, dominance authority as paters. is the vocabulary of "healthy" male virility. We talk "Patriarchy" is the name of the political and cul of the rape of a country and it is not an accident that tural system which oppresses women. To be for the when soldiers rape a country, they also rape its liberation of women is to be against patriarchy no women. The VietNam genocide was characterized lesser commitment is a serious one. In a patriarchy by massive, repeated attempts to defoliate the all civil and religious authority (power) belongs by earth, Mother Nature herself. Nixon s Christmas birthright to men. Patriarchy is a system of owner bombing message used language which was highly ship wherein women and children are owned. Patri sexual and sexist. We know that these connections archy is the original authoritarian model, the molec exist, and anyone who is concerned with violence ular totalitarian model, and every tyrannical form is and ending it as the substance of human relation derived from it. To be against tyranny and for free must speak to them. dom is to oppose, to resist, to refuse to be complicit It is incredible to feminists that the notion of in, patriarchal institutions. The destruction of the violence as a function of male sexual identity is not master-slave political scenario, however we of pressing, burning concern to those who are describe it (capitalist-worker white-black, rich against, they say violence. How we ask, can one poor etc.), requires the destruction of the source of be against violence without being against the com that scenario patriarchy The destruction of the mon, daily violence which defines male-female

3 relation? How can one be against war there and good things your masters hand out, soli celebrate it here, on our bodies? Real opposition to citous for your well-being so long as they violence would necessitate specific attention to stand to gain. They say, there is no more crimes of violence against women. Wife-beating distressing spectacle than that of slaves and general physical assault by men against women who take pleasure in their servile state. are endemic in Amerika as elsewhere. Wife They say, you are far from possessing beating, in particular, is a crime which remains the pride of those wild birds who refuse invisible, sanctioned by laws which give the hus to hatch their eggs when they have been band authority over the wife. Violent rape is rife on imprisoned. They say, take an example city streets, epidemic; and it is also common in from the wild birds who, even if they so-called private, personal relationships between mate with the males to relieve their bore \ · men and women. Women are raped, and women dom, refuse to reproduce so long as they are forced to prostitution, and women are are not at liberty. assaulted, and acts of violence against women Monique Wittig, Les Guerilleres everywhere on every level are common, so com mon that they are not worthy of notice, so common On the Left, bright young men are fond of saying that they are called "normal" and romanticized as that women will be liberated when workers control love. the means of production. It is very hard for us to How is it possible, we ask, to act against war explain, though it does seem perfectly obvious, that without acting against violence? And how is it possi sexism is not a functon of capitalism. Corporate or ble to act against violence without acting against monopoly capitalism is this era's manifestation, male violence against women? Feminists do not sophisticated and virtually uncontrollable, of patri think that it is possible and yet when we look for archal ownership. Men owned women, women those on the Left who oppose violence, they say, in were capital; men owned women and the children our ranks, we do not find them. that women produced; men owned women as wives, concubines, slaves, and whatever women 4. The Means of Production produced, men owned. There was one man and he and the Original Capital owned several women and their children and what ever they all produced. There was one man and he ( We know that two evils clearly pre-date owned families who worked his land, and in those corporate capitalism, and have post families women were owned first by the man who dated socialist revolutions: sexism and owned the families, then by the man who headed racism - so we know that a male her particular family. He was the master, and mas dominated socialist revolution in econ ter became his title, then a common form of omic and even cultural terms, were it to address. Women were capital; later other commod occur tomorrow, would be no revolu ities, then money, substituted for women occasion tion, but only another coup d'etat ally, then more often. Today there is corporate among men. capitalism in Amerika and state capitalism in Rus \ Robin Morgan sia. When we look at the failure of the socialist revolution in Russia we see clearly the inability of I assure you I am not an enemy of patriarchs to give up the ownership of women. women. I am very favourable to their When that basic totalitarian form of ownership sur '' employment as labourers or in other vives, wherever it survives, the whole motley menial capacity. gamut of totalitarian behavior survives with it. an industrialist to Emily Davis, When we look at the Left in Amerika here and '-· who wanted help in funding now, what we see strikes terror in our hearts: a school for women mostly there is capitalism- the private ownership In one world the sons of educated men of women with token reform in the division oflabor; work as civil servants, judges, soldiers, where there is socialism, there is the collective and are paid for that work; in the other male ownership of women, usually without even world, the daughters of educated men token reform in division of labor. work as wives, mothers, daughters- but I am convinced, as I ponder why Leftists are so are they not paid for that work? Is the absolutely and blissfully stuck on the notion that work of a mother, of a wife, of a freedom for all is when the workers control the daughter, worth nothing to the nation in means of production, that the Left has an almost solid cash? pathological attachment to the mythic notion of The Virginia Woolf Worker as a figure of virility. There, think intellec tuals, he is: driving trucks, laying bricks, building The women say, shame on you. They say roads, working heavy equipment - a real man - you are domesticated, forcibly fed, like The Working Man. Certainly it cannot be denied geese in the yard of the farmer who fat that he is the left-wing)tero, and if we have learned tens them. They say, you strut about, anything it is to keep our distance from left-wing you have no other care than to enjoy the heroes.

4 How does one come to such a conclusion? I begin are deprived of that control by a system of laws, with the proposition that the means of production customs, and habits which exploits us so viciously must be in the hands of the people; that freedom, and absolutely that the real exploitation of The dignity, and nonalienated work are the rights of all Worker pales by comparison. Why, we must ask, is people. I look to those who articulate those proposi his situation crucial to you, and ours invisible? It tions. But in fact, or in effect, they say: the means of could not be because The Worker is poorer, or production must be in the hands of men; work must more exploited, than, for instance, his wife who stay in the hands of men; money must stay in the either works or does not work at paid labor, and in hands of men; freedom, dignity, and nonalienated either case does domestic labor and child rearing for work are the rights of men. They say: men have no money, and is herself the means of production. It these rights and if there is anything left over-jObs, must be that he is a real man, that working class or money, or some excess freedom or dignity- we hero. She, as ever, is only a real woman. Clearly, will parcel it out among the women. Needless to self-proclaimed Marxists and communists of all ide say, there is n9thing left over, ever ologies remain capitalists, bosses, and shameless We must" consider here women who work, exploiters until they develop serious feminist con women wfio do not work, and "women's work." sciousness and commitment. Women who work are underhired, underpaid, first fireB., excluded from trade unions, not given promo tions or raises or training, are discriminated against 5. Feminism and Fucking / in every way. Let working men make these com plaints and the Left is involved, concerned, yea, "The only real love I have ever felt outraged - picket lines are joined, books are was for children and other women. written. The fact that the Left is mute on the Everything else was lust, pity, wretched situation of working women is not acci self-hatred, pity, lust." dental. On the contrary, it is a manifestation of male This is a woman's confession. alliance to protect male power and male privilege: Now, look again at the face however poor men are, women must be poorer and of Botticelli's Venus, Kali, thus dependent on male favor, in a state of econ the Judith of Chartres omic, and therefore sexual, bondage. with her so-called smile. Many women do not work at all in the labor Adrienne Rich market, particularly poor women who are impris oned by the welfare system, children, lack of mar Every act of becoming conscious ketable skills. Here the classic concern of the Left (it says here in this book) for the poor and unemployed vanishes - women is an unnatural act are not thought of as poor or unemployed on their Adrienne Rich own; no, they are thought of as the wives of the poor ... I'm a lesbian, right? And I don't and unemployed or they are not thought of at all. have to love 'em, I don't have to fuck What is most astounding is how left-wing econo 'em, and I damn sure don't have to mists totally ignore, as if it did not exist, so-called depend on 'em, and that is freedom ... "women's work." Most women do domestic labor Shirley, from Phyllis Chesler's and are not paid for it. Most women do child rearing Women and Madness and are not paid for it. Women do slave labor, unrewarding, repetitive, involuntary, unskilled, The world was so recent that many unvalued, menial work that the poorest man will things lacked names, and in order to not do. Where are the left-wing writings on how indicate them it was necessary to point. women are the most viciously exploited labor force Gabriel Garcia Marquez, on the planet? · We do not support capitalism One Hundred Years of Solitude (women's identity is not invested in capitalism), but we too must survive under it. To survive, we must Women's oppression, body and soul, takes place be paid for the work we do. every day. It is the fabric of daily existence, unceas That, of ~ourse, is not enough. Domestic work ing, unrelenting, built into law, custom, and habit. and child rearing are not women's work-we reject Women survive by submitting, by learning the that precious birthright along with the bullshit male slave mentality and glorying in it. Women advance rhapsodies which sentimentalize it. Scrubbing in this society by being good women (i.e., cunts, floors and washing shit off babies and out of diapers chicks, pieces of ass, etc.) just as blacks advance by are not functions of gender fate or identity, unless being good niggers. only women have hands. When one stops playing the slave's game, the Last, the Left, its economists, historians, and world falls apart. Nothing is left. Nothing that one philosophers, have seemingly not yet noticed that learned before works anymore. How does one walk, we are the means of production. We are, in our talk, dress, play, think, love, differently? Each min bodies, the worker and the means of production. ute, how and what does one do? The world becomes Never has there been such alienated labor. For us, a very dangerous place. When one stops playing the control over our bodies is control over our lives. We slave's game, one must start to invent every minute

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of one's life. There are no forms which already exist Both of these models must compel those whQ to show how, and there are no liberated communi understand that systems of oppression are cancers ties where exemplary people lead exemplary lives. which grow from and originate in the twisted sexual One lives on the edge of a personal world collapsed, model, which is the patriarchal notion of normalcy, in direct opposition to the whole world of reality called dominance and submission. We say, oppres and power, and what then can one do except sion begins where life begins, in the act of fucking, invent? and revolution must begin in the same place, or it The point here is that we do not have the luxury has not begun at all. of being able to abstract our protests or resistances -we must live in our bodies and our bodies must 6. Conclusion live in patriarchy, subject to continuing violation, harassment, and contempt. There are no neutral There is only one choice. Call it areas- areas in which" sexism" does not matter. In freedom. particular, sex, the home, and "romance" are not Marge Piercy neutral areas. Nothing is more political to a feminist than fucking - nothing is less an act of love and Grace Paley was telling me about her trip to Russia more an act of ownership, violation; nothing is less and she said - an instrument of ecstasy and more an instrument of oppression than the penis; nothing is less an expres anti-]ewishness is the pathology of Rus sion of love and more an expression of dominance sia, and ofthe whole ofWestern Europe, and control than conventional heterosexual rela just as anti-blackness is the pathology of tion. Here the war mentality makes a visitation on Amerika, and being anti-woman is the our bodies and the phallic values of aggression, pathology of the world. dominance, and conquest are affirmed. The pathology of being anti-woman, or woman To transform the world we must transform the hating, is the warp and woof of the world. Cure it, very substance of our erotic sensibilities and we and the world as we know it-its cruel and system must do so as consciously and as conscientiously as atized oppression, the suffering of its wretched mul we do any act which involves our whole lives. There titudes- must collapse. Cure it, and we transform are two emerging feminist erotic models: human life and create human community. Con lesbianism and androgyny. Lesbianism is a tinue to nurture that same pathology, to call it love celebration of womanhood, the core erotic act in an and normalcy, and our history will be in the future emerging women's culture. Androgyny has to do what it has been in the past~ Dachau, Hiroshima, with the obliteration of gender distinctions and sex Viet Nam; rape, sexual torture, women in chains. roles, and ultimately of gender itself.

Andrea Dworkin is the author of Woman Hating (Dutton, 1974) and Our Blood (Harper and Row, 1976).

r Cover drawing by janet McLaughlin.

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