◆ SpookStack

a a ae 6 ah a aa as a rio ye, Loe 90 THE DIALECTIC OF gry had a smile on your puss!” . . . “Nasty little brat. If j Were your father T would spank you so hard you woulda know what hit youl”... Their violence js amazin Yet these men feel that the woman or the child is to blame for not being “friendly.” Because it makes them uncom. fortable to kitow that the woman or the child or the black or the workman is grumbling, the oppressed Oups must also a to like their oppression—emiling “and simpering howsh they may feel ike hell side, The smite is the child/woman equivalent of the shufllo; it indicates ecquiescence of the victim to his own ‘Oppression, ; In my own case, I had to train myself out of that Phony- - smile, which is like a nervous tic on every tecnage pirl. And this meant that I smiled rarely, for in truth, when it came down to real smiling, I had less to smile about. My “dream” action for the women’s liberation movement: a smile boycott, at which declaration al} women would instantly abandon their “pleasing” smiles, henceforth smil. ing only when something pleased them. Likewise children’s liberation would demand an end to all fondling not dic tated by the child itself, (This of course would predicate @ Society in which fondling in general was no longer frowned upon; often the only demonstration of affection a child now receives is of this phony kind, which he may still consider better than nothing.) Many men can't under- stand that their easy intimacies come &$ no privilege. Do they ever consider that the real person inside that baby or female animal may not, choose to’ be fondled then, or by them, or even noticed? Unagine this man's own coasternz- tion were some stranger to approach him on the street in a similar manner-—patting, gurgling, muttering baby talk— without respect for his pzofession or his “manhood,” ern nic “childhood,” tightened the noose nomically dependent group by What had been only a brief around the alresdy ero. extending and reinforcing at dependence, by the usual I The Case jor Feminist Revolution g1 means: the develonment of a Special ideology, of a Spe- cial indigenous life style, language, dress, manuerisms, etc, And with the increase and exaggeration of children's de- pendence, woman's bondape to HOWner Was = the same lousy boat, Their Ooppressions began to reinforce one aulother. To the mystique of the glories of childbirth, the grandeur of “natural” female creativity, was now added a new mystique about the glories of childhood itselt and the “creativity” of childrearing. (“Why, my dear, what could be more creative than taising 8 child?") By now people have forgotten what history has proven: that “raising” a child is tantamount i ort é best way to raise a child is to LAY OFF, gr OUR TIMB: THE MYTH IS MAGNIFIED We have seen how the increasing privatization of family life brought ever more oppression to its dependents, wom- . ea and children. The interrelated myths of femininity and childhood were the instruments of this oppression. In the Victorian Era they reached such epic proportions that finally women rebelled—their rebellion peripherally: af- fecting childhood. But the rebellion was destroyed before it could eliminate these myths, They went underground. fo reappear in @ more insidious version, complicated by mass cousumerism. For in fact nothing had changed, In Chapter 2 I described how the emancipation of women was subtly sabotaged; the same thing occurred in the corol- lary oppression “childhood.” The pseudo-emancipation of children exactly parallels the pseudo-emancipation of women: Though we have abolished all the superficial signs of oppression—the dis- tinct and cumbrous clothing, the schoolmaster's rod—~ ere is no question that the myth of childhood is flourish ing in epic proportions, twenticth-century style: whole in- dustries are built on the manifacture- of special toys, games, baby food, breakfast food, children’s books and