I've been reading Ursula Le Guin's essays and now, after reading "The Fisherwoman's Daughter" what I really, really want to read is Three Guineas.
The rationale of exclusionists, as I understand it, is that the material privilege and social approbation our society grants the heterosexual wife, and particularly the mother, prevent her solidarity with less privileged women and insulate her from the kind of anger and the kind of ideas that lead to feminist action. There is truth in this; maybe it's true for a lot of women; I can oppose it only with my experience, which is that feminism is a life-saving neccesity to women trapped in the wife/mother "role." What do the privilege and approbation accorded to the housewife-mother by our society in fact consist of? Being the object of infinite advertising? Being charged by psychologists with total answerability for children's mental well-being, and by government with total answerability for children's welfare, while being regularly equated with apple pie by sentimental warmongers? As a social "role", motherhood, for any woman I know, simply means that she does everything everybody else does plus bringing up the kids.
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It's a long road to freedom, a winding steep and high, but when you walk in love with the wind on your wing, and cover the earth with the songs you sing, the miles fly by...
I walked, one morning by the sea,
And all the waves reached out to me,I took their tears, then let them be...
I walked, one morning at the dawn,
When bits of night still lingered on, I sought my star, but it was gone...
I walked, one morning with a friend,and prayed the day would never end, the years have flown, so why pretend...
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