184
SUSAN SONTAG
(Thus, aptly enough, "the liberation of women equals the liberation of
men" is the official slogan of the Swedish government's eminently super–
ficial policies for securing equality for women within the framework of
sophisticMed liberal capitalism.)
To be sure, every human being in this imperfect world stands in
need of liberation - masters as well as slaves, oppressors as well as the
oppressed. But a just society cannot be accurately conceived, or fought
for, in a unitary or universal way. Liberating a Thai peasant is not the
same as liberating a white factory worker in Detroit. The oppression of
women does not, in terms of fundamental structures, resemble the op–
pression of men.
Reasonable-sounding as the idea may be, it is simply not true that
the liber3ition of men 3illd ·the lirbefaltion of women are
two
parts of a
reciprocal process. However muah men too are deformed psychologically
by sexist stereotypes, these stereotypes do confer undeniable privileges
on them. Men have a greater range of behavior available to them than
women have, and ,they have considerably more mobility in the world.
(Simply consider the fact that in
most
places she might go in "the
world," a woman alone risks rape or physical violence. Basically, a
woman is only safe at "home" or when proteoted by a man.) In the
most concrete way, in
,tJh3lt
he need not always be on guard against pre–
datory assault, a man is always better off than a woman. Men (and
women) are oppressed by other men. But aU women are oppressed by
all men.
The cliche that when women are liberated men will be liberated
too shamelessly slides over ,the raw reality of male domination - as if
this were an arrangement in fact arranged by nobody, which suits no–
body, whiah works to nobody's advantage. In fact, the very opposite is
true. The domination of men over women is to the advantage of men;
the liberation of women will be at <the expense of male privilege. Per–
haps afterwards, in some happy sense, men will be liberated too–
liberated from the tiresome obligation to be "masculine." But allowing
oppressors to lay down their psyohologica1 burdens is quite another,
secondary sense of liber3ition. The first priority is to liberate the op–
pressed. Never before
in
history have the claims of oppressed and op–
pressors turned out to be, on inspection, quite harmonious.
It
will not
be true ,this time either.
All women live in an "imperialist" situation in which men are
colonialists and women are natives. In so-called Tbird World countries,
the situation of women
with
respect to men is tyrannically, brutally
colonialist. In economically advanced countries (both capitalist and
Communist) the si,tuation of women is neocolonialist: the segregation
