Five College Forum; Lecture by Kate Millett on Sexual Politics and the Cultural Oppression of Women

And the cultural oppression of women. Today's five college forum a talk by Kate Millett of the Department of Philosophy at Barnard College. Mrs Millett is the director of the experimental college of Barnard and Columbia and the chairman of the Education Committee for the National Organization of Women. She is also a member of Columbia's women's liberation and radical women. Mrs Millett spoke in February at Smith College. This is going to be kind of heavy so I hope you can hang on and put up with it. And if I start to accelerate as I always do and if I become unintelligible as I may be you know through various causes Let me now sing out what I'd really like to talk about is sexual politics and the cultural oppression of women trying to hit two stones What's the first part is an attempt to build a sort of historical

theoretical model of the relationship between the sexes as a political category. And it's a bit abstract things get better later on. It's impossible I think to describe. The cultural oppression of any subordinated class without first understanding the nature of the political context of that group's oppression and the institutions which implemented first. For instance in the case of exploited nations you must first take account of peonage and imperialism. In the case of the black slavery and racism in the case of the poor wage slavery and capitalism. It is moreover a very interesting very horrible little quirk of historical consciousness that when a system of oppression is functioning without dissent or at least without any very serious threat to its existence are any strong questioning of its premises. It tends to attract very little recognition. Our little formulation it tends

not even to be defined. Now such a society typically neglects to examine its most basic assumptions. It takes them for granted. And it's the most it's the the most important thing always is the unstated. Really. In the case of women a comfortable kind of sedation has been invented to disk I O pression in a tissue of. Well what. As a linguist I can only call semantic dishonesties. I think you know some of them but I'll just sort of reel some off. It's been very fashionable for a long time to talk about the changing role of women in a changing world. The sets are familiar or the problems of women quote unquote or the conflicts women experience as if it were all their fault and all their unique peculiar little funny things are or the options. That's a very fashionable word special last couple years. The options which await them as wives and mothers or their career expectations

and so forth. Now I think the time has come when the sort of twaddle won't serve any more at all. But I should like to present to you is a pioneering and therefore quite naturally and imperfect effort to formulate the oppression of women in political terms and then to describe the experience of those who endure it. And some of this affects such a situation has upon them. What I wish to point out is that our social system like that of all other historical civilizations is patriarchal. Patriarchy is a form of social organization through which one group by virtue of a birthright starters controls the lives and the destinies of the other. Now this is affected in the classic manner of all political systems through the control of all avenues of power. Now a moment's reflection will remind you that control of finance the military science

the arts the universities industry technology armaments and the repressive forces of the police and in a police state that's important. All of them are in male hands. The relationship between the sexes is one therefore of dominance and subordinates. Now this of course does not operate person to person by group by group. Much as racism does or other class distinctions. Marx maybe I would call this dominance and subordinates order he would call it Herrschaft. And that's probably a good word only it's German. The relationship between the sexes like that say between classes is in fact a political relationship and the sexes are I submit to you two political entities. There are a lot of other things too. But you know all that patriarchy is a constant and a basic political pattern. It's pervasive. And it underlines any number of known political economic or religious forms whether it's bureaucratic feudal feel crowded

socialist capitalist whether it's a matter of clam Kingdom or empire. It's not only of great antiquity. And this is a very important thing its actual age. It's not only of great antiquity but it's a great universal A-T. And of great strength as well. And I'd like to explain why it's so strong. I think it's because it's a value system. And I would suggest to you that the strength of political forms. Is rooted in the value system far more than it is in outward shows of power of force. Its value system has entered in to the entire psychic structure. Of its members of both sexes and it's in KL created in the earliest years of childhood socialization. Now that's a very strong system. Like any other total system patriarchy relies therefore principally upon the conditioning of its two classes to what amounts to a general consent to its idiology amice universal belief in it

and its values. Now this idiology prevails through three interrelated mechanisms. First a sexually differentiated system of starters. Secondly a sexually differentiated system of roads and thirdly a sexually differentiated system of temperament or personality. The question of starters. Now I'm. I'm just discussing this as a political form and I will not take into account all rationalizations about these differences being biological and so on. They are not. The question of star This is the most transparently political one because and I think I think I've even mentioned it by by pointing out that. The male's prerogative to control and to command all social and cultural forms is taken for granted and it is in fact they are. Moreover the weight of patriarchal tradition. And here you have to deal with

the weight of the past which is particularly strong in this area. The weight of patriarchal tradition further facilitates acceptance by both male and female. Until recently of masculine prestige of masculine standards and norms. And of masculine privilege and priority. But the first and really the earliest device of patriarchal socialization is the cultivation of two distinct to even polarized temperamental patterns based upon sexual stereotypes. We all know as masculine and feminine. Now these patterns have no basis in biology and it is impossible to rationalize these temperamental differences on biological or innate psychological grounds. But they do have a great function they play a vital role in maintaining what is in fact a dominance order. You have not only split up the human race into two personalities but one personality has the qualities which go in

governing the other one in being governed. So there it's rather complicated system. What they accomplish these two temperamental divisions is the formation of human personality along the lines of sexual category. A sexual category that's based on the needs and values of the dominant male group. And what its ruling members would cherish in themselves and find convenient in subordinates. Thus aggression intellect force and efficacy in the male. And in the female Percy vity ignorance docility virtue Ailie of sexual repression and ineffectuality. Now this primary mechanism of temperamental differentiation is complemented as time goes by in the child's life by a second factor. Sex role which decrease a consonant and elaborate code of conduct of attitude and even of gesture for each sex. Now these are

tremendously rigidly policed in our society. They have been particularly policed in the last fifty hundred years when they have begun to break down. Their policed I think probably most crucially in adolescence and that's why everyone hates it so much and one suffers in it so much because you are continually up against the terror that faces you of being judged not feminine not masculine which in this kind of a system more or less amounts to saying you don't exist in that as you're born the first identity you're given before your class your race your family anything is your sexual identity. If you lose it or if it's a question you are in a tremendously threatened position are and so that one can be continuously co wurst through the system through the deprivation of identity. The thing of course lasts all one's life it's very I once taught kindergarten and it's remarkably strong by five years old already rigid division of

human life in terms of life activity sex role. And this is what people do all their lives. Sexual assigns domestic service and attendance upon infants to the female and the most of the rest of human achievement interest and ambition to the male. The limited role allotted to the female tans or it seeks to tend to arrest her at the level of what is biological experience. Since all it can be described as human rather than animal activity for after all animals also give birth and care for their young in their way. All the rest of it is culturally largely reserved for the male. Now of course start us again follows from such an assignment. In fact the whole area one designates as culture is itself the stated province of the male. Now that the male has not an entire monopoly on this. Here's something that I'll discuss a little later on. I've designated the political component as start US role as a sociological temperament as the

psychological. Yet their interdependence is unquestionable. They enter mesh they form a kind of chain like this. Those awarded higher status tend to adopt roles of mastery largely because they are first encouraged to develop temperaments of dominance. That this is true of caste and of class as well. Of course the self evident politically the fact that each group develops a circumscribed. But complimentary personality and range of activity politically are all this is of secondary importance to the fact that each group represents a power or start this division. But. The fact that each personality becomes little more and often less than half. Of its human potential. Cannot fail to attract our attention and ought to cause very grave concern. For patriarchy does not owe press both sexes equally. But it does thwart or distort the person in each category by compelling conformity to

patterns that are not only unproductive. And constricting but actually very dangerous. First of all that waste the contribution of half the race. In the case of the female in the case of the male it's even more terrifying for the results of its virility. Ethel's is anti-social and at the extreme it's dangerous to life itself. I think you all know you can divert reality virility kills it wages war. That's what it's about. Having constructed a rough theoretical model of the manor of patriarchy is control over women. Let us look at some of the effects of closer range now. Can you hear me. Do I go too fast. Sorry. Until the relatively recent reforms of the last century and the beginning of our own women had no civil or human rights and women was no more than chattel property to be infantilized or coddled. Abused so victimized or exploited. But

for her growing group of women some of them still living we would not have the right of education. Of property of wages of citizenship or of legal witness. Or of any employment save the most menial such reforms however have had very little overall effect. We are still systematically exploited. Consistently as throughout history. One of the strongest means of patriarchal control remains the economic dependence of women. Citizenship has given us no voice in government or power. And no representation not even the most token. Authority itself. When you come to think of it Authority itself is a carefully protected male province. In our culture we know this from infancy. Consider the effect of the fact that all authority figures from God to Richard Nixon are male. Consider the effect of this upon a child. Now go

beyond authority. Think of force. We don't usually think of force in connection with patriarchy its etiology is so effective it is implanted so early in life that there is very little need for outward force. But like any political system it has force at its command and it employs it very brutally when it chooses and it has throughout history any number of barbarities come to mind in this connection. The death penalty of the adulterous the burning of witches the sooty foot binding Clitheroe death to me. The GYN ACM purdah rape beatings and murders. Something like 10000 women in the United States die every year because they're women because they died from illegal abortions so that we have in fact. A toll I mean life is being taken in the system and a great deal of life is being abused for everybody is notified.

Everywhere there is a kind of force behind the imposition of patriarchy which we all to disingenuously call the battle of the sexes. Consider the effect of a social situation where only the male is ever armed either psychologically or technologically. Only the male is ever armed to perpetrate violence. Now think of this. In both political and personal terms. Not only is the female armed. But her conditioning renders her innocuous before any condom assault. The fact of force is always somewhere in a woman's consciousness. And I say this as a pacifist. I have never in my life been afraid of another woman. But if I am in danger at all through any kind of physical violence I know and I've known all my life that it will be from a male. Then there's the psychological effect of

living in what is in fact a total and alien culture. As throughout history the subordination of one such a vast human group to another has naturally its psychological effect. Very deleterious by the way to the self-esteem of the group so oppressed. The effect for example of living in a patriarchal culture the effect of this upon female ego. Now this would be a tremendous area of research. But no one has ever paid any attention to it at all. It's removable when you can think of it. Then there's the effect of having more of being told that you have no history no tradition no existence. I think all of us who study feel this very much. We are often we feel we are studying something else. Not only are not our past not our culture. And yet I would like to suggest to you that we do have a culture. That in certain ways it is a less corrupted culture than the one under which we live. And I have no

intention of losing what I find of value in our culture. Nor do I and I this is an important caveat nor do I want to sentimentalize it. Are the virtues of the owe pressed. Are good virtues they're often the most genial human virtues there are are but there's an awful lot of vices in the oppressed condition too. I don't want to sentimentalise it and I also don't want to be silly and illogical and believe it's inherent none of this is inherently or culturally produced phenomena. But there are two cultures. I foresee that in the future women's liberation is going to have much less recourse to totally appropriating the culture of our oppressors. Much less recourse to that then to as it were infecting our culture upon our oppressors. And that there is much in it a value much in it of value and much of need for the male in our culture. We have been left in a lot of ways more human unused and

all the rest of it but still more human. We are in the position of all oppressed groups I think at the moment our Something happens to all oppressed groups and they begin to get it together. They go through a period of identity perception. Often as even kind of a crisis. I think what we have to do now is to go through a careful and a rational and I would stress this very much a rational inspection of our. Of the culture of our oppressors and of the oppressed. And this is across the board. All the groups are and determine what is good and what is evil in each. This will require a good deal of thinking. But there is much I would like to suggest you know our culture as women that we want to keep. There is much that we might want to as it were propagate. If one goes still further into the question of what is the experience of women in a patriarchal society. To ask what is it like to live under this form of oppression. One must first remember that the culture of patriarchy is of

course the product of and a reflection. Of such a form of social political organization will reinforce. It will dignify it will perpetuate its own versions of reform patriarchy such as our own which unlike the more consistent varieties of say Islam or South America reform victory are keys which have in fact undergone the changes of the last hundred years whereby the legal superstructure of patriarchy conceded under feminist pressures. Conceded a minimum of human recognition. This kind of reformed society has not really altered its cultural media or its cultural institutions has not altered them even to the degree that it has consented to alter its legal and to lesser extent its economic system. Reformed patriarchy is patriarchy still. It is patriarchy perhaps even strengthened by the purging of its most notorious abuses and preserved through the

institution of the family and particularly the socialization of the young into the network of starters temperament and role. Now all this this is quite capable of carrying on with scarcely diminished vigor and it is very scarcely diminished in the last fifty years. First Well one third and more of our national market labor force is female. Such a fact is not reflected in our university faculties or in any other prestigious employment for women are employed overwhelmingly in the most tedious and unremunerative areas of work that we have. There employed as secretaries as factory workers as waitresses and as domestics and I've had every one of those jobs and I know what I'm talking about. Nor do our cultural media reflect any kind of change. Even the palest reforms our novels and our cinema continue to assault us with an image of women in transient Lee traditional The female as a sex object the female

as defined by her relation to the male as mother wife mistress enemy whore. The female is a creature defined principally by. For and through a sexual rather than impersonal or even a human identity. Now if you are concerned with the varieties of cultural oppression of the female I ask you to consider two representative cases. The student and the token woman. I choose these because they're ones you know are and there where you are or where you will be. Many of you will I think recognize this not only as autobiography but as biography as well. First the student the experience of a girl born into a male supremacist culture. Conditioned to respond if only imperfectly. And it doesn't work you know all the time on everybody to systems of sexually differentiated behavior. Whereby every cultural clue every

media stimulus will discourage her from achievement and recognition will remind her that her class is without a tradition in patriarchal high culture. Will encourage will even browbeat her often towards personal Percivale and Idil atonce or even anti intellectual attitude toward the life of the mind. The role the activity the expectation the temperamental inclination imposed upon her. Others can scry by a biological and a social relationship only they are maternity and housewifery she is compelled to occupy a vicarious or spectator position which is a direct antithesis of cultural or intellectual participation. And this is across the board from NSD s meeting to the Young Republicans for the Confederacy. Whatever ears are. The sense of gender identity. What the new researchers all over the

country in the new biology core calling gender identity. It's the knowledge formulated by the phrase I'm a boy girl. This is established by 18 months. Now as you know this is the time when language takes over. Moni at Johns Hopkins says that sex stereotyping is affected by this time. I mean it's set. It will get set harder it will be really laid on and solid by the age of five. So it happens before you go to school. How does it happen it happens from your parents. And if they don't do it your peers will. And if they don't your school will. And if they don't the media will. And then you get into the culture the larger historical culture. And if you haven't got the message by now you probably can't read. It would be interesting to do some studies on sex stereotyping in feebleminded for example to see you know how early or completely if they can escape it.

It's a sad way to get out of it. So this is a stablished by 18 months no money in people like this say that it's established really and and most completely done through the through the acquisition of language and language is here analogous to imprinting in any kind of learning process including that of our subhuman species. Further socialization only reinforces the sense of worth of gesture of attitude interest and person that such a phrase I'm a boy I'm a girl conveys. By the time. A young woman enters the university now if indeed she does and not all that many of us do. Her interests are following the stereotypes set out in early life. They're usually confined to the humanities and this is part of a larger academic effect which I call a curriculum split. Be a great idea

to do some actual studies on majors all over the country. A phenomenon it's a phenomenon familiar to all of us whereby the humanities and certain of the social sciences are in the main approved as feminine and therefore there are fields that are becoming to undergraduate women although they are controlled by faculties of men. Whereas who do all the work and set all the assumptions of them whereas science technology business and the professions are accepted as masculine simply or at least largely because they currently offer higher prestige power and reward money I mean. I would suggest to you that this total thing this totality has the most dilatory is possible effects on everyone and everything. It's bad for the areas of study and it's bad for the people and it's bad for the population it's bad for the culture as a whole. The humanities are trivialized sense they are

associated with an inferior class of persons carefully trained to fear and shun serious accomplishment. Or such is the prevailing theory in the sciences already over prestigious in a technological age are corrupted with the ethics of competitive business and they become the instruments of demented militarism and government policy. There is only a slim chance the young woman I have described will succeed in an academic surroundings. Still less that she'll continue in it still less that she'll be rewarded in it. Only 42 percent of college freshman are women. Only 33 percent of B A's and Emmys only 11 percent of Ph.D.s should she earn a doctorate. Her prospects are still very dim and right now they're getting a lot dimmer because the government is taking away education money for everybody. And that's the war and that's what it's all about. Should she earn a doctorate then her prospects prospects are still very dim. At

Columbia my university only point seven that's less than one percent of the tenured faculty teaching at Columbia College are women only 2 percent in the graduate faculties and yet 40 percent of the Ph.D.s they produce are female. How do you account for this they say they don't discriminate. They're very selective anyway. This young woman will have had none or very few role models through her career. It's very likely that she will never study with another woman at the graduate level. I never have. She will be subject to continual harassment in graduate school and after federal school it's a traumatic horrible experience anyway. But if you're a woman it becomes much worse. All the time that she pretty perceptive or is immersed in a foreign largely alien culture. Now again if she insists if she ignores all the accumulated social pressures to desist if she forbears before every discriminatory treatment

from graduate fellowships to hiring and promotion practices the unfriendly and patronizing air of her colleagues and even perhaps of her students. She will have arrived at the highly dubious position in which some of us find ourselves. She will be a token woman. Now this is a plight in itself. Every motive of self-interest will cooperate with a lifetime of intimidation and self-doubt. So that she will be inclined to lawyer about her salary. To deceive herself about her opportunities for employment and promotion to congratulate herself for hood of her good fortune in merely surviving or to blame herself for the treatment accorded her. But in any and in every case to keep her mouth shut. And to live in gratitude for the permission to be an exception. Yet only slight reflection will remind her the token or not she now has great responsibility to her fellows the time and the opportunity. The

tools of a Gnosis and perception have been put at her disposal. Further complicity now is culpability and she is no longer utterly alone. There is moreover a great deal to be done. Our universities are ripe. Rotten ripe for reform. Very drastic reform. But the changes which must be made in a patriarchal culture are very probably both more fundamental and more far reaching than most academic or educational reforms being discussed today. Perhaps there are more fundamental. Than any social reform being discussed anywhere in the United States. This revolution may go to interest of all. One does not abolish a political system of such longevity. General incidence and rigor without very basic very radical social change even to change in the psychic structure even to changes in the structure of formal and informal education from

infancy. But. I believe and I think I'm right. I believe it's an inevitable social change that it's going to happen. It's only a question of what speed and where. I call it the sexual revolution. And guess what. You don't mean Playboy. It means I think a tremendous change in the relationship between the sexes. And since sex is the issue and I define sex as a political category and sense change the most radical order is called revolutionary political terms such as sexual revolution seemed to be the most out. Call it feminism call it women's liberation. It means the freeing of women from their action. Oppression. Which will bring about and will affect the freeing of men too. For the oppressor himself is some sort of a victim. It will mean an end to the entire patriarchal system its etiology its psychology its political economic and social functions. It will mean a drastic

reorganization of the family and of our attitudes towards sexuality itself. Now a very important component of this is the easing of sexual repression creating a more humane less brutal are less sick Puritan and so on kind of second attitude towards sexuality than the one we have had. So that sexual freedom is a very big part of it. But it is not freedom to exploit. I think it will also mean the end of what you might call what I call patriotic heterosexuality like Norman Mailer. I think it's going to be the end of sex as a as a relationship which we have seen all too often is painful humiliating hostile Bruto Paku Neary and so on. It will mean an end to sex roles and I think and I know this may scare you out of your minds. I think that something called gay liberation is even going to play a part in it. That's perhaps too radical for you to like but it does. They're great at breaking

down the sex roles. One might well ask just what. A college or a university what part can it play in such a total cultural revolution. Well I think it is or it could be very large indeed. Just for starters the university and the college must cease to be the instrument of sexual discrimination and of patriarchal values which they are at present learning must re-examine its basic attitudes and premises. In a number of disciplines. A great deal of knowledge and analysis must be brought to bear on the question of sexual political relations. A competent sociology anthropology and psychology must be constructed in this area. We have great need now I think of an honest social science viewed as social science that is viewed in a totally different light from the traditional rationalisation of the status quo which they have been for so long.

You know in America the social sciences are the been the great pacifiers especially for women. Women must come to find in the university a counterforce because it's too late to go back and change the first five years of your life or of the freshman class for the next twenty. Our women must come to find in the university a counterforce to the detrimental early conditioning they receive they must be able to find in the university the motivation and encouragement and a sense of themselves through an objective rather than a service learning. A great force here must be the study of their own past. And I think the greatest service the university could do right now is to institute women studies in history literature the social sciences in minority law and in the history of the education of women in Colombia in Colombia women's liberation a group of us have just begun to develop syllabus in this area. We did it first to be reasonable

Columbia women's lib has a slogan sweet reason first and after that the book passed working on sweet reason sign. We wanted to demand women's studies with real content. But we're doing it now for a very different reason because as undergraduates as graduate students and as junior faculty. As students and scholars in short. We were so excited by the academic potential of a field of learning just discovered. Half the human race until now utterly overlooked in the curriculum. You know when you think of it that's a great accomplishment in oversight now. You ask yourself can that can only speed done in the university. Well it's going to be. Let me warn you though it will not be easy because American colleges have never seen women as a group to be served. With the exception of a handful of Eastern women's colleges founded under the impetus of the first feminist movement. Colleges I might add. Which have long ago forgotten their mission.

Co-education in America was and still is undertaken principally to ease financial pressures on male colleges. This is how we got to go to the university to start with. Enrollment went down before and after the Civil War and we pushed and they let us in Princeton let some women in because they were losing money. Women pay I don't know. Because this is so. It will not be easy to do. Yet it must and it will be done. Women will have need of and they will avail themselves of the intellectual resources that the university now monopolizes for knowledge is not only power. Knowledge is freedom. The question is whether the academic world will continue to be part of the problem or whether it will decide to assist in being part of the solution. Now if the former. Then the progressive tendency of sexual integration and

education will be frustrated I think as separatist pressures and the resentment of women students necessarily assert themselves. But if the latter then the entire invidious. And really tragically crippling system of sexual row and temperament. Will come under the most searching rational attack from faculty and students alike. We could use the mind to build a decent society. Now should this become the case. We might indeed fulfil our claims to scholarship to humanism and even by God to intelligence. We might just possibly proceed amicably and without further waste of time. To undo the ravages of this longest and most pervasive system of oppression cultural and personal and create a world we could bear out of the desert we inhabit. To

a. T. Do you want to ask questions or rap or something. Yeah. Well the same is true for blacks. Oh I think it does exist. We haven't realized it. To give you just a very concrete example are the whole history of the feminist movement that has women as a political force. I mean documented all over the place but much ignored for a long time. Now there you've got you know hardcore political history but when you're doing cultural history you can't depend on that most of the time.

I think that. As I said I think that it would be silly to try to describe the history of blacks in America without knowing what racism was. Without knowing what slavery was and just how it worked. I feel the same way about patriarchy. Unless we understand how it functions how it works what it does to people how it has operated through history. It's pointless to describe the experience of women. Now there's plenty of information on this. The laws of all societies are one place to start right there. You can find documented through common law through Continental law through the popular protesters in Rome. It's the lot of this work was done nineteenth century of the early anthropologists were really into this and I borrow their term patriarchy I'm sure you've heard of at one point or another. Now it's descended to a term that is used in kinship relations or to describe bearded creatures in the Bible or something patriarchal and so on. For the serene early patriarchal culture of Abraham or

something like that. But in fact this is the term through which 19th century early social science saw this thing. Now this is one aspect of this kind of history. There are great to give you some clear notion. The first section of a course in women's history I think should examine. The structure and function of patriarchy and particularly deal with a very vexed question and that is the origins of patriarchy. How did this relationship originate. How did it arise now all you've got is a series of contending theories we do not and cannot prove what the social organization of prehistoric peoples was we can't prove it. Maybe someday we'll be able to. Right now you've got his archaeological findings and they don't tell you. But you have got the institution so well you can debate its origins. You can study its structure because it's right there and it's what we've lived with through historical time. The second section of such a course would be given the constant of patriarchy

to see certain variables and trans operating unit through the historical period and. Because this is so vast it's best to confine it to the west with projects for students to do on the east so that you would say examine the effect. Of Christianity the ideas of the fathers of women the ascetic quality of early Christian life. What effect did that have on the relationship between the sexes. What is the effect of Marian ology. What is the effect of Luther and other reformers to go into the ideology of courtly romantic love. Now of course you realize what you Norm is documents there are in this whole area to go into the whole business of the effect of industrialism this would be another large sort of thing. And then at the having examined a number of these kind of trends and so on then in the last section to do the political history of women through the feminist movement its beginnings at the end of the 18th century to the present which would give you plenty to do. This could be

a very elaborate kind of course of study. This I give you some want in now literature I think it's pretty clear what we do to prove it. Right. Precisely but. Look if you're going to know what the experience of a group is to know the Roman law. What for example what was the position of women in Roman law. Here's how the male to find her. She is part of his family. This from you include his children his wife and slaves. He can't sell or kill any a man any moment now. That may be a male definition but if you don't know that you know very little about run society. Yeah. Right you're. Right. You're right.

Oh oh oh. Oh excuse me I didn't mean to imply that. First of all is you realize we have had very little chance to express ourselves through our history but we have done it nevertheless and I think the literature which describes female consciousness it's not very recent best of it is in the Victorian period. This is a great source of study. So are all the documents of the first movement. I'd rather talk to some women too young. Right. You know and it's a system we wish to study objective. Right.

Right. Don't you know. Yeah. If you make them do it they will. I might I would even worry a little bit they might co-opt you there because they're looking around for a reason for their continued existence. But in the meanwhile since they won't. Integrate tomorrow afternoon all of them they could do a great service to women I think. Yeah. Well it's so hard because we never know what each other means my family are people

who love each other go on living together I mean they've done that I suppose. More recently than ever on whether they bother to go and register it with the government seems sort of immaterial by now. So that so that you'll have you know lovers. Now the question the real question is How about kids. Alone besides having lovers who might have lovers who live apart together lovers of every imaginable sex lovers short term long term you know. You name it. Probably people you know grow into mature to inability to have a mature long relationship with each other so it's good for young people to experiment a lot. And they grow into learning how to live with another person. Are the children now the question. I think that we very strongly support the idea that children should not be the victims anymore of the family system that they should have.

Now there is one caveat to this I would keep the social function of the founding family as a lot of functions. It's a big coercer for the state especially in fascist societies. You know you got all those heads of families lined up to turn the Fuehrer says and then they go home play Fuehrer it's wonderful. You only need to control 1 out of 10 people or something. It's also economic. The relationship between family members and that's not very nice it's it's very hard for people who are economically unequal to be equals. It's hard to be an economic dependent or any other kind of dependent emotional or social. It's hard to be that and unequal but there is something nice in the family and that's the social addict. A lot of families don't even have it and a great many through history have never even wanted it. But we may feel that that's a good thing. So if you have a set up like say I think the model you're most familiar with for example is the cookbooks where the children come and visit. And you have an hour when you have fun together a couple hours or an evening out so that you have reduced the family now not to punishing not to coercing not to teaching

stereotypes and and so on and so forth but simply to its best aspect the one of love. But it seems to me very important that children be rescued from the family because the family has in the past and continues to abuse them. Better kids are you know like everyplace. It's only a few of them that get to the hospital. But what happens in their heads about that battering. You are literally the victim of your family. If your family is poor too bad see the class system. The family by the way is the biggest Institute of class systems and perpetuator of them there ever was whole strides vacation system depends on it. So in fact all sorts of racism and ethnic hatreds and so on are through and dog me and acts on them. So if kids are no brutalized victimized by the family they released right now want to have a place they can go and you know that they really don't have a place they can go. There isn't anything you can do you know if you're 12 you go to family court and say you know my daddy just raped me. Well

you know where would you get up the courage to do this if it happened. Who's going to believe you are and so on are the kinds of brutality that the family inflicts on children is horrible and right now I think we ought to begin to use to the whole state measure of civil liberties and civil rights for children who presently don't have any at all. Children's liberation the liberation of youth is very tied to women's liberation. Under patriarchy you know women and kids are in it together and we're both miners and lunatics but our children really have to have a lot of rights that they don't have now and they will I think have to have you know the enjoyment of their own peer group too without being oppressed by it either. Yeah. Well a child is somebody who's been born. Up to that point and has no viable life of its own. It's it's a parasitic

existence. But. If you legalize abortion people are going to do or not very often they're bloody awful stupid thing of waiting to live six months or something if they can. I mean I've I've done a lot of abortion counseling for my students I guess now I can go to jail over I mean I said it but I said before I thought anyway I have done a lot of this and if they had resources they wouldn't wait so long. But you know they get so scared. There really is so few places to go. Used to be when I was your age there was nothing to do but jump off a cliff or something disappear into the countryside and give it all up. Now it's an awful lot better but you won't have abuse of abortion if you have it now only free and legal. But also you've got to set up clinics because people don't know their rights until they're told are 16 year olds aren't going to realize that people who in strong religious backgrounds which frown upon it

aren't going to feel free about it. People in the ghettos aren't if they choose to use it. So you have to make it really available because the doctors aren't going to want to do it that much. This is the English experience and done between between free abortion and a great deal better feeling about contraception this sort of thing doesn't really have to happen very often. Sexual Politics and the cultural oppression of women. Today's five college forum a talk given at Smith College in February by Kate Millett the Department of Philosophy at Barnard College. Mrs Millett is the director of the experimental college of Barnard and Columbia and chairman of the Education Committee for the National

Organization of Women. Her book Sexual Politics will be published by Doubleday in July. Five college forum a time for candid conversation about a variety of issues ideas and events is a production of WFC are five College Radio in Amherst Massachusetts. I am.

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The end. Thanks.