100

everything to the creation or amplification of
protectionary laws that are pretexts to mask our
real situation of dependence on men and
second-class citizenship.

From all kinds of ideological pressure, ex-
pressed in the terror most of us feel about join-
ing feminist organizations, under the assump-
tion that if we do so, we must be “against men.”
From the fear of being ridiculed or insulted as
“tomboys,” “whores,” or “dykes.”

Statistics atfirm that few women are workers.
Out of the home and onto the production lines!
Working women also carry the burden of the
home!

Communal eating-places, day-care centers and
laundries—to create new jobs and lessen the
load of unpaid workers in the home.

Being a mother and being fulfilled shouldn’t be
a contradiction.

We want family planning in hospitals, acces-
sible to everyone.

Against whom must we struggle?

Against the Patriarchal-Capitalist System
which determines an unjust society, fostering
exploitation, abuse, discrimination, hunger,

wars and massacres; a system which transforms
woman into a beast of burden (if she is prole-
tarian), or into a luxury sex-object (if she is bour-
geois). Capitalism has also reviled love, reduc-
ing male-female relationships to economic
factors or to mere social appearances. It is a
system in which children are the responsibility
of individual couples and, in actual practice, of
the women alone.

Against all sexist ideology which gains by re-
inforcing our situation as “different” and which
is expressed in the cult of “femininity” —sweet-
ness, weakness, virginity and motherhood as
woman’s only aim and destiny.

And finally, against all threats to the libera-
tion front whose ultimate goal is the Monolithic
Unity of Revolutionary Women, and of those
men who integrally support the cause of our
liberation.

*Excerpts (slightly rearranged) from the booklet of this
name distributed by “Accion para la Liberacion de la Mujer
Peruana,” April 15, 1975, Lima, Peru. This text was taken
from the first half of the booklet; the second half deals with
a specific program for practical revolutionary work. The
following are listed as the group’s coordinators and “hon-
orary members”: Cristina Portocarrero Rey, Ana Marfa
Portugal, Amor Arguedas, Dorelly Castafieda, Beatriz
Ramos, Lucia Parra, Margot Loayza, Edith Alva, Carmela
Bravo, Dora Ponce, Flor Herrera, Leo Arteaga, Diana
Arteaga, Dora Guerrero, Bertha Vargas, Inés Pratt, Adela
Montesinos, Estela Luna Lépez.

IR R R R R R I I I I I I I I I I R A A A A R R A A R R R R R R U N S VU VU VUV VSV Vv

On Woman's Refusal to Celebrate Male Creativity*

Rivolta Femminile

Rivolta Femminile is an Italian group of radical
feminists founded in Rome in July 1970, now
associated with other feminist groups in Milan,
Turin, Genoa and Florence. They have con-
sistently resisted hierarchal structures and male-
dominated institutions and their development
of feminist theory has been detailed in publica-
tions such as Carla Lonzi’s Sputiamo su Hegel
(71970) and La Donna clitoridea e la donna vagi-
nale (7971), the collective’s Sessualita femmi-
nile e aborto (7977) and Carla Accardi’s Su-
periore e inferiore (1972). The latter records the
author’s dismissal from her job after discussing
the Rivolta Femminile manifesto with her fe-
male high school students. All publications are
available from Rivolta Femminile, Via del
Babuino 16, Rome, Italy.

We in Rivolta Femminile refuse to pay tribute
to male creativity because we are aware that in
the patriarchal world—that is, in a world made
by men and for men—even the liberating force

of creativity is the prerogative of men. Wom-
an—in so many ways a subsidiary being—is
denied every role which could effect 4 recogni-
tion of these inequities. For her, there is no
prospect of liberation.

The creativity of men speaks to the creativity
of other men while woman, as client and spec-
tator of that dialogue, is assigned a status which
excludes competition. Woman is locked into a
role which, a priori, assures the male artist an
audience. While creating art is seen to have a
liberating function, art as an institution insists
that woman be the neutral witness to the work
of others. Man’s energy, even in art, is spent by
competing with other men. Only the contem-
plation of art invites woman’s involvement.

This is the nature of patriarchal creativity: to
depend upon aggressive competition with male
rivals and on the passive appreciation of wom-
en. Man, the artist, feels abandoned by woman
as soon as she abandons her archetypal specta-
tor’s role; their mutual solidarity rests solely on