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SUSAN SONTAG
them as sexual rivals, they fear them as professional rivals - wishing
to guaI1d their special status as women admitted into largely all-male
professional wovlds. Most women who pass as being "liberated" are
shameless Uncle Toms, eager to flatter their men colleagues, becoming
their accomplices
in
putting down other, less accomplished women,
dis–
honestly minimizing the difficulties they themselves have run into be–
oause of being women. The implication of their OOhavior is that all
women can do what they have done, if only rthey would exert llhemselves;
that the barriers put up by men are Himsy; that it is mainly women
themselves wiho hold themselves back. This simply is not true.
The first responsibility of a "liberated" woman is to lead the fullest,
freest, and mosrt imaginative life she can. The second responsibility is
her solidarity with other women. She may live and work and make love
with men. But she has no right to represent her situation as simpler, or
less suspect, or less full of compromises than it really is. Her good rela–
tions with men must not be bought at ,the price of betraying her sisters.
