PARTISAN REVIEW
205
to go to a university, and then took up various careers, the relations
thaJt I had with men in my professional life seemed to me, with some
exceptions, cordial and untroubled. So I went on not knowing there
was a problem. I didn't even know I was a feminist, so unfashionable
was that point of view at
the
time, when I married at the age of seven–
teen and kept my own name; it seemed to me an equally "personal" act
of principle on my part, when I divorced my husband seven years later,
to have indignantly rejected my lawyer's automatic bid for alimony, even
though I was broke, homeless, and jobless at that moment and I
had
a six-year-old child to support.
Now and then, people I met would allude to the supposed difficul–
ties of being both independent and a woman; I was always surprised–
and sometimes annoyed, because, I thought, they were being obtuse. The
problem didn't exist for me - except in the envy and resentment I oc–
casionally felt from other women, the educated, jobless, home stranded
wives of the men with whom I worked. I was conscious of being an ex–
ception, but it hadn't ever seemed hard to
be
an exception; and I
accepted the advantages I enjoyed as my right. I know better now.
My case is not uncommon. Not so paradoxically, the position of a
"liberated" woman in a liberal society where the vast majority of women
are
not
liberated can be embarrassingly easy. Granted a good dose of talent
and a certain cheerful or merely dogged lack of self-consciousness, one
can even escape (as I did) the initial obstacles and derision that are
likely to afflict a woman who insists on autonomy.
It
will not seem so
hard for such a woman to lead an independent life; she may even reap
some professional advantages from being a woman, such as greater
visibility. Her good fortune is like ,the good fortune of a few blacks in a
liberal but still racist society. Every liberal grouping (whether political,
professional or artistic) needs its token woman.
What I have learned in the last five years - helped by the wom–
en's movement - is to situate my own experience
in
a cel'tain
political
perspeotive. My good fortune is really beside the point. What does it
prove? Nothing.
Any already "liberated" woman who complacently accepts her pri–
vileged situation participates
in
the oppression of other women. I accuse
the overwhelming majority of women with careers in the arts and
sciences, in the liberal professions, and in politics of doing just that.
I have often been struck by how misogynistic most successful
women are. They are eager to say how silly, boring, superficial, or tire–
some they find other women, and how much they prefer 'the company
of men. Like most men, who basically despise and patronize women, most
"liberated" women don't like or respect other women.
If
they don't fear
