Andrea Dworkin - Our Blood - Prophecies and Discourses on Sexual Politics

Satan, what are we to think? When we discover that Calvin

himself burned witches, and that he personally supervised the

witch hunts in Zurich, what are we to think? When we discover that the fear and loathing of female carnality are codified in Jewish law, what are we to think?

Some of us have a very personal view of the world. We say

that what happens to us in our lives as women happens to us

as individuals. We even say that any violence we have experienced in our lives as women— for instance, rape or assault by a husband, lover, or stranger—happened between two individuals. Some of us even apologize for the aggressor—we feel

sorry for him; we say that he is personally disturbed, or that he

was provoked in a particular way, at a particular time, by a

particular woman.

Men tell us that they too are “oppressed. ” They tell us that

they are often in their individual lives victimized by women—

by mothers, wives, and “girlfriends. ” They tell us that women

provoke acts of violence through our carnality, or malice, or

avarice, or vanity, or stupidity. They tell us that their violence

originates in us and that we are responsible for it. They tell us

that their lives are full of pain, and that we are its source.

They tell us that as mothers we injure them irreparably, as

wives we castrate them, as lovers we steal from them semen,

youth, and manhood— and never, never, as mothers, wives, or

lovers do we ever give them enough.

And what are we to think? Because if we begin to piece

together all of the instances of violence— the rapes, the assaults, the cripplings, the killings, the mass slaughters; if we read their novels, poems, political and philosophical tracts and

see that they think of us today what the Inquisitors thought of

us yesterday; if we realize that historically gynocide is not

some mistake, some accidental excess, some dreadful fluke,

but is instead the logical consequence of what they believe to

be our god-given or biological natures; then we must finally

understand that under patriarchy gynocide is the ongoing

reality of life lived by women. And then we must look to each

other— for the courage to bear it and for the courage to

change it.

The struggle of women, the feminist struggle, is not a struggle for more money per hour, or for equal rights under male law, or for more women legislators who will operate within

the confines of male law. These are all emergency measures,

designed to save women’s lives, as many as possible, now,

today. But these reforms will not stem the tide of gynocide;

these reforms will not end the relentless violence perpetrated

by the gender class men against the gender class women. These

reforms will not stop the increasing rape epidemic in this

country, or the wife-beating epidemic in England. They will

not stop the sterilizations of black and poor white women who

are the victims of male doctors who hate female carnality.

These reforms will not empty mental institutions of women

put into them by male relatives who hate them for rebelling

against the limits of the female role, or against the conditions

of female servitude. They will not empty prisons filled with

women who, in order to survive, whored; or who, after being

raped, killed the rapist; or who, while being beaten, killed the

man who was killing them. These reforms will not stop men

from living off exploited female domestic labor, nor will these

reforms stop men from reinforcing male identity by psychologically victimizing women in so-called “love” relationships.

And no personal accommodation within the system of

patriarchy will stop this relentless gynocide. Under patriarchy,

no woman is safe to live her life, or to love, or to mother

children. Under patriarchy, every woman is a victim, past,

present, and future. Under patriarchy, every woman’s daughter is a victim, past, present, and future. Under patriarchy, every woman’s son is her potential betrayer and also the inevitable rapist or exploiter of another woman.

Before we can live and love, we will have to hone ourselves

into a revolutionary sisterhood. That means that we must stop

supporting the men who oppress us; that we must refuse to

feed and clothe and clean up after them; that we must refuse

to let them take their sustenance from our lives. That means

that we will have to divest ourselves of the identity we have

been trained to as females—that we will have to divest ourselves of all traces of the masochism we have been told is synonymous with being female. That means that we will have

to attack and destroy every institution, law, philosophy, religion, custom, and habit of this patriarchy—this patriarchy that feeds on our “dirty” blood, that is built on our “trivial”

labor.

Halloween is the appropriate time to commit ourselves to

this revolutionary sisterhood. On this night we remember our

dead. On this night we remember together that nine million

women were killed because men said that they were carnal,

malicious, and wicked. On this night we know that they live

now through us.

Let us together rename this night Witches’ Eve. Let us together make it a time of mourning: for all women who are victims of gynocide, dead, in jail, in mental institutions, raped,

sterilized against their wills, brutalized. And let us on this

night consecrate our lives to developing the revolutionary

sisterhood— the political strategies, the feminist actions—

which will stop for all time the devastating violence against

us.

4

The Rape A tro city

and the Boy N ext Door

I want to talk to you about rape— rape —what it is, who does

it, to whom it is done, how it is done, why it is done, and what

to do about it so that it will not be done any more.

First, though, I want to make a few introductory remarks. *

From 1964 to 1965 and from 1966 to 1968, I went to Bennington College in Vermont. Bennington at that time was still a women’s school, or, as people said then, a girls’ school. It

was a very insular place—entirely isolated from the Vermont

Delivered at State University of New York at Stony Brook, March 1, 1975;