| The women say men have kept you at a distance,
they have supported you, they have put you on a pedestal,
constructed with an essential difference. They say, men in their way have
adored you like a goddess or else burned you at their stakes or else relegated
you to their service in their back-yards. They say, so doing they have
always in their speech dragged you in the dirt. They say, in speaking
they have possessed violated taken subdued humiliated you to their hearts'
content. They say, oddly enough what they have exalted in their words
as an essential difference is a biological variation. They say, they have
described you as they described the races they called inferior. They say,
yes, these are the same domineering oppressors, the same masters who have
said that negroes and women do not have a heart spleen liver in the same
place as their own, that difference of sex difference of colour signify
inferiority, their own right to domination and oppression. They say, yes,
these are the same domineering oppressors who have written of negroes
and women that they are universally cheats hypocrites tricksters liars
shallow greedy faint-hearted, that their thinking is intuitive and illogical,
that nature is what speaks most loudly in them, et cetera. They say, yes,
these are the same domineering oppressors who sleep crouched over their
money-bags to protect their wealth and who tremble with fear when night
comes. |