merit, not an artificial attainment by inheritance,
wealth, family and position. Conceding, then, that
the responsibilities of life rest equally on man and
woman, that their destiny is the same, they need the
same preparation for time and eternity. The talk o f
sheltering woman from the fierce storms o f life is the
sheerest mockery, for they beat on her from every
point of the compass, just as they do on man, and
with more fatal results, for he has been trained to
protect himself, to resist, and to conquer. Such are
the facts in human experience, the responsibilities of
individual sovereignty.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, 1892
1
The Promise of the Ultra-Right
There is a rumor, circulated for centuries by scientists, artists, and
philosophers both secular and religious, a piece of gossip as it were,
to the effect that women are “biologically conservative. ” W hile gossip among women is universally ridiculed as low and trivial, gossip among men, especially if it is about women, is called theory, or
idea, or fact. T his particular rumor became dignified as high
thought because it was Whispered-Down-The-Lane in formidable
academies, libraries, and meeting halls from which women, until
very recently, have been formally and forcibly excluded.
The whispers, however m ultisyllabic and footnoted they sometimes are, reduced to a simple enough set of assertions. Women have children because women by definition have children. This
“fact of life, ” which is not subject to qualification, carries with it
the instinctual obligation to nurture and protect those children.
Therefore, women can be expected to be socially, politically, economically, and sexually conservative because the status quo, whatever it is, is safer than change, whatever the change. Noxious male philosophers from all disciplines have, for centuries, maintained
that women follow a biological imperative derived directly from
their reproductive capacities that translates necessarily into narrow
lives, small minds, and a rather meanspirited puritanism.
This theory, or slander, is both specious and cruel in that, in
fact, women are forced to bear children and have been throughout
history in all economic systems, with but teeny-weeny time-outs
while the men were momentarily disoriented, as, for instance, in
the immediate postcoital aftermath of certain revolutions. It is entirely irrational in that, in fact, women of all ideological persuasions, with the single exception of absolute pacifists, of whom there have not been very many, have throughout history supported wars
in which the very children they are biologically ordained to protect
are maimed, raped, tortured, and killed. Clearly, the biological explanation of the so-called conservative nature of women obscures the realities of women’s lives, buries them in dark shadows of distortion and dismissal.
The disinterested or hostile male observer can categorize women
as “conservative” in some metaphysical sense because it is true that
women as a class adhere rather strictly to the traditions and values
of their social context, whatever the character of that context. In
societies of whatever description, however narrowly or broadly defined, women as a class are the dulled conformists, the orthodox believers, the obedient followers, the disciples of unwavering faith.
To waver, whatever the creed of the men around them, is tantamount to rebellion; it is dangerous. Most women, holding on for dear life, do not dare abandon blind faith. From father’s house to
husband’s house to a grave that still might not be her own, a
woman acquiesces to male authority in order to gain some protection from male violence. She conforms, in order to be as safe as she can be. Sometimes it is a lethargic conformity, in which case male
