I'm A Radical Feminist, Not The Fun

A Man Can Be A Hero If He Is A Scientist, Or A Soldier, Or A Drug Addict, Or A Disc Jockey, Or A Crummy Mediocre Politician. A Man Can Be A Hero Because He Suffers And Despairs; Or Because He Thinks Logically And Analytically; Or Because He Is "sensitive"; Or Because He Is Cruel. Wealth Establishes A Man As A Hero, And So Does Poverty. Virtually Any Circumstance In A Man's Life Will Make Him A Hero To Some Group Of People And Has A Mythic Rendering In The Culture - In Literature, Art, Theater, Or The Daily Newspapers.

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?

All Personal, Psychological, Social, And Institutionalized Domination On This Earth Can Be Traced Back To Its Source: The Phallic Identities Of Men.

Being Female In This World Means Having Been Robbed Of The Potential For Human Choice By Men Who Love To Hate Us. One Does Does Not Make Choices In Freedom. Instead, One Conforms In Body Type And Behavior And Values To Become An Object Of Male Sexual Desire, Which Requires An Abandonment Of A Wide-ranging Capacity For Choice... Men Too Make Choices. When Will They Choose Not To Despise Us?

For A Mother The Project Of Raising A Boy Is The Most Fulfilling Project She Can Hope For. She Can Watch Him, As A Child, Play The Games She Was Not Allowed To Play; She Can Invest In Him Her Ideas, Aspirations, Ambitions, And Values - Or Whatever She Has Left Of Them; She Can Watch Her Son, Who Came From Her Flesh And Whose Life Was Sustained By Her Work And Devotion, Embody Her In The World. So While The Project Of Raising A Boy Is Fraught With Ambivalence And Leads Inevitably To Bitterness, It Is The Only Project That Allows A Woman To Be - To Be Through Her Son, To Live Through Her Son.