by Anne Summers
Conclusion
This chapter has argued that virtually every function of ‘the family’ is dependent on women’s work for its performance. Yet while women are accorded a certain amount of status for doing so, the institution remains a patriarchal one. Legally and economically it is dominated by the husband/father. It bears his name and requires his financial support, if not his presence. If either of these is withheld then women must founder in a world that gives them scant recognition because they are unmarried or because they have been abandoned by their provider/protector. In return for giving his name and his financial support, the husband/father assumes dominance within an institution that plays a key role in perpetuating the present system, a system that is both capitalist and patriarchal.
The pious and sentimental attitudes and conventions that surround ‘the family’ disguise the connection between it and the system by representing it as a privatised sphere, and as an arena of individual assertion. They also obscure the work that women do within families as well as the fact that women have little choice but to engage in this work. ‘The family’ survives on the conscripted labour of women.
The functions fulfilled by ‘the family’ as outlined in this chapter are all interlocking and mutually dependent. Not all of them are socially necessary, and they need not all be performed within an institution such as ‘the family’. The common link between them is provided by women who, as mothers and wives, devote the greater part of their lives to ensuring the perpetuation of existing authority relations and, hence, ‘the family’.
*This is necessarily an extremely abbreviated account of the development of the ‘nuclear family’ and is forced to schematise developments and patterns that took over a century to develop and that displayed regional, national and class variations. Part Two deals with the development of ‘the family’ in Australia in more detail.
*In August 1974, the then Minister for Social Security, Mr Hayden, announced that an allowance, similar to that paid to supporting mothers, would be paid to supporting fathers.
*Socialisation can be seen as a continuous and lifelong process, for as long as we encounter new situations or are called upon to perform new roles we must learn how to act within these situations or roles, but I am here only concerned with childhood socialisation. This is because the focus here is on ‘the family’, the site of a great part of childhood socialisation, and also because of my argument that what occurs during childhood socialisation is not merely the absorption of knowledge and attitudes but the formation of a psychic structure and the channelling of instincts into conformity to the demands of the status quo.
*This number could be substantially larger if those children involved in desertions and separations could be accounted for. This would entail obtaining statistical information on the number of children whose mothers are in receipt of the supporting mothers’ allowance – and this information is not readily available. Even this would not complete the picture, however, as we would also need to add those children who are cared for by their father as well as those whose mothers are not in receipt of a social security allowance.
CHAPTER SEVEN
A colonised sex
The subjection of women to men being a universal custom, any departure from it quite naturally appears unnatural.
John Stuart Mill, The Subjection of Women, 1869
Rape is an act of aggression (by a man or group of men against a woman) in which the victim is denied her self-determination. It is an act of violence which, if not actually followed by beatings or murder, nevertheless always carries with it the threat of death … rape is a form of mass terrorism, for the victims of rape are chosen indiscriminately but the propagandists for male supremacy broadcast that it is women who cause rape by being unchaste or in the wrong place at the wrong time – in essence, by behaving as though they were free.
Susan Griffin, ‘Rape: The all-American crime’, Ramparts, September 1971
At the Women’s Commission [in Sydney] last March, much time was spent listening to the expression of hostility towards the doctors in women’s lives. The cost of treatment was rarely mentioned. The complaints were about male chauvinism and its pervasive effects on women’s treatment and their well-being.
Caroline Graham, ‘Women and doctors’, Nation Review, 8–14 June, 1973
During life it is inevitable that a woman will have her share of anxiety, of illness, of strain, as well as her share of satisfaction and happiness. But because she is biologically different from man, she may develop conditions unique to woman. Many of these are minor, but require attention. In most instances a woman should consult her doctor, but as doctors are busy men and all too often do not explain adequately to the patient the nature of the condition from which she is suffering, she often remains anxious.
Derek Llewellyn-Jones, M.D., Everywoman, 1971
When the British invaded the continent of Australia in 1788 they did more than colonise a continent and its Aboriginal inhabitants. They also colonised an entire sex – the female sex. This means of exploiting women was not a unique form developed especially for the Antipodes although, as Part Two outlines, it has taken on various unique features in this country. The argument that women are a colonised sex can be generalised to include all industrialised Western countries, and is probably applicable to women in all known societies. However, no such universal claim is being advanced here: my intention is to try and show how women in Australia are colonised and some of the effects of this.
The classic colonial situation has four major components which can be described in abbreviated fashion as (1) the invasion and conquering of a territory, (2) the cultural domination of its inhabitants, (3) the securing of effective control of the inhabitants by creating divisions among them, thus preventing their uniting to oppose the invasion, a political tactic traditionally known as divide and rule, and (4) the extraction of profits from the colonised territory. Colonisation is accomplished by the brute force of invasion and by the partial or complete destruction of the native people’s culture. It is the latter which is often decisive both in accomplishing control and in preventing revolt against the invading power. The native people is persuaded, or forced, to concede that its own culture is inferior and that it should strive to emulate and adopt that of the colonising power.
The process of cultural colonisation is seldom accomplished without resistance since there is usually a religious or spiritual value attached to the indigenous culture by the native people. In such cases the colonisers will try to provide a substitute religion – such as Christianity – which both compensates for the loss of the old one and also, because it is associated with the power of the invaders, can be posed as superior to the myths and superstitions previously adhered to. But the old culture is ultimately destroyed by the ‘benefits’ that the invaders proffer, ‘benefits’ that could not possibly be acquired in any other way. The people are offered individual rewards, such as wages for labour (in comparison to the vagaries of commodity exchange which characterise a peasant economy), which enable them to purchase consumer items, which the colonial masters persuade them are necessary to a satisfying existence. The invaded people is also supplied with collective benefits in the form of schools, hospitals and other services which, they are informed, will be of immeasurable advantage to them. (What they do not often recognise immediately is that all of these ‘benefits’ are in fact slowly inducting them into the ways of life of the colonial power and, at the same time, destroying forever their own heritage and wisdoms.)
No matter with what seeming ease the colonial invasion is accomplished there is invariably some resistance. This usually comes from the older people who either have memories of previous invasions, or instinctively resist this wanton destruction of their own way of life. The tactic adopted by the colonising power to thwart and neutralise such resistance is the classic one of divide and rule. Some sections of the native people, usually the younger people who want to be ‘progressive’, are almost always responsive to th
e rewards dangled before them by the invaders, and it is these groups who are selected for special treatment. They are given privileges, allowed to share some of the status of the colonisers and are persuaded that their capitulation to the mores of the powerful group is to their own personal, as well as their country’s, advantage.
The colonisers always make use of ideological weapons. No matter whether this ideology is religion, philanthropy, a ‘civilising mission’ or whatever, it is intended to mask the true intent of the invasion. That intention is always to pacify the invaded people and to convince them that the colonisation is for their own good. Yet, if there were not substantial benefits to be accrued by the invaders, colonisation would not have occurred in the first place. The primary purpose of colonisation is always and without exception to enhance the wealth and power of the ruling class of the colonising country.
At first sight it appears that there are some similarities between the position of women in a patriarchal society such as Australia and that of a colonised people. Both are denied self-determination, and both spend their lives working to enhance the power and wealth of a group to which they can never belong. But this similarity extends much further than has been previously recognised.1 To say that women are a colonised group is no metaphor. It is a salient political description of women in industrialised countries like Australia, if not of all women everywhere.
The limits to women’s freedom and self-determination described in the previous chapters amount to a massive physical and psychological circumscription of their ability to decide what to do with their lives and would, in themselves, present a strong case for describing women as a colonised group. But, it could be objected, women possess no separate territory. They have not been invaded, and various other crucial criteria for colonisation have not been met. Can we say that women have had an alien culture imposed upon them? Have they been divided in order to secure a more effective domination? Who profits from their subjugation?
Yet women do possess a territory: their bodies. Women’s bodies are territories in two senses. In a society that denies them economic independence and hence precludes them from ownership of land – isolated examples to the contrary do not disprove this since most women with wealth have inherited it from men – their bodies are all that women indisputably possess. Secondly, their bodies are hosts to new life and, to date, no amount of technological innovation has been able to make them redundant in this respect. When human lives are seen as resources – and most societies view population this way, however much they might disguise it with ideological or religious sentiments – it becomes imperative for the survival of the human race that women’s bodies continue to serve this function. Women’s bodies are seen as territory to be cultivated, the product reaped being a new generation of human beings.
Once women’s bodies are recognised as a form of territory, the description of their position as being one of colonisation stops being metaphorical and assumes the status of political analysis. Women are colonised by being denied control over their bodies. The main purpose of colonisation is to ensure that women will continue to reproduce. But most societies also require that reproduction does not occur indiscriminately: they want population to be produced in accordance with what are viewed as desirable kinship patterns and methods of socialising new members of that society. In a country such as Australia, ‘the family’ is considered to be the only appropriate institution into which children can be born and reared. Thus the specific aim in colonising Australian women is to ensure that they will marry and bear children, thus perpetuating ‘the family’.
The colonisation of women contains the four elements that are present in the colonisation of a continent or a tribal people. These are (1) invasion and conquering, (2) cultural domination, (3) divide and rule, and (4) the extraction of profits.
The colonisation of women
Women are denied control and self-determination of their bodies in three separate ways. Their bodies are violently invaded by the act of rape which is a political means of terrorising and conquering them and controlling their movements. They are denied full expression of their sexuality and the freedom to explore their unique sexual responses by the demands of reproduction. And they are denied free access to those technological means that are available for controlling their biology by the stranglehold the medical profession has over these means and their distribution. The cultural domination of women comes about by the imposition of the code of femininity and the male-dominated, professionalised practice of modern medicine. Women are divided by the Damned Whore and God’s Police stereotypes and, their potential solidarity undermined, patriarchy’s control over women is facilitated. Both the patriarchal and capitalist systems and individual men reap substantial profits from women’s colonised state.
Invasion and conquering
The political crime of rape
Rape is viewed by most people and by the organs of the mass media as a terrible crime. According to a public opinion survey it is considered by a great majority of people to be second only to murder as the most serious crime that can be committed.2 But there is a contradiction between this professed public horror and the various means by which rape in Australian society is either overlooked, excused or considered a subject of mirth. These means also disguise the enormous incidence of rape and the fact that it is increasing rapidly.
Rape is defined at law as the forcible penetration of a woman without her consent. This definition is a narrow one, which does not encompass or even recognise several kinds of undesired sexual violation that women commonly encounter. The legal definition assumes a degree of violence, or threatened violence, beyond the penetration and overlooks the violence involved in the act of penetration itself.
The heterosexual act of intercourse is, by its very nature, the invasion by a man of a woman’s body.* It is not necessarily a coercive act, nor one that women do not seek or enjoy, but in a political system where differences of sex also describe differences of power and status it becomes not merely one aspect of that power difference, but a tangible expression of it. The heterosexual act of intercourse is the unique activity that encapsulates the polarity between the sexes: the male must actively desire it before it can be accomplished, while the female’s acquiescence is not physically necessary. This activity is also the means by which the female is impregnated and thus enabled to perform her unique function for civilisation. Yet again it is at the male’s behest that this occurs: a woman cannot demand of an unwilling male that he perform this task for her. In other words, biology ordains that a woman’s body must be invaded for her to be able to reproduce, yet while she is able to prevent conception, she is unable to effect it without the consent of a male. Patriarchal society demands of women that they reproduce, and it is men who have the social and the biological power to decide when and whether they will do so. The desire of the male is an essential prerequisite while female passivity, indifference or resistance is not an impediment. Rape is a biological possibility for the male, while no such conquistadorial power is possessed by the female. This biological fact, when situated in a culture in which men monopolise political, economic, legal, military, religious and other forms of power, has the potential to create a disposition among men to view sexual intercourse as one additional piece of weaponry in their armoury of power, one that they can use whenever and upon whomsoever it pleases them.
Rape, however, is not seen as having any connection with ‘normal’ sexual intercourse. It is seen as a crime, and a very serious one, which in Australia carries a maximum penalty of life imprisonment. It is a violent act that occurs very infrequently, people believe, and then is committed only by a minority of deviant men. Rapists are not regarded as ordinary criminals, but as a specially abhorrent group apart. Or at least that is the popular mythology, and it is reinforced by the fact that rape is a subject studied by criminologists who devise all kinds of theories to account for its incidence and to suggest ways of reducing the rape toll.
This is how
rape is popularly viewed. This is our means of distancing rape from our everyday lives, of defining it out of the province of normality into the region of deviance and, therefore, of spasmodic and infrequent occurrence. This is patriarchal society’s way of de-emphasising rape. At the one time it is demarcated as the most serious crime short of taking a person’s life, and yet also proclaimed to be an offence that is rarely perpetrated and then only by a minority who are seen as deviant.
This view excludes from recognition the common everyday occurrence of rape, denies that it is a constant fear and a far from uncommon reality in the lives of almost all women, and totally overlooks the fact that some instances of rape are actually sanctioned by law while others are deliberately placed outside the ambit of the law.
There is no legal recognition of rape within marriage. Marriage gives a man ‘reasonable’ access to his wife’s body and she is not free to refuse him intercourse if he insists – although she can refuse to participate in some sexual acts, such as sodomy, which are legally proscribed in all circumstances. Marital rape need not only be the brutal forcing of sexual submission from an unwilling wife, although this occurs with a frequency which, if it could be incorporated into the official rape statistics, would increase them to horrendous proportions. Any sexual encounter involving an unwilling woman is a violation of her body and a denial of her self-determination. Marriage provides many occasions for such violation because of the constant physical proximity of husband and wife.