1969: A Discussion at the Kitchen Table

1969: A MANIFESTO RESULTING FROM A DISCUSSION AT THE KITCHEN TABLE

On a long, calm summer evening, the light changed and deepened to golden. We were talking about women's place in the world, and reached some understandings. We dined on spaghetti and fresh lettuce from the garden, and as it grew dark around nine o'clock, the moon came floating to the trees and paused for a moment on a branch. Our local mockingbird began to sing its song of many bird-languages. We felt the possibilities of the night. And we were all buzzed too.


Part One:  PROPOSITIONS

1. All People all over the world are equally human, we all know this, with natural rights to freedom from subordination based on their sex. And if you want to know what natural rights are, you must ask yourself why I shouldn't kill you now. That's right. Reason concludes that you're human, and we all know that reason must therefore concurrently conclude that women are human.

Birth as a male or female is an immutable characteristic. You don't invent organs as quaint as testes or clitorii. Of course some men will always live as women. That is not a big issue.

Women historically and universally have been treated as a subordinate group and excluded from the public sphere. We have collaborated in our seclusion. The situation has been neither illogical or unsatisfying for biological reasons and we have acceded to the arrangement.

But all satisfying yet inequitable things must end to the discomfort of all. Thus do we progress.

2. Many other groups have suffered the pain and disability of being considered "not fully human" over the long history of humanity: Native Americans, Aboriginal people, Jewish people, African-Americans, immigrants, and homosexuals. Women's history as a subordinated group is more ancient than any of these groups and more entrenched; the scale of our oppression is vastly greatly than any other group's because we are half of humanity, and the character of our subordination is unique; we are unfortunately proud of that.

Even so, the liberation of women should be seen in the context of liberation of other historically-subordinated groups. Pragmatically, women must be the leaders of their own liberation process, but must strategically ally with due protections with some marginalized groups including marginalized men to accomplish this. In other words, we must play politics.

Women should strive to unite as a group based on commonalities, no matter what our social, racial, or cultural differences. 

Women's liberation will help men to lead safer, more fully-realized lives as well. Obviously.

3. Reality is Male   Knowledge, science, art, and human culture still generally reflect male rather than female views of reality. The female point of view is still significantly different from that of males and is devalued. 

Men and women as different sexes have significantly different biologies resulting in significantly different perceptions, drives, desires, pleasures, and, generally, a different mode of existence. 

Women are treated in all societies as objects exploited for our sexuality, reproductive capabilities, labour, and nurturing capabilities. Bummer! Only men are considered fully human, that is, existentially autonomous, in this male-dominated construction of reality. Stupid Legos.

To re-capture their own reality, many women may choose to separate physically, be celibate, and perform other actions to allow us to gain perspective and transform "male" reality into one which acknowledges and respects our own modes of experience and perception. These actions of separating women are always chaste, by the way.

4. Power is Male   Everywhere and for thousands of years, human society has been structured on a hierarchy of male power and dominance and female powerlessness and subordination. This is cringeworthy and should stop. This is old stuff hanging over us like an elephantiasitic arm. Let's continue to dredge it up slowly and with reluctance. No sense causing a riot.

Female spirituality and sources of power have been systematically stripped away and are under constant surveillance and management. But the Goddesses haven't gone away, they've just been buried for a couple thousand years and now their mad acolytes are waking them again into their rightful power.

Amen.

Men are biologically more aggressive than women (Jack went down the hill first)

and have a greater drive for dominance than women. Duh!

Aggression and valorization of death and insatiable acquisition run rampant in human society, causing imbalance and unnecessary suffering, and harming the earth and all its creatures, not just women. 

(True words, those...feel free to read that line again.)

Violence is rooted in both biology and culture. It can be managed with a more effective combination of women's liberation, education, social stigma, amelioration of poverty, development of classless society, and penal measures, and this is humanity's top priority as the survival of the species and the earth itself now depend on it. 

5. The Four Categories of Male Appropriation of Females are 1) the appropriation of women's labor (especially domestic servitude); 2) appropriation of women's sexuality; 3) appropriation of women's reproductive capacity, and 4) appropriation of women's caretaking capabilities, including emotional nurturing. Really, you have to hand it to men.

The mechanism of confinement of women into a social system in which their lives are limited generally to functions useful and desirable to men and categorized by these four general categories of appropriation is called genderization and structures patriarchy.

6. Genderization in all global societies is the overall social stratification mechanism that subordinates women. Women are marked and groomed early in life.

 "Gender is a social system that divides power. It is therefore a political system" (C. MacKinnon).

There are two biological sexes. The members of the female sex are confined at birth into a gender (a category of social roles, behaviors, expectations, and status) defined by their utility to men. Girl's genderization is enforced by institutionalized coercions ranging from social institutions such as marriage, religious tradition, and law, to violence. And this is no lie.

Male social roles and behaviors are the norm and therefore are not genderized. There is no male gender in the sense of a set of subordinating societal roles applied only and universally to men as a group. There is only The Sex (see footnotes), namely, women. In other words, there are Men and there are Defective Men a la Aristotle.

The standard human, the "reasonable man" is the norm of Western law . Male-dominated society has reflected male biological needs and desires, but female genderized roles have not; they require women to live their lives in ways that are alien, harmful, stunting, and not based on their own biological needs and desires. Who knows, maybe we would decide to be housewives...one must entertain strange fancies when one thinks of the future...

7. Commonalities  Women worldwide and of all classes and races share commonalities which are the major shaping forces in their lives, including common reproductive and other biology, common socialization to service to men and children, common assignment at birth into subordinate worldwide gender roles, an ancient common history in which they have been treated as property/slaves/wards, and common goals to reacquire their human rights. So don't be givin' us that Third Wave Shit. Fuck Lacan!

8. Transition  Beginning in the twentieth century, human society entered a state of transition to more balanced power relations, accounting for many apparent contradictions and disjunctures in current relations between the sexes. That's right, the Revolution is Here, we are in the middle of it.

During the Revolution, while the current gender system still is powerful and male violence is not adequately managed, women require special accommodations for their protection, and individuals of both sexes may require gradual rather than sudden change from social roles in which they have already invested their lives. Women's dependence will lessen as the transition progresses.

9. The Transformed State  Women as a group require a State, rather than anarchy or a loose federation, to ensure that biological dispositions toward violence and stratification do not take hold in society. All institutions of social control that contribute to subordinating women as a group would be transformed or abolished in a global transformed State, including marriage, prostitution, coerced seclusion, coerced economic dependence on men, silencing, pornography, sex trafficking, abortion prohibitions, official recognition of subordinative religious teachings, and coerced consent to sexual access. 

That shit would go --- did you gentlemen think it would last?

All people have the right to not fear violence from other human beings and the transformed global State therefore would have to effectively manage violence in any form, including war. No more violence, as they say.

The transformed State would reflect the needs and desires of both women and men, and the genderization of women would cease. (Good thing I put the comma there.)

During transition, a utopian vision of a global State in which women and men share political, economic, and social power equally should be developed. 

Maybe do a TV sitcom?

One such utopia would be a worldwide State ensuring peace, non-aggression, non-hierarchicality, access to food, clothing, and shelter, help for those in need, women's control of their reproductive capacities, legal and social equality, and maximum independence of the individual within these parameters. In short, Sweden.

Within that State would be innumerable municipalities of limited population, with maximum travel freedom between municipalities and free development of differing cultures. Yeo olde villages, I'm sorry, not too exciting.

In all governance at both the global State level and within each municipality, 50% of the participants would be women. This is the Line. This is what will free women and correct the current imbalance for everyone's benefit.

10. Abolition of Stratified Gender Roles  Post-transition, social relations between all people would no longer adopt genderization as a legal, political, or limiting distinction. However, non-hierarchical, non-genderized sex differences and their social expressions would be valued and balanced so that all may fully develop their non-violent human capacities. So sex would still be okay. Just no adds to replace women's estrogens so they could have more sex after sixty. Leave us alone already!

11. Visionary Feminism Feminism in the arts, especially literature, is to be encouraged as women need models of a future liberated society, need narratives that reflect women's reality, and need their particular history and culture to be conserved. Like slutwalks.