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10 lines
2.7 KiB
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<h1>CHAPTER 14</h1>
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<h2>The Diabolical Time Clock</h2>
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<p>With the second half of the Women's Movement in this country - the late 60s, early 70s - the men in control began an all-out siege against women's freedom, a very successful part of which has been their continuing, brilliant "biological-time-clock" campaign. If they could no longer keep us nailed to the system through wifehood, they would step up the never-fail motherhood campaign, knowing that women on their own may be unruly and obstreperous and leave men and threaten patriarchy, but they will be docile and obedient and stay put to keep their children safe.</p>
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<p>It seems to me that ever since men took over heaven and earth, no woman has had a free choice to be a mother. If we choose to have children, we cannot know how much we have been affected by brainwashing to do so, we cannot assume that we are the exceptions, the one totally untouched by the massive propaganda campaign to make mother-slaves of us all. If we choose not to have children, we cannot be sure our decision was not made in <i>reaction</i> to this terrific coercion.</p>
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<p>So whether we decide to be or not to be mothers, neither choice can be said to be made freely. In patriarchy women are not only captives in physical fact, but we are slaves in our beliefs about ourselves, who we are, what we want and need.</p>
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<p>Everywhere feminists - married, single, Lesbian - are having babies, each one swearing that hers was a totally free choice. Each one insists that patriarchy's fiercest and most essential of all messages had nothing whatever to do with <i>her</i> decision to become a mother.</p>
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<p>In addition to my objection to women's passive acceptance of this brutal world for our children, I also object to our hiding from ourselves the dynamics of our conditioning to be mothers and the service we do the state by fulfilling that expectation, obeying that command.</p>
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<p>Our work as women, it seems to me, is to stop accepting the male model of motherhood and ourselves make a world in which motherhood is what we want and need it to be. If we were to do this, motherhood could become what it has not been for thousands of years - a genuine choice.</p>
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<p>I also believe that all of us who are mothers must tell the truth about our experience, first to ourselves, and then to every young unchilded woman who will listen. I am ready now - and without first assuring everyone that I truly love my children so that I won't be stoned to death on the spot-to break this last and deepest of patriarchal taboos by attesting strongly and freely that motherhood was most unsatisfactory for me in this society, as childhood was unsatisfactory for my children, and that, given these conditions, no, I would <i>not</i> do it again.</p>
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