ADRIENNE RICH
27
history of patriarchy is
yet
to
be
written-I do not mean the history of
men, but of an idea which arose, prospered, had its particular type of
expression, and which has proved self-destructive. But there are four
or five movements of recent history which
seem
to intersect here. One
is the so-called "sexual revolution" of the sixties-briefly believed
to
be
congruent with the liberation of women . The "pill," it was
believed by
some,
would release women from the fear of pregnancy,
hence from the double standard, and would make us sexually co–
equal with men. For many reasons, this proved a myth; it did not
mean that we were
free
to discover our own sexuality, but rather that
we were expected to behave according to male notions of female
sexuality as surely as any Victorian wife, though the notions them–
selves had changed. And the "pill" itself is a mechanistic and patri–
archal device, physically dangerous to many, perhaps all, women.
It
is
unlikely that any technical innovation can alone liberate anyone,
anywhere. But the liberalization of sexual attitudes, the increase in
pre- and extramarital
sex,
the growing divorce rate, and the acknowl–
edgedly threadbare texture of the nuclear family, did lead toward a
new recognition of the contradictions between patriarchal theory
and practice . A classic contradiction is the prevalence of rape, which
is estimated to
be
the most frequently committed violent crime in
America today. As one writer points out, rape illuminates the sexual
schizophrenia of the society in which "the masculine man is .. .
ex–
pected to prove his mettle as a protector of women," while rape is
also a measure of virility.· But it is more than simply an all-American
crime. From the Book of Numbers (31: 14-36), which describes the
rape of 32,000 Midianite women by order of
Moses ,
to the recent rape
by Pakistani soldiers of 200 ,000 women of Bangladesh, rape remains
the great unpunished war crime in every culture . As a crime of violence
committed by a man against his wife, it is not even legally recognized.
Also relevant are the movements for ecology and zero population
growth . These have arisen, to be
sure,
not from any primary concern
for women, but from the pressures generated by the wastefulness of
technological society and the misallocation and monopoly of
resources
on the planet, which are usually referred to as the problems of famine
and overpopulation . In the ecological analysis there has been some
·Susan Griffin , " Rape: The All-American Crime," inJo Freeman, ed.,
Woman: A Feminist
Perspective.
Mayfield Publishing Co.. 1975 .
