ADRIENNE RICH
29
None of these movements, for or against the limitation of births,
has the condition of women at heart as a root of insight; all are pre–
pared to dictate to women-as patriarchy has always dictated–
whether or not and under what circumstances to "produce" children.
As the sociologistJessie Bernard puts it:
It
was not until the later 1960s that motherhood became a seri–
ous political issue in our country. Like so many other issues, it
came not in clear-cut, carefully thought-through form but in a
murk}' conglomerate of ecology, environmental protection, and
a "welfare
mess ."
It
took an "antinatalist" slant . The problem
posed was how to stop women from having so many babies .
Ecologists frightened us with images of millions suffocating for
lack of oxygen and hostile reformers with images of women–
especially black women-having babies in order to remain on
welfare rolls . The first group directed their attack against mid–
dle-class women, the second, against welfare women .
A third strand in this historical pattern is technological; the
genetic revolution, now in progress in laboratories, which has already
developed the' 'sperm bank" and artificial insemination, and is now
at work on "cloning" or the controlled reproduction of selected types
through the growing, in a matrix, of cell nuclei transplants from a
single "parent," to create a series of genetically identical offspring .
Shulamith Firestone, an enthusiastic believer in replacing biological
with artificial motherhood, has observed that the possibilities are
terrifying if we envision the choice of human types, gender, and capa–
cities being controlled by patriarchy. On the other hand, if biological
motherhood can become a real choice (as distinct from being forcibly
proscribed or rendered obsolete by fiat) then the concept of woman as
womb, and of "biological destiny" becomes harder to defend . And
these concepts have buttressed the structure of patriarcpy from the
first .
There has been another, vaguer movement of the human
psyche: a seeming cultural rejection of masculinism itself. Even in the
mid-fifties, a few scattered male writers such as de Rougemont and
Neumann had begun to identify the denial of' 'the feminine" in civili–
zation with the roots of inhu'manity and self-destructiveness and to
