Kiss Sleeping Beauty Good-bye
Madonna Kolbenschlag
In a sense everyone's liberation depends on the liberation of white males, precisely because they have the power to prevent women and minorities from seeking a broader range of alternatives if they do not play the game by the rules of the masculine value system. Unless you can admit that you are the problem and begin the task of liberating yourself and dismantling the male-ordered system, many so-called "liberated" women will be seduced into a patriarchal, elitist, one-dimensional, masculine role. We will simply have a new set of "half- persons" who happen to be female...
...I would like to free you of your compulsive workaholism, your "breadwinner" fixation. But I can't share that load unless you relieve me of some of the burden of homemaking and child rearing. Can you learn to work less, earn less, spend more time with the kids -- and be happy? If you can't then I can't be happy either. Can you stop measuring yourself by the size of your paycheck?
I want to be an equal partner with you in supporting our home and in building a world. I think I should work, but I don't want to betray myself in "liberating" myself into the marketplace. I know I have to learn how to cope with competition. But I don't want to be infected with it, as you are. If my professional advancement is going to depend on conforming to the male model of achievement (compulsive-accretive production, narrow specialization, manipulation of data, the ability to walk over others on the way up, "chutzpah" and hustling, a cool and stoic demeanour), then I would be a fool to remake myself in your image
. Your institutions are like your automobiles -- extensions of your ego. So pervaded by the masculine consciousness that they have become lethal instruments, harmful to all forms of human life. Your hospitals, schools, universities, governments and churches are all corporations, factories. All in bondage to the idea of male supremacy, that might makes right and wealth dictates policy, where workers are excluded from ownership and decision making, and profit becomes synonymous with survival. Most of your institutions are still modelled on the plantation -- a few privileged white male professionals supported by a huge substructure of underpaid, underprivileged, largely female labour force...
...I'm tired of lobbying for shared responsibility, equal pay, promotions and job opportunities. Women have always wanted these things, unless they've been brainwashed beyond repair. We won't get these things, however, until men realize that they have to give up something -- power, advantage -- in order for us to be equal. Until you promote women's liberation, there won't be any. It isn't going to happen by natural evolution -- your present position is too comfortable. You play the "anointed" role, as if authority always had to be given to the oldest son. It might be easier to take if you simply acknowledged the lust for power and the insecurity