wildfire/12_chap6.html

<h1>CHAPTER 6</h1>
<h2>Just/Us and Hequality<a href="#fn1">[1]</a></h2>
<p>Nor do I care how politically incorrect it sounds to acknowledge how appalled I am that I ever accepted the concept of justice, another example of men's attempt to make us perceive power as external and dichotomous. Though it is symbolized by scales held by a blindfolded figure, in fact objective justice is an oxymoron. Justice is securely based in values, and values by definition are neither blind nor impersonal.</p>
<p>Rather than being some sort of moral absolute, justice was created as a loyal servant to patriarchy, spawning a system dependent upon someone's meting out upon others either reward for conformity to patriarchal values or punishment for flaunting them.<a href="#fn2">[2]</a> The concept of justice cannot exist without acceptance of patriarchy's identification of power with hierarchy and external control.</p>
<p>The assumption that any man or woman, no matter how "good," should or even <i>can</i> decide what is best for anyone else without being influenced by personal biases and beliefs, not only dignifies men's absurd belief in pure disembodied logos, but reinforces the idea that it is reasonable, nay "natural," for some to have control over others. And reinforces the absurdity that power automatically attaches to those who control.</p>
<p>In creating the illusion that someone outside us must sit in judgment upon us, justice sanctions and gives life-support to tyranny. Tyranny can survive only so long as most of us believe that power is externally based, that someone else has the right to decide what is "just" for us, what we "deserve." A belief in god and god-surrogates is essential to tyranny.</p>
<p>Inherent in justice is the eye-for-an-eye authorization of retaliation and revenge. One of my most difficult tasks as a mother has been to persuade my children not to be spiteful and mean in response to spite and meanness. This has been made particularly onerous not only by their study of the behavior of famous men in history, but also by watching present famous men rationalize bombing a city because a U.S. ship has been fired upon. With such models of moral pathology parading as "justice," women's job of humanizing children has been made well-nigh impossible.</p>
<p>The concept of justice is based on distrust and hatred of human nature and is hostile to the development of self-trust, self-rule, and trust of others. Because it is external coercion, not self-government, justice is always a weapon of those in control. It cannot function in behalf of those controlled; it is not "just" that they should be controlled in the first place.</p>
<p>Since I do not want justice, what would I propose instead? I want compassion and generosity, first from myself. If I can understand and love myself, I will be merciful and loving to others. If enough of us can deal with ourselves generously and truthfully, kindly, lovingly, mercifully, there will be no need for courts, for laws, for the top-heavy, top-down inherent cruelty of justice. I am tired of being controlled by others. What I want is self-rule. I want true anarchy. I am ready for it.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>Like justice, equality is a word I don't hear very often any more among the feminists I meet and with whom I associate. Many of us, having found equality an obfuscating concept, have long since rejected it as a goal. Equal to whom, we ask? In what way? Equality, like justice an externally referenced word, must always involve comparison, and as far as I am concerned, being a feminist means that I stop comparing myself against external standards or other people - particularly men - taking to heart my knowledge that because each of us is truly incomparable, the concept of "equality" is profoundly patriarchal. That we judge ourselves with criteria not of our own devising and compare ourselves with others in almost all aspects of our lives is a stunning achievement of the fathers.</p>
<p>In addition, what we <i>think</i> of as equality (i.e., when we are not aware of it as a conditional, dualistic concept) is not even a possibility in a hierarchical system. I can't think why I ever thought it <i>was</i> any more than I can remember why I once thought it was a desirable end. Men admit that even when two of <i>them</i> meet, before they can so much as begin to talk they must both decide which one of them is in the one-up position and which in the one-down, using the criteria first of race, then of wealth and status measured in dozens of ways. Without imposing their hierarchical paradigm upon every experience, men cannot move an inch in any aspect of their lives.</p>
<p>If no <i>man</i> ever perceives any other man as an equal but instead always either higher or lower in status than he, where do <i>women</i> fit into patriarchy's "equality" ideal? The answer is of course that we neither do nor even <i>can</i> fit and that equality therefore is not possible in patriarchy. Further, what we have always mistakenly called "equality" is really HEquality, a construct that bears no resemblance to what men say equality is but instead is a variation on the theme of tyranny.</p>
<p>More than this, however. The concept of equity is only possible to the dualistic mind, the mind that must posit "unequal" in order to posit "equal." When we realize that its existence is dependent upon the existence of inequality - not just in our minds but also in the world - we see that equality is an artifact of dichotomous patriarchal thought.</p>
<p>So in solemnly teaching us to revere and desire equality, men have played a great joke on us. But now that we have caught them out, perhaps we can acknowledge their drollery by referring to this venerable nonideal in the future not only as hequality but also as "hee-heequality."</p>
<p>With what shall we replace this figment, this dream of "equality?" I suggest that it was part of a long and ancient nightmare and that we just let it go. It needs no replacement. Feminist anarchy is simple: self-love resulting in love of others out of which springs behavior in the best interests of everyone. To some that sounds impossible. But it is not nearly so complicated, not nearly so difficult to maintain, as patriarchy, and it is home to the human heart, where it longs to go, where it knows it is <i>possible</i> to go, where, guided by the rising of women out of self-hatred and out of our consequent facilitation of men's destructiveness, it is heading at the speed of light.</p>

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<p><a id="fn1">[1]</a> These are Marlene Mountain's words that she lent me in conversations in January and March 1989.</p>
<p><a id="fn2">[2]</a> Having been a mother for over 25 years, I no longer believe in the efficacy of punishment.
It has never improved any of my children's behavior for long.</p>