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female suffering is buried in cultural invisibility and contempt. Because women’s testimony is not and cannot be validated by the witness of men who have experienced the same events and given

them the same value, the very reality of abuse sustained by

women, despite its overwhelming pervasiveness and constancy, is

negated. It is negated in the transactions of everyday life, and it is

negated in the history books, left out, and it is negated by those

who claim to care about suffering but are blind to this suffering.

The problem, simply stated, is that one must believe in the exis-

tence of the person in order to recognize the authenticity of her

suffering. Neither men nor women believe in the existence of

women as significant beings. It is impossible to remember as real

the suffering of someone who by definition has no legitimate claim

to dignity or freedom, someone who is in fact viewed as some

thing, an object or an absence. And if a woman, an individual

woman m ultiplied by billions, does not believe in her own discrete

existence and therefore cannot credit the authenticity of her own

suffering, she is erased, canceled out, and the meaning of her life,

whatever it is, whatever it might have been, is lost. This loss cannot be calculated or comprehended. It is vast and awful, and nothing w ill ever make up for it.

No one can bear to live a meaningless life. Women fight for

meaning just as women fight for survival: by attaching themselves

to men and the values honored by men. By committing themselves

to male values, women seek to acquire value. By advocating male

meaning, women seek to acquire meaning. Subservient to male

w ill, women believe that subservience itself is the meaning of a

female life. In this w ay, women, whatever they suffer, do not suffer the anguish of a conscious recognition that, because they are women, they have been robbed of volition and choice, without

which no life can have meaning.

*

The political Right in the United States today makes certain metaphysical and material promises to women that both exploit and quiet some of women’s deepest fears. These fears originate in the

perception that male violence against women is uncontrollable and

unpredictable. Dependent on and subservient to men, women are

always subject to this violence. The Right promises to put enforceable restraints on male aggression, thus sim plifying survival for women— to make the world slightly more habitable, in other

words— by offering the following:

Form. Women experience the world as mystery. Kept ignorant

of technology, economics, most of the practical skills required to

function autonomously, kept ignorant of the real social and sexual

demands made on women, deprived of physical strength, excluded

from forums for the development of intellectual acuity and public

self-confidence, women are lost and mystified by the savage momentum of an ordinary life. Sounds, signs, promises, threats, w ildly crisscross, but what do they mean? The Right offers women

a simple, fixed, predetermined social, biological, and sexual order.

Form conquers chaos. Form banishes confusion. Form gives ignorance a shape, makes it look like something instead of nothing.

Shelter. Women are brought up to maintain a husband’s home

and to believe that women without men are homeless. Women

have a deep fear of being homeless—at the mercy of the elements

and of strange men. The Right claims to protect the home and the

woman’s place in it.

Safety. For women, the world is a very dangerous place. One

wrong move, even an unintentional smile, can bring disaster—assault, shame, disgrace. The Right acknowledges the reality of danger, the validity of fear. The Right then manipulates the fear. The promise is that if a woman is obedient, harm will not befall her.

Rules. Living in a world she has not made and docs not understand, a woman needs rules to know what to do next. If she knows what she is supposed to do, she can find a way to do it. If

she learns the rules by rote, she can perform with apparent effortlessness, which will considerably enhance her chances for survival. The Right, very considerately, tells women the rules of the game on which their lives depend. The Right also promises that,

despite their absolute sovereignty, men too will follow specified

rules.

Love. Love is always crucial in effecting the allegiance of women.