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SUSAN SONTAG
their image as "household" (serving and nurturing) creatures; they are
considered unfit for large executive responsibilities. Thus, women can–
not be said to be economically liberated until they perform
all
activities
now performed by men, on the same terms (with respect to wages,
standards of performance, exposure to risk) as men - thereby relin–
quishing the prerogatives of the fool, the child, and the servant. Their
economic liberation is essential not merely to the psychological and moral
well-being of individual women. Until they become important to the
economy, not just as a reserve labor pool but because in large numbers
they possess the major professional and executive skills, women have no
means of exercising political power, which means gaining control of in–
stitutions and having an effective say in how society will change in the
coming decades. Once again: liberation means
power
-
or it hardly
means anything at all.
The notion of "sexual liberation" seems to me even more suspect.
The ancient double standard, which imputes to women less sexual en–
ergy and fewer sexual desires than men (and punishes them for behavior
condoned in men), is clearly a way of keeping women in their place.
But to demand for women the same privileges of sexual experimentation
that men have is not enough, since .the very conception of sexuality is an
instrument of repression. Most sexual relatianships act out the attitudes
which oppress women and perpetuate male privilege. Merely to remove
the onus placed on the sexual expressiveness of women is a hollow vic–
tory if the sexuality they become freer to enjoy remains the old one that
converts women into objeots. The mores of late, urban capitalist society
have been for some time, as everyone has noticed, increasingly more
"permissive," penalizing women much less than before for behaving like
sexual beings outside the context of monogamous marriage. But this al–
ready "freer" sexuality mostly refleots a spurious idea of freedom: the
right of each person, briefly, to exploit and dehumanize someone else.
Without a change in the very norms of sexuality, the liberation of
women
is
a meaningless goal. Sex as such is not liberating for women.
Neither
is
more sex.
The question is:
what
sexuality are women to be liberated to en–
joy? The only sexual ethic liberating for women is one which challenges
the primacy of genital heterosexuality. A nonrepressive society, a society
in which women are subjectively and objectively the genuine equals of
men, will necessarily be an androgynous society. Why? Because the only
other plausible terms on which the oppression of women could be ended
are that men and women decide to live apa.rt, and that is impossible.
Separatism does remain plausible as a way of putting an end to the op–
pression of "colored" peoples by the white race. Conceivably, the
dif-
