ADRIENNE RICH
33
psychic ~
and philosophic perturbation, more and more resistant to
pacification and reduction . For a movement which has existed in its
present form less than a decade, it has already brought forth decisive
shifts of value , relation, and identity among women of all ages and
economic levels, many of whom would not call themselves feminists.
It
has opened a new range of choices to women , many of which seem
private and inconsequential, yet each of which , multiplied by the
thousands, has helped create a new climate of perception. For some
women it has meant the emotional freedom to remain childless, for
others the decision to have children but no husband, and to raise
them without a father (as distinct from the classic predicament of the
pregnant woman abandoned by her seducer or the family deserted
by the father). For still others, the women's movement-directly or
indirectly-has meant an end to guilt and confusion about lesbian–
ism; or an increased awareness of bisexuality; for yet others, the adop–
tion of a deliberate celibacy which is felt partly as a political act, partly
as a way of breaking old psychological dependencies on men, or on
sex itself as a drug. For some it has meant confirmation and strength
in leaving a dead marriage ; for others, the strength to enter a sexual
relationship that attempts to transcend gender roles. Such choices and
changes may as yet be actively embraced by only a minority of wom–
en ; yet they resonate deep into the female community, and their
micro-effects on the lives of countless women who do not call them–
selves feminists have yet to be assessed. In the growth of the move–
ment , from the early political manifestos , pamphlets and guerilla
theater, through the incalculable shock of common recognition
shared by vast numbers of women who began , inwardly and in
groups , to analyze our common situation, through the continuing
struggle against the fragmentation of woman from woman (young
from old , poor from middle class, White from Black, lesbian from
" straight," the mothers from the childless) women have been learn–
ing, and teaching each other, not simply what kind of cultural and
institutional web has imprisoned
us,
but how radical, and how inclu–
sive, the implications of feminism really are . Elizabeth Oakes-Smith
had demanded in 1852: "Do we really understand that we aim at
nothing less than an entire subversion of the present state of society,
a dissolution of the whole existing social compact?" By 1970, Shula–
mith Firestone was responding: "Rather than concentrating the
