182
SUSAN SONTAG
Historically, or rather prehistorically, the oppression of women must
have arisen out of certain practical arrangements to insure their special
biological responsibility: ohildbearing. 'The elaboraJte forms of women's
oppression - psychological, political, economic, cultural-
all
refer back
to the biological division of labor. But the faot that women bear children
while men do not hardly proves that women and men are fundamentailly
different.
It
rather indicates how slim is -the basis i.n "nature" for the
supposed difference - whereby women's reproduotive physiology is con–
verted i'nto a life-vocation, with its appropriately narrow norms of char–
acter and temperament. But even physiological "nature" is not an im–
mutable faot with unchanging consequences. It, too, is part of history–
and evolves with history.
If
the whole difference between women and
men ultimately rests on
~he
fact that women are busy bearing children,
then the ciroumstances in which ,thaJt vocation is exercised have been
severely modified: if "naJture" has supplied
tIhe
pretext for women's en–
slavement, then history now supplies .the objective conditions for their
social and psychological liberatioo. For itt is just this importance of the
physiological difference 'between women and men which is becoming
obsolete.
The Industrial Revolution provided the m<IJterial base for a recoo–
sideration of slavery; when machines were invented that were more
produotive and efficient than unpaid labor, it hecame reasonable to free
people fmm legal bondage to work. Now the Ecological TurIlling Point
(increased longevity, plus 'the population explosion, plus the rapid de–
pletion of naJtural resources) makes it not only possible but ultimately
imperative tha;t most women be freed from all but the most minimal
relation to 1!heir biological responsibility. Once .the reproduotive destiny
of women shrinks to two, one, or no pregnancies (wi-vh every likelihood
that, for
,the
first time in history, alrnostall children born wiH live to
adulthood), the underlying rationale for nhe repressive definition of
women
:as
servile, domestic, primarily ohildrearing creatures collapses.
As
the Industrial Revolution encouraged people to rethink the "natural–
ness" of slavery, so ,tJhe new ecologic<lIl era whioh the planet entered in
the middle of the twentietili century is enabling people to rethink the
hitherto self-evident "femininity" of women. The "femininity" of women
and tJhe "masculinity" of men are morally defective
and
historically ob–
solete conceptions. T:he liberation of women seems to me as much a
historic:al necessity as the abolition of slavery - like aJbolition, a hope–
less-'looking cause before
iJt
actually triumphs; even more momentous
than aboLition in its psyc'hic and historical consequences.
But, anachronistic as their oppression may be, women will not be
liberated without a hard struggle, a struggle that really does deserve the
