female suffering is buried in cultural invisibility and contempt. Because women’s testimony is not and cannot be validated by the witness of men who have experienced the same events and given
them the same value, the very reality of abuse sustained by
women, despite its overwhelming pervasiveness and constancy, is
negated. It is negated in the transactions of everyday life, and it is
negated in the history books, left out, and it is negated by those
who claim to care about suffering but are blind to this suffering.
The problem, simply stated, is that one must believe in the exis-
tence of the person in order to recognize the authenticity of her
suffering. Neither men nor women believe in the existence of
women as significant beings. It is impossible to remember as real
the suffering of someone who by definition has no legitimate claim
to dignity or freedom, someone who is in fact viewed as some
thing, an object or an absence. And if a woman, an individual
woman m ultiplied by billions, does not believe in her own discrete
existence and therefore cannot credit the authenticity of her own
suffering, she is erased, canceled out, and the meaning of her life,
whatever it is, whatever it might have been, is lost. This loss cannot be calculated or comprehended. It is vast and awful, and nothing w ill ever make up for it.
No one can bear to live a meaningless life. Women fight for
meaning just as women fight for survival: by attaching themselves
to men and the values honored by men. By committing themselves
to male values, women seek to acquire value. By advocating male
meaning, women seek to acquire meaning. Subservient to male
w ill, women believe that subservience itself is the meaning of a
female life. In this w ay, women, whatever they suffer, do not suffer the anguish of a conscious recognition that, because they are women, they have been robbed of volition and choice, without
which no life can have meaning.
*
The political Right in the United States today makes certain metaphysical and material promises to women that both exploit and quiet some of women’s deepest fears. These fears originate in the
perception that male violence against women is uncontrollable and
unpredictable. Dependent on and subservient to men, women are
always subject to this violence. The Right promises to put enforceable restraints on male aggression, thus sim plifying survival for women— to make the world slightly more habitable, in other
words— by offering the following:
of technology, economics, most of the practical skills required to
function autonomously, kept ignorant of the real social and sexual
demands made on women, deprived of physical strength, excluded
from forums for the development of intellectual acuity and public
self-confidence, women are lost and mystified by the savage momentum of an ordinary life. Sounds, signs, promises, threats, w ildly crisscross, but what do they mean? The Right offers women
a simple, fixed, predetermined social, biological, and sexual order.
Form conquers chaos. Form banishes confusion. Form gives ignorance a shape, makes it look like something instead of nothing.
and to believe that women without men are homeless. Women
have a deep fear of being homeless—at the mercy of the elements
and of strange men. The Right claims to protect the home and the
woman’s place in it.
wrong move, even an unintentional smile, can bring disaster—assault, shame, disgrace. The Right acknowledges the reality of danger, the validity of fear. The Right then manipulates the fear. The promise is that if a woman is obedient, harm will not befall her.
she learns the rules by rote, she can perform with apparent effortlessness, which will considerably enhance her chances for survival. The Right, very considerately, tells women the rules of the game on which their lives depend. The Right also promises that,
despite their absolute sovereignty, men too will follow specified
rules.
