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203
of authority, which depends on what the base of its legitimacy is. The
restruoturing of the family required for the emancipation of women
meall1s subtraoting from the authority available to family arrangements
one of its principal forms of legitimacy: the authority that men have
over women. Although the family is the institution in which the oppres–
sion of women is originaBy incarnated, eliminating this oppression will not
dissolve the family. Nor will a nonsexist family be without
any
idea of
legitimate authority. When family arrangements are no longer a hier–
archy dictated by sex roles, they will still have certain hierarchical fea–
tures diota:ted by differences in age. A nonsexist family will not be com–
pletely unstructured, though it will be "open."
Precisely because the family is a singular institution - the only in–
stitution that modern society insists on defining as "private" - recon–
struoting the family
is
an extremely delicate project, and less amenable
to the kind of advance planning for change ,that one can apply to other
institutions. (What to do about schools, for instance, in order to make
them nonsexist, as well as less authoritarian in other ways, is much
clearer.) The reconstruotion of family life must be paI1t of the construc–
tion of new, but still small-scale, forms of community. This is where the
women's movement can be particularly useful, by bringing into existence,
within the context of today's society, alternative institutions that will
pioneer the development of a new praxis of group life.
In any case, nothing can be done about ,the family by fiat. And,
undoubtedly, some form of family life
will
continue. What
is
desirable
is not to destroy the family, but to destroy the opposition (particularly
entrenched in capitalist countries) between "home" and "the world."
This opposition is decadent. It is oppressive to women (and children),
and it stifles or drains off those communitarian - sorora:! and fraternal
- feelings on which a new society could be built.
9. ,What place do you give to the right to abortion on demand
among the objectives of women's struggle?
The legalization of abortion is a reformist demand - like the
removal of the Sltigma
0'11
unwed mothers and so-called illegitimate chil–
dren, and the establishment of free child-care facilities for working
mothers - and as such, suspect. History shows thaJt the anger of women,
when channelled into pressing reformist demands only,
is
all too easily
defused Cas happened to the movement organized around suffrage in
England and America once women were finally given the vote after
World War I). Such reforms tend to narrow, and then abruptly dis–
perse, militant eneI1gies.
It
alw can be argued rthat they directly bolster
the repressive system, by ameliorating some of its hardships. Contrary to
what is felt with such passion, particularly in Latin countries, it's more
