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FUNERAL ORATION FOR THE BURIAL OF TRADITIONAL
WOMANHOOD by Kathie Amatniek
(Editors Note: In January of 1968 with the SE Asia War raging, the Jeanette
Rankin Brigade came to Washington to pressure Congress to end the war.
The Brigade was named for Jeanette Rankin, the first woman to be elected
to Congress. Rankin voted against US entrance into both WWI and WWII
and was a well known feminist and peace activist. Some of the radical
women staged a mock funeral for traditional womanhood during the protest.)
You see
here the remains of a female human being who during her all a lifetime
was a familiar figure to billions of people in every corner of the world.
Although scientists would classify this specimen within the genus species
of homo sapiens, for many years [here has been considerable controversy
as to whether she really belonged in some kind of sub-species of the
genus. While the human being was distinguished as an animal who freed
himself from his biological limitations by developing technology and
expanding his consciousness, traditional womanhood has been recognized,
defined and valued for her biological characteristics only and those
social functions closely related to her biological characteristics.
As human
beings, both men and women were sexual creatures and they shared their
sexuality. But the other areas of humanity were closed off to traditional
womanhood...the areas which, as has already been noted, were more characteristically
human, less limited by biology. For some reason, man said to woman:
you are less sexual when you participate in those other things, you
are no longer attractive to me if you do so. I like you quiet and submissive.
It makes me feel as if you don't love me, if you fail to let me do
all the talking ...if you actually have something to say yourself.
Or else, when I like you to be charming and well-educated...entertainment
for me and an intelligent mother for my children....these qualities
are for me and for me alone. When you confront the world outside the
home - the world where I operate as an individual self as well as a
husband and father - then, for some reason, I feel you are a challenge
to me and you become sexless and aggressive.
If you
turn me off too much, you knew, I'll find myself another woman. And
if that happens, what will you do? You’ll be a nobody, that's what
you'll be. An old maid, if I haven't deigned to marry you yet. A divorced
woman..with some children, no doubt. Without me, you won't even have
your sexuality anymore, that little bit of humanity which I have allowed
you. And even if you manage to solve that problem in some kind of perverse
way, it's going to be hard for you.
What kinds
of jobs can you get to keep yourself in comfort? I control those few
interesting challenging ones. And I control the salaries on all the
other kinds of jobs from which my fellow men who work at them will
at least get the satisfaction of more pay than you. And I control the
government and its money which, you can bet your tax dollar, isn't
going to get allotted for enough good nursery schools to put your children
into so you can go out to work. And because of all these things, there
can always be another woman in my life, when you no longer serve my
needs.
And so
traditional Womanhood, even if she was unhappy with her lot, believed
that there was nothing she could do about it. She blamed herself for
her limitations and she tried to adapt. She told herself and she told
others that she was happy as half a person, as the "better half"
of someone else, as the mother of others, powerless in her own right.
Though
Traditional Womanhood was a hardy dame, the grand old lady finally
died today - her doctor said, of a bad case of shock. Her flattering
menfolk had managed to keep her alive for thousands of years. She survived
the Amazon challenge. She survived the Lysistrata challenge. She survived
the Feminist challenge. And she survived many face-liftings. She was
burning her candle at one end on a dull wick and she went out slowly,
but she finally went...not with a bang but a whimper.
There are
some grounds for believing that our march today contributed to the
lady's timely demise and this is partly the reason we have decided
to hold her funeral here. The old hen, it turns out, was somewhat disturbed
to hear us - other women, that is - asserting ourselves just this least
little bit about critical problems in the world controlled by men.
And it was particularly frightening to her to see other women, we-
women, asserting ourselves together, however precariously, in some
kind of solidarity, instead of completely resenting each other, being
embarrassed by each other, hating each other and hating ourselves.
And we
were-even attempting to organize ourselves on the basis of power...that
little bit of power we are told we have here in America...the so-called
power of wives and mothers. That this power is only a substitute for
power, that it really amounts to nothing politically, is the reason
why all of us attending this funeral must bury traditional womanhood
tonight. We must bury her in Arlington Cemetery, however crowded it
is by now. For in Arlington Cemetery, our national monument to war,
alongside Traditional Manhood, is her natural resting place.
Now some
sisters here are probably wondering why we should bother with such
an unimportant matter at a time like this. Why should we bury traditional
womanhood while hundreds of thousands of human beings are being brutally
slaughtered in our names...when it would seem that our number one task
is to devote our energies directly to ending this slaughter or else
solve what seem to be more desperate problems at home?
Sisters
who ask a question like this are failing to see that they really do
have a problem as women in America...that their problem is social,
not merely personal...and that their problem is so closely related
and interlocked with the other problems in our country, the very problem
of war itself...that we cannot hope to move toward a better world or
even a truly democratic society at home until we begin to solve our
own problems.
How many
sisters failed to join our march today because they-were afraid their
husbands' would disapprove? How many more sisters failed to join us
today because they've been taught to believe that women are silly and
a women's march even sillier? And how many millions of sisters all
across America failed to join us because they think so little of themselves
that they feel incapable of thinking for themselves...about the war
in Vietnam or anything else. And if some sisters come to conclusions
of their own, how many others of us fail to express 'these ideas' much
less argue and demonstrate for them because we're afraid of seeming
unattractive, silly, "uppity." To the America watching us,
after all, we here on this march are mere women, looking silly and unattractive.
Yes, sisters,
we have a problem as women all right, a problem which renders us powerless
and ineffective over the issues of war and peace, as well as over our
own lives. And although our problem is Traditional Manhood as much
as Traditional Womanhood, we women must begin on the solution.
We must
see that we can only solve our problem together, that we cannot solve
it individually as earlier Feminist generations attempted to do. We
women must organize so that for man there can be no "other woman"
when we begin expressing ourselves and acting politically, when we insist
to men that they share the housework and childcare, fully and equally,
so that we can have independent lives as well.
Human qualities
will make us attractive then, not servile qualities. We will want to
have daughters as much as we want to have sons. Our children will not
become victims of our unconscious resentments and our displaced ambitions.
And both our daughters and sons will be free to develop themselves
in just the directions they want to go as human beings.
Sisters:
men need us, too, after all. And if we just get together and tell our
men that we want our freedom as full human beings, that we don't want
to live just through our man and his achievements and our mutual offsprings,
that we want human power in our own right, not just "power behind
the throne," that we want neither dominance or submission for anybody,
anyplace, in Vietnam or in our own homes, and that when we all have
our freedom we can truly love each other.
If men
fail to see that love, justice and equality are the solution, that
domination and exploitation hurt everybody, then our species is truly
doomed; for if domination and exploitation and aggression are inherent
biological c characteristics which cannot be overcome, then nuclear
war is inevitable and we will have reached our evolutionary deadened
by annihilating ourselves.
And that
is why we must bury this lady in Arlington Cemetery tonight, why
we must bury Submission alongside Aggression. And that is why we
ask you to join us. It is only a symbolic happening, of course, and
we have a lot of real work to do. We have new men as well as a new
society to build.
This document was obtained by the Herstory Project from the Women's
Studies Resources | Duke Special Collections Library- A project
of The Digital Scriptorium, Special Collections Library, Duke University.
http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/wlm
. Please contact this collection for information about reproducing this
article.
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