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SUSAN
SONTA G
represented mainly by integrated organizations, which meant, in practice,
being led by 'benevolent, well-educated, liberal whites. One of the pur–
poses of political action is to educate those who stage tJhe action. At the
present point of women's political underdevelopment, working with men
(even sympa:thetic men) slows down the process by which women learn
how to be politically mature.
Women have to learn, first of all, how to talk to each other. Like
blacks (and other colonialized peoples), women have trouble organizing,
are not easily djsposed to respect each other and to take each other
seriously. They are used to leadership, support, and approval by men.
I t
is
therefore all the more important that .they do learn to organize
politically by themselves, and try to reach other women. Their mis,takes
are at least
their
mistakes.
More generally: people who favor women working for their libera–
tion in concert with men tacitly deny the realities of women's op–
pression. Suah a policy insures that all struggle on behalf of women
will be moderate and, ultimately, cooptable.
It
is to arrange, in advance,
that nothing "radical" will happen, that the consciousness of women
will not change in a profound way. For integrated aotions, ,those taken
alongside of men, necessarily limit the freedom of women to think
"radically." The sole chance women have to effect that deep change
in their consciousness required for their liberation is by organizing
separately. Consciousness changes only through confrontation, in situa–
tions in which appeasement is not possible.
Thus, there are certain activities that only all-women's groups can
- or will want to - perform. Only groups composed entirely of women
will be diversified enough in their tactics, and sufficiently "extreme."
Women should lobby, demonstrate, march. They should take karate
lessons. They should whistle at men in the streets, raid beauty parlors,
picket toy manufacturers who produce sexist toys, convert in sizeable
numbers to militant lesbianism, operate their own free psychiatric and
abortion clinics, provide feminist divorce counselling, establish make-up
withdrawal centers, adopt their mothers' family names as their last names,
deface billboard adveI1tising that insults women, disrupt public events
by singing in honor of the docile wives of male celebrities and politicians,
collect pledges to renounce alimony and giggling, bring law suits for
defamation against the mass-circulation "women's magazines," conduct
telephone harrassment campaigns against male psychiatrists who have
sexual relations with their women patients, organize beauty contests for
men, put up feminist candidates for ,all public offices. Though no single
action
is
necessary, the "extremist" acts are valuable in themselves,
be–
cause they help women to raise their own consciousness. And, however
