Feminist Art May... Though Perhaps Our Imaginations

Men Are Rewarded For Learning The Practice Of Violence In Virtually Any Sphere Of Activity By Money, Admiration, Recognition, Respect, And The Genuflection Of Others Honoring Their Sacred And Proven Masculinity. In Male Culture, Police Are Heroic And So Are Outlaws; Males Who Enforce Standards Are Heroic And So Are Those Who Violate Them.

Feminist Art Is Not Some Tiny Creek Running Off The Great River Of Real Art. It Is Not Some Crack In An Otherwise Flawless Stone. It Is, Quite Spectacularly I Think, Art Which Is Not Based On The Subjugation Of One Half Of The Species. It Is Art Which Will Take The Great Human Themes -love, Death, Heroism, Suffering, History Itself -and Render Them Fully Human. It May Also, Though Perhaps Our Imaginations Are So Mutilated Now That We Are Incapable Even Of The Ambition, Introduce A New Theme, One As Great And As Rich As Those Others -should We Call It Joy?

Every Three Minutes A Woman Is Being Raped. Every Eighteen Seconds A Woman Is Being Beaten. There Is Nothing Abstract About It. It Is Happening Right Now As I Am Speaking.

In Her Heart She Is A Mourner For Those Who Have Not Survived. In Her Soul She Is A Warrior For Those Who Are Now As She Was Then. In Her Life She Is Both Celebrant And Proof Of Women's Capacity And Will To Survive, To Become, To Act, To Change Self And Society. And Each Year She Is Stronger And There Are More Of Her.

Pornography Reveals That Male Pleasure Is Inextricably Tied To Victimizing, Hurting, Exploiting; That Sexual Fun And Sexual Passion In The Privacy Of The Male Imagination Are Inseparable From The Brutality Of Male History. The Private World Of Sexual Dominance That Men Demand As Their Right And Their Freedom Is The Mirror Image Of The Public World Of Sadism And Atrocity That Men Consistently And Self-righteously Deplore. It Is In The Male Experience Of Pleasure That One Finds The Meaning Of Male History.