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SUSAN SONTA G
plausible to suppose that ga.mmg the right to have an abortion - like
the
right to divorce and to purchase contraceptives legally and cheaply
- will help conserve the present system of marriage and the family. In
this way, such reforms ac tually reinforce the power of men, indirectly
confirming the licentious sexuality, exploitative of women, that is con–
sidered normal in this society.
These reforms do nevertheless correspond to the concrete, immediate
needs of hundreds of millions of women - all but the rich and privi–
leged. Ameliorating their condition can, given a proper theoretical
consciousness in the woman's movement, lead to other demands. Much
of 'the value of struggling for goals of suoh limited, questionable political
weight depends on where the struggle is taking place. As a rule, the
harder the struggle is, the greater is the chance of politicizing it. Thus,
to campaign for the legalizing of contraceptives and abortions has a
larger political dimension in Italy or Argentina rthan it does in Norway
or Australia. In itself, the right to abortion has no serious political con–
tent at all-
desp~te
its extreme desirability on humanitarian and eco–
logical grounds. It becomes a valuable demand, however, when taken
as a step in a chain of demands, and actions, which can mobilize and
move forward the awareness of large numbers of women who have not
yet begun .to think consciously about their oppression. Nothing in the
situation of women will be changed when anyone of these rights are
won. The facrt that divorce is virtually impossible to get in Spain, while
it is easy to get
in
Mexico, does not make the situation of women in
Mexico substantially better than it
is
in Spain. But the struggle for these
rights can be an important step in preparing for a more profound level
of struggle.
10. How do you, who are precisely a liberated woman, experience
the attitude of men toward you?
I would never describe myself as a liberated woman. Of course,
things are never as simple as
that.
But I have always been a feminist.
When I was five years old, I day-dreamed about becoming a bio–
ohemist and winning the Nobel Prize. (I had just: read a biography of
Madame Curie.) I stuck with chemistry until the age of ten, when I de–
cided I would ,become a doctor. At fifteen, I knew I was going to
be
a writer. That is .to say: from the beginning it never even occured
to me that I might be prevented from doing things in "the world"
because I was born female. Perhaps because I spent most of my sickly
childhood reading and in my chemistry laboratory in the empty garage,
growing up in a very provincial part of the United States with a family
life so minimal that it could be described as subnuclear, I was curiously
innocent of the very existence of a barrier. When, at fifteen, I left home
