7 THE DIALECTIC OF SEX Sex class is so deep as to be invisible. Or it may appear as a superficial inequality, one that can be solved by merely a few reforms, or perhaps by the full integration of women into the labor force. But the reaction of the common man, woman, and child—"That? Why you can't change that! You must be out of your mind!"—is the closest to the truth. We are talking about something every bit as deep as that. This gut reaction—the assumption that, even when they don't know it, feminists are talking about changing a fundamental biological condition—is an honest one. That so profound a change cannot be easily fit into traditional categories of thought, e.g., "political," is not be-cause these categories do not apply but because they are not big enough: radical feminism bursts through them. If there were another word more all-embracing than revolution, I would use it. Until a certain level of evolution had been reached and technology had achieved its present sophistication, to question fundamental biological conditions was insanity. Why should a woman give up her precious seat in the cattle car for a bloody struggle she could not hope to win? But, for the first time in some countries, the preconditions for feminist revolution exist—indeed, the situation is beginning to demand such a revolution. •2- THE DIALECTIC OF SEX The Case for Feminist Revolution The first women are fleeing the massacre, and, shaking and tottering, are beginning to find each other. Their first move is a careful joint observation, to resensitize a fractured consciousness. This is painful: No matter how many levels of consciousness one reaches, the problem always goes deeper. It is everywhere. The division Yin and Yang pervades all culture, history, economics, nature itself; modern Western versions of sex discrimination are only the most recent layer. To so heighten one's sensitivity to sexism presents problems far worse than the black militant's new awareness of racism: Feminists have to question, not just all of Western culture, but the organization of culture itself, and further, even the very organization of nature. Many women give up in despair: if that's how deep it goes they don't want to know. Others continue strengthening and enlarging the movement, their painful sensitivity to female oppression existing for a purpose: eventually to eliminate it- Before we can act to change a situation, however, we must know how it has arisen and evolved, and through what institutions it now operates. Engels' "[We must] examine the historic succession of events from which the antagonism has sprung in order to discover in the conditions thus created the means of ending the conflict." For feminist revolution we shall need an analysis of the dynamics of sex war as comprehensive as the Marx-Engels analysis of class antagonism was for the economic revolution. More comprehensive. For we are dealing with a larger problem, with an oppression that goes back beyond recorded history to the animal kingdom itself. In creating such an analysis we can learn a lot from Marx and Engels: Not their literal opinions about women-— about the condition of women as an oppressed class they THE DIALECTIC OF SEX -3- know next to nothing, recognizing it only where it overlaps with economics—but rather their analytic method. Marx and Engels outdid their socialist forerunners in that they developed a method of analysis which was both dialectical and materialistic. The first in centuries to view history dialectically, they saw the world as process, a natural flux of action and reaction, of opposites yet inseparable and interpenetrating. Because they were able to perceive history as movie rather than as snapshot, they attempted to avoid falling into the stagnant "metaphysical" view that had trapped so many other great minds. (This sort of analysis itself may be a product of the sex division, as we shall discuss in Chapter 9.) They combined this view of the dynamic interplay of historical forces with a materialistic one, that is, they attempted for the first time to put historical and cultural change on a real basis, to trace the development of economic classes to organic causes. By understanding thoroughly the mechanics of history, they hoped to show men how to master it. Socialist thinkers prior to Marx and Engels, such as Fourier, Owen, and Bebel, had been able to do no more than moralize about existing social inequalities, positing an ideal world where class privilege and exploitation should not exist—in the same way that early feminist thinkers posited a world where male privilege and exploitation ought not exist—by mere virtue of good will. In both cases, because the early thinkers did not really understand how the social injustice had evolved, maintained itself, or could be eliminated, their ideas existed in a cultural vacuum, Utopian. Marx and Engels, on the other hand, attempted a scientific approach to history. They traced the class conflict to its real economic origins, projecting an economic solution based on objective economic •4- THE DIALECTIC OF SEX The ' ose for Feminist Revolution preconditions already present: the seizure by the proletariat of the means of production would lead to a communism in whicii government had withered away, no longer needed to repress the lower class for the sake of the higher. In the classless society the interests of every individual would be synonymous with those of the larger society. But the doctrine of historical materialism, much as it was a brilliant advance over previous historical analysis, was not the complete answer, as later events bore out. For though Marx and Engels grounded their theory in reality, it was only a partial reality. Here is Engels' strictly economic definition of historical materialism from Socialism: Utopian or Scientific: Historical materialism is that view of the course of history which seeks the ultimate cause and the great moving power of all historical events in the economic development of society, in the changes of the modes of production and exchange, in the consequent division of society into distinct classes, and in the struggles of these classes against one another. (Italics mine) Further, he claims: . . . that all past history with the exception of the primitive stages was the history of class struggles; that these warring classes of society are always the products of the modes of production and exchange—in a word, of the economic conditions of their time; that the economic structure of society always furnishes the real basis, starting from which we can alone work out the ultimate explanation of the whole superstructure of juridical and political institutions as well as of the religious, philosophical, and other ideas of a given historical period. (Italics mine) It would be a mistake to attempt to explain the oppression THE DIALECTIC OF SEX •5- of women according to this strictly economic interpretation. The class analysis is a beautiful piece of work, but limited: Although correct in a linear sense, it does not go deep enough. There is a whole sexual substratum of the historical dialectic that Engels at times dimly perceives, but because he can see sexuality only through an economic filter, reducing everything to that, he is unable to evaluate in its own right. Engels did observe that the original division of labor was between man and woman for the purposes of childbreed-ing; that within the family the husband was the owner, the wife the means of production, the children the labor; and that reproduction of the human species was an important economic system distinct from the means of production." * His correlation of the inicrdct'clopmcnt of these two systems in Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State on a time scale might read as follows: RECORDED HISTORt GREECE RENAISSANCE MO Of RH REVOLUTION III «i MATRIARCHY PATRIARCHY GROUP MARRIAGE PAIR MARRIAGE DOUBLE STANDARD MONOGAMY HETAlRiSM 1. SAVAGERY (NOMADS) xtaptJlton to 2. BARBARISM /TILLERSV OF \ SOIL / inr/MSing productoify of n':\. 'ľ thioiigh hmin into rrnt-oa. notably cultivation of land M doRiřt"CB'Kr< °' arifTols 3. CIVILIZATION ARISTOCRACY LOWER CLASS ARISTOCRACY BOURGEOISIE n iir.-tf; . COmn PROLETARIAT U> iCrt THE DIALECTIC OF SEX . §. The Case for Feminist Revolution But Engels has been given too much credit for these scattered recognitions of the oppression of women as a class. In fact he acknowledged the sexual class system only where it overlapped and illuminated his economic construct. Engels didn't do so well even in this respect. But Marx was worse: There is a growing recognition of Marx's bias against women (a cultural bias shared by Freud as well as all men of culture), dangerous if one attempts to squeeze feminism into an orthodox Marxist framework—freezing what were only incidental insights of Marx and Engels about sex class into dogma. Instead, we must enlarge historical materialism to include the strictly Marxian, in the same way that the physics of relativity did not invalidate Newtonian physics so much as it drew a circle around it, limiting its application—but only through comparison —to a smaller sphere. For an economic diagnosis traced to ownership of the means of production, even of the means of reproduction, does not explain everything. There is a level of reality that does not stem directly from economics. The assumption that, beneath economics, reality is psy-chosexual is often rejected as ahistorical by those who accept a dialectical materialist view of history because it seems to land us back where Marx began: groping through a fog of Utopian hypotheses, philosophical systems that might be right, that might be wrong (there is no way to tell), systems that explain concrete historical developments by a priori categories of thought; historical materialism, however, attempted to explain "knowing" by "being" and not vice versa. But there is still an untried third alternative: We can attempt to develop a materialist view of history based on sex itself. The early feminist theorists were to a materialist view THE DIALECTIC OF SEX •7- of sex what Fourier, Bebel, and Owen were to a materialist view of class. By and large, feminist theory has been as inadequate as were the early feminist attempts to correct sexism. This was to be expected. The problem is so immense that, at first try, only the surface could be skimmed, the most blatant inequalities described. Simone de Beau-voir was the only one who came close to—who perhaps has done—the definitive analysis. Her profound work The Second Sex—which appeared as recently as the early fifties to a world convinced that feminism was dead—for the first time attempted to ground feminism in its historical base. Of all feminist theorists De Beau voir is the most comprehensive and far-reaching, relating feminism to the best ideas in our culture. It may be this virtue is also her one failing: she is almost too sophisticated, too knowledgeable. Where this becomes a weakness—and this is still certainly debatable—-is in her rigidly existentialist interpretation of feminism (one wonders how much Sartre had to do with this). This in view of the fact that all cultural systems, including existentialism, are themselves determined by the sex dualism. She says: Man never thinks of himself without thinking of the Other; he views the world under the sign of duality which is not in the first place sexual in character. But being different from man, who sets himself up as the Same, it is naturally to the category of the Other that woman is consigned; the Other includes woman. (Italics mine.] Perhaps she has overshot her mark: Why postulate a fundamental Hegelian concept of Otherness as the final explanation—and then carefully document the biological and historical circumstances that have pushed the class "women" into such a category—when one has never seriously con- -8- THE DIALECTIC OF SEX The Case for Feminist Revolution sidered the much simpler and more likely possibility that the fundamental dualism sprang from sex itself? To posit a priori categories of thought and existence—Otherness, Transcendence, Immanence—into which history then falls may not be necessary. Marx and Engels had discovered that these philosophical categories themselves grew out of history. Before assuming such categories, let us first try to develop an analysis in which biology itself—procreation—is at the origin of the dualism. The immediate assumption of the layman that the unequal division of the sexes is "natural" may be well-founded. We need not immediately look beyond this. Unlike economic class, sex class sprang directly from a biological reality: men and women were created different, and not equally privileged. Although, as De Beauvoir points out, this difference of itself did not necessitate the development of a class system—the domination of one group by another—the reproductive junctions of these differences did. The biological family is an inherently unequal power distribution. The need for power leading to the development of classes arises from the psychosexual formation of each individual according to this basic imbalance, rather than, as Freud, Norman O. Brown, and others have, once again overshooting their mark, postulated, some irreducible conflict of Life against Death, Eros vs. Thanatos. The biological family—the basic reproductive unit of male/female/ i n fant, in whatever form of social organization—is characterized by these fundamental—if not immutable—facts: i) That women throughout history before the advent of birth control were at the continual mercy of their THE DIALECTIC OF SEX •9- biology—menstruation, menopause, and "female ills," constant painful childbirth, wetnursing and care of infants, all of which made them dependent on males (whether brother, father, husband, lover, or clan, government, com-munity-at-large) for physical survival. 2) That human infants take an even longer time to grow up than animals, and thus are helpless and, for some short period at least, dependent on adults for physical survival. 3) That a basic mother/child i n terde pendency has existed in some form in every society, past or present, and thus has shaped the psychology of every mature female and every infant. 4) That the natural reproductive difference between the sexes led directly to the first division of labor based on sex, which is at the origins of all further division into economic and cultural classes and is possibly even at the root of all caste (discrimination based on sex and other biologically determined characteristics such as race, age, etc.). These biological contingencies of the human family cannot be covered over with anthropological sophistries. Anyone observing animals mating, reproducing, and caring for their young will have a hard time accepting the "cultural relativity" line. For no matter how many tribes in Oceania you can find where the connection of the father to fertility is not known, no matter how many matrilineages, no matter how many cases of sex-role reversal, male housewifery, or even empathic labor pains, these facts prove only one thing: the amazing flexibility of human nature. But human nature is adaptable to something, it is, yes, determined by its environmental conditions. And the biological family that we have described has existed everywhere throughout time. Even in matriarchies where woman's fertility is wor- •10- THE DIALECTIC OF SEX The Case for Feminist Revolution shipped, and the father's role is unknown or unimportant, though perhaps not the genetic father, there is still some dependence of the female and the infant on the male. And though it is true that the nuclear family is only a recent development, one which, as I shall attempt to show, only intensifies the psychological penalties of the biological family, though it is true that throughout history there have been many variations on this biological family, the contingencies I have described existed in all of them, causing specific psychosexual distortions in the human personality. But to grant that the sexual imbalance of power is biologically based is not to lose our case. We are no longer just animals. And the Kingdom of Nature does not reign absolute. As Simone de Beauvoir herself says: The theory of historical materialism has brought to light some important truths. Humanity is not an animal species, it is a historical reality. Human society is an antiphysis—in a sense it is against nature; it does not passively submit to the presence of nature but rather takes over the control of nature on its own behalf. This arrogation is not an inward, subjective operation; it is accomplished objectively in practical action. Thus, the "natural" is not necessarily a "human" value. Humanity has begun to outgrow nature: we can no longer justify the maintenance of a discriminatory sex class system on grounds of its origins in Nature. Indeed, for pragmatic reasons alone it is beginning to look as if we must get rid of it (see Chapter 10). The problem becomes political, demanding more than a comprehensive historical analysis, when one realizes that, though man is increasingly capable of freeing himself from the biological conditions that created his tyranny over THE DIALECTIC OF SEX •11- women and children, he has little reason to want to give this tyranny up. As Engels said, in the context of economic revolution: It is the law of division of labor that lies at the basis of the division into classes [Note that this division itself grew out of a fundamental biological division]. But this does not prevent the ruling class, once having the upper hand, from consolidating its power at the expense of the working class, from turning its social leadership into an intensified exploitation of the masses. Though the sex class system may have originated in fundamental biological conditions, this does not guarantee once the biological basis of their oppression has been swept away that women and children will be freed. On the contrary, the new technolog)', especially fertility control, may be used against them to reinforce the entrenched system of exploitation. So that just as to assure elimination of economic classes requires the revolt of the underclass (the proletariat) and, in a temporary dictatorship, their seizure of the means of production, so to assure the elimination of sexual classes requires the revolt of the underclass (women) and the seizure of control of reproduction: the restoration to women of ownership of their own bodies, as well as feminine control of human fertility, including both the new technology and all the social institutions of childbearing and childrearing. And just as the end goal of socialist revolution was not only the elimination of the economic class privilege but of the economic class distinction itself, so the end goal of feminist revolution must be, unlike that of the first feminist movement, not just the elimination of male privilege but of the sex distinction itself: genital differences between human THE DIALECTIC OF SEX .|2- The Case f0* F f Minist Revolution beings would no longer matter culturally. (A reversion to an unobstructed pansexuality—Freud's "polymorphous perversity"—would probably supersede hetero-, homo-, bisexuality.) The reproduction of the species by one sex for the benefit of both would be replaced by (at least the option of) artificial reproduction: children would be born to both sexes equally, or independently of either, however one chooses to look at it; the dependence of the child on the mother (and vice versa) would give way to a greatly shortened dependence on a small group of others in general, and any remaining inferiority to adults in physical strength would be compensated for culturally. The division of labor would be ended by the elimination of labor altogether (cybernation). The tryanny of the biological family would be broken. And with it the psychology of power. As Engels claimed for strictly socialist revolution: The existence of not simply this or that ruling class but of any ruling class at all [will have] become an obsolete anachronism. That socialism has never come near achieving this predicated goal is not only the result of unfulfilled or misfired economic preconditions, but also because the Marxian analysis itself was insufficient: it did not dig deep enough to the psychosexual roots of class. Marx was onto something more profound than he knew when he observed that the family contained within itself in miniature all the antagonisms that later develop on a wide scale within the society and the state. For unless revolution disturbs the basic social organization, the biological family—the vinculum through which the psychology of power can always be smuggled—the tapeworm of exploitation will never be annihilated. We shall need a sexual revolution much larger THE DIALECTIC OF SEX •13- than—inclusive of—a socialist one to truly eradicate all class systems. * # * We have attempted to take the class analysis one step further to its roots in the biological division of the sexes. We have not thrown out the insights of the socialists; on the contrary, radical feminism enlarges their analysis, granting it an even deeper basis in objective conditions and thereby explaining many of its insolubles. As the groundwork for our own analysis we shall expand Engels' definition of historical materialism. Here is the definition we have already quoted above, rephrased to include the biological division of the sexes for the purpose of reproduction, which lies at the origins of class: Historical materialism is that view of the course of history which seeks the ultimate cause and the great moving power of all historic events in the dialectic of sex: the division of society into two distinct biological classes for procreative reproduction, and the struggles of these classes with one another; in the changes in the modes of marriage, reproduction and childcare; in the related development of other physically-differentiated classes [castes]; and in the first division of labor based on sex which developed into the [economic] class system. And here is the cultural superstructure, as well as the economic one, traced not just back to (economic) class, but all the way back to sex: All past history [note that we can now eliminate "with the exception of primitive stages"] was the history of class struggle. These warring classes of society are always the product of the modes of organization of the biological family unit for reproduction of the species, as well as of the strictly economic modes of production and exchange of goods and services. The sexual- THE DIALECTIC OF SEX . 14. The Case for Feminist Revolution reproductive organization of society always furnishes the real basis, starting from which we can alone work out the ultimate explanation of the whole superstructure of economic, juridical and political institutions as well as of the religious, philosophical and other ideas of a given historical period. And now Engels' projection of the results of a materialistic approach to history is more realistic: The whole sphere of the conditions of life which environ man and have hitherto ruled him now comes under the dominion and control of man who for the first time becomes the real conscious Lord of Nature, master of his own social organization. In the following chapters we shall assume this definition of historical materialism, examining the cultural institutions that maintain and reinforce the biological family (especially its present manifestation, the nuclear family) and its result, the power psychology, an aggressive chauvinism now developed enough to destroy us. We shall integrate this with a feminist analysis of Freudianism: for Freud's cultural bias, like that of Marx and Engels, does not invalidate his perception entirely. In fact, Freud had insights of even greater value than those of the socialist theorists for the building of a new dialectical materialism based on sex. We shall attempt, then, to correlate the best of Engels and Marx (the historical materialist approach) with the best of Freud (the understanding of the inner man and woman and what shapes them) to arrive at a solution both political and personal yet grounded in real conditions. We shall see that Freud observed the dynamics of psychology correctly in their immediate social context, but because the fundamental structure of that social context was basic to all humanity—to different degrees—it ap- THE DIALECTIC OF SEX •15- peared to be nothing less than an absolute existential condition which it would be insane to question—forcing Freud and many of his followers to postulate a priori constructs like the Death Wish to explain the origins of these universal psychological drives. This in turn made the sicknesses of humanity irreducible and uncurable—which is why his proposed solution (psychoanalytic therapy), a contradiction in terms, was so weak compared to the rest of his work, and such a resounding failure in practice—causing those with a social/political sensibility to reject not only his therapeutic solution, but his most profound discoveries as well. CONCLUSION THE ULTIMATE REVOLUTION I STRUCTURAL IMPERATIVES Before we talk about revolutionary alternatives, let's summarize—to determine the specifics that must be carefully excluded from any new structures. Then we can go on to "utopian speculation" directed by at least negative guidelines. We have seen how women, biologically distinguished from men, are culturally distinguished from "human." Nature produced the fundamental inequality—half the human race must bear and rear the children of all of them —which was later consolidated, institutionalized, in the interests of men. Reproduction of the species cost women dearly, not only emotionally, psychologically, culturally but even in strictly material (physical) terms: before recent methods of contraception, continuous childbirth led to constant "female trouble," early aging, and death. Women were the slave class that maintained the species in order to free the other half for the business of the world—admittedly often its drudge aspects, but certainly all its creative aspects as well. This natural division of labor was continued only at great cultural sacrifice: men and women developed only half of themselves, at the expense of the other half. The CONCLUSION: THE ULTIMATE REVOLUTION ■233- division of the psyche into male and female to better reinforce the reproductive division was tragic: the hypertrophy in men of rationalism, aggressive drive, the atrophy of their emotional sensitivity was a physical (war) as well as a cultural disaster. The emotionalism and passivity of women increased their suffering (we cannot speak of them in a symmetrical way, since they were victimized as a class by the division). Sexually men and women were channeled into a highly ordered—time, place, procedure, even dialogue—heterosexuality restricted to the genitals, rather than diffused over the entire physical being. I submit, then, that the first demand for any alternative system must be: i) The freeing of women from the tyranny of their reproductive biology by every means available, and the drßti-sion of the childbearing and childrearing role to the society as a whole, men as well as women. There are many degrees of this. Already we have a (hard-won) acceptance of "family planning," if not contraception for its own sake. Proposals are imminent for day-care centers, perhaps even twenty-four-hour child-care centers staffed by men as well as women. But this, in my opinion, is timid if not entirely worthless as a transition. We're talking about radical change. And though indeed it cannot come all at once, radical goals must be kept in sight at all times. Day-care centers buy women off. They ease the immediate pressure without asking why that pressure is on women. At the other extreme there are the more distant solutions based on the potentials of modern embryology, that is, artificial reproduction, possibilities still so frightening that they are seldom discussed seriously. We have seen that the fear is to some extent justified: in the hands of our current society and under the direction of current scientists (few THE DIALECTIC OF SEX • 234 • rfc* Case for Feminist Revolution of whom are female or even feminist), any attempted use of technology to "free" anybody is suspect. But we are preparing to talk about speculative systems, and for the purpose of our discussion we must assume flexibility and good intentions in those working out the change. To thus free women from their biology would be to threaten the social unit that is organized around biological reproduction and the subjection of women to their biological destiny, the family. Our second demand will come also as a basic contradiction to the family, this time the family as an economic unit: 2) The full self-determination, including economic independence, of both women and children. To achieve this goal would require fundamental changes in our social and economic structure. This is why we must talk about a feminist socialism: in the immediate future, under capitalism, there could be at best a token integration of women into the labor force. For women have been found exceedingly useful and cheap as a transient, often highly skilled labor supply," not to mention the economic value of their traditional function, the reproduction and rearing of the next generation of children, a job for which they are now patronized (literally and thus figuratively) rather than paid. But whether or not oflicially recognized, these are essential economic functions. Women, in this present capacity, are the very foundation of the economic superstructure, vital to its existence.f The paeans to self-sacrificing motherhood • Most bosses would fail badly had they io lake over ihcir secrclarics' job. or do without them. I know several secretaries who sign wiihout a [bought their bosses' names 10 their own (even brilliant) solutions. The skills of college women especially would cost a fortune reckoned in material terms of male labor. t Margaret Bcnsion ("The Political Kconomy of Women's Liberation," Monthly Review, September 1969), in attempting to show that women's CONCLUSION: THE ULTIMATE REVOLUTION ■235- have a basis in reality: Mom is vital to the American way of life, considerably more than apple pie. She is an institution without which the system really would fall apart. In official capitalist terms, the bill for her economic services* might run as high as one-fifth of the gross national product. But payment is not the answer. To pay her, as is often discussed seriously in Sweden, is a reform that does not challenge the basic division of labor and thus could never eradicate the disastrous psychological and cultural consequences of that division of labor. As for the economic independence of children, that is really a pipe dream, realized as yet nowhere in the world. And, in the case of children too, we are talking about more than a fair integration into the labor force; we are talking about the abolition of the labor force itself under a cybernetic socialism, the radical restructuring of the economy to make "work," i.e., wage labor, no longer relevant. In our post-revolutionary society adults as well as children would oppression is indeed economic—though previous economic analysis has been incorrect—distinguishes between the male superstructure economy based on commodity production (capitalist ownership of the means of production, and wage labor), and the pre-industrial reduplicative economy of the family, production for immediate use. Because the latter is not part of the official contemporary economy, its function at the basis of that economy is often overlooked. Talk of drafting women into the super-structure commodity economy fails to deal with the tremendous amount of necessary production of the traditional kind now performed by women without pay: Who will do it? •Juliet Mitchell, in "Women: The Longest Revolution" (New Left Review, December 1966). states that "domestic labor is enormous if qualified in terms of productive labor. In Sweden. 3.340 million hours a year are spent by women in housework compared with 1,290 million hours spent by women in industry." The Chase Manhattan Bank estimates a woman's over-all domestic work week at 99.6 hours. Margaret Benston gives her minimal estimate for a childless married woman at 16 hours, close to half of a regular work week; a mother must spend at least six or seven days a week working close to 12 hours. THE DIALECTIC OF SEX • 236 • The Case for Feminist Revolution be provided for independent of their social contributions in the first equal distribution of wealth in history. We have now attacked the family on a double front, challenging that around which it is organized: reproduction of the species by females and its outgrowth, the physical dependence of women and children. To eliminate these would be enough to destroy the family, which breeds the power psychology. However, we will break it down still further. 3) The total integration of women and children into all aspects of the larger society. All institutions that segregate the sexes, or bar children from adult society, e.g., the modern school, must be destroyed. These three demands predicate a feminist revolution based on advanced technology. And if the male/female and the adult/child cultural distinctions are destroyed, we will no longer need the sexual repression that maintains these unequal classes, allowing for the first time a "natural" sexual freedom. Thus we arrive at: 4) The freedom of all women and children to do whatever they wish to do sexually. There will no longer be any reason not to. (Past reasons: Full sexuality threatened the continuous reproduction necessary for human survival, and thus, through religion and other cultural institutions, sexuality had to be restricted to reproductive purposes, all non-reproductive sex pleasure considered deviation or worse; The sexual freedom of women would call into question the fatherhood of the child, thus threatening patrimony; Child sexuality had to be repressed because it was a threat to the precarious internal balance of the family. These sexual repressions increased proportionately to the degree of cultural exaggeration of the biological family.) In our new society, humanity could finally revert to its natural "poly- CONCLUSION: THE ULTIMATE REVOLUTION •237- morphously perverse" sexuality—all forms of sexuality would be allowed and indulged. The fully sexuate mind, realized in the past in only a few individuals (survivors), would become universal. Artificial cultural achievement would no longer be the only avenue to sexuale self-realization: one could now realize oneself fully, simply in the process of being and acting. 11 FEARS AND CONSIDERATIONS These broad imperatives must form the basis of any more specific radical feminist program. But our revolutionary demands are likely to meet anything from mild balking ("utopian . . . unrealistic . . . farfetched . . . too far in the future . . . impossible , . . well, it may stink, but you haven't got anything better . . .") to hysteria ("inhuman . . . unnatural . . . sick . . . perverted . . - communistic . . . 1984 . . . what? creative motherhood destroyed for babies in glass tubes, monsters made by scientists?, etc.") But we have seen that such negative reactions paradoxically may signify how close we are hitting: revolutionary feminism is the only radical program that immediately cracks through to the emotional strata underlying "serious" politics, thus reintegrating the personal with the public, the subjective with the objective, the emotional with the rational-—the female principle with the male. What are some of the prime components of this resistance that is keeping people from experimenting with alternatives to the family, and where does it come from? We are all familiar with the details of Brave New World: cold collectives, with individualism abolished, sex reduced to a mechanical act, children become robots, Big Brother