“We’re driving through a magical land,” she said as she sipped the delicious chocolate, “a magical land populated by warring people.”
“What warring people are they?” I asked, trying not to sound patronizing.
“The Yaqui people of Sonora,” she said and kept quiet, perhaps measuring my reaction. “I admire the Yaqui Indians because they have been in constant war. The Spaniards first; and then the Mexicans—as recently as 1934—have felt the savagery, cunning, and relentlessness of the Yaqui warriors.”
“I don’t admire war or warlike people,” I said. Then, by way of apologizing for my belligerent tone, I explained that I came from a German family that had been torn apart by the war.
“Your case is different,” she maintained. “You don’t have the ideals of freedom.”
“Wait a minute!” I protested. “It is precisely because I espouse the ideals of freedom that I find war so abhorrent.”
“We are talking about two different kinds of war,” she insisted.
“War is war,” I interjected.
“Your kind of war,” she went on, ignoring my interruption, “is between two brothers who are both rulers and are fighting for supremacy.” She leaned toward me, and in an urgent whisper added, “The kind of war I’m talking about is between a slave and the master who thinks that he owns people. Do you see the difference?”
“No, I don’t,” I insisted stubbornly, and repeated that war is war no matter what the reason.
“I can’t agree with you,” she said, and sighing loudly leaned back in her seat. “Perhaps the reason for our philosophical disagreement,” she continued, “is that we come from different social realities.”
Astonished by her choice of words, I automatically slowed the car. I didn’t mean to be rude, but to hear her spout academic concepts was so incongruous and unexpected that I couldn’t help but laugh.
Delia didn’t take offense. She watched me, smiling, thoroughly pleased with herself, and said, “When you get to know my point of view, you may change your mind.” She said this so seriously and yet so kindly that I felt ashamed of myself for laughing at her. “You may even apologize for laughing at me,” she added as if she had read my thoughts.
“I do apologize, Delia,” I said and truly meant it. “I’m terribly sorry for my rudeness. I was so surprised by your statements that I didn’t know what to do.” I glanced at her briefly, and added contritely, “So I laughed.”
“I don’t mean social apologies for your conduct,” she said, shaking her head in disappointment. “I mean apologies for not understanding the plight of man.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said uneasily. I could feel her eyes boring through me.
“As a woman, you should understand that plight very well,” she said. “You have been a slave all your life.”
“What are you talking about, Delia?” I asked, irritated by her impertinence. Then I immediately calmed down, certain that the poor Indian had no doubt an insufferable, overwhelming husband. “Believe me, Delia, I’m quite free. I do as I please.”
“You might do as you please, but you’re not free,” she persisted. “You are a woman, and that automatically means that you’re at the mercy of men.”
“I’m not at the mercy of anybody!” I yelled.
I couldn’t tell whether it was my assertion or my tone of voice that made Delia burst into loud guffaws. She laughed at me as hard as I had laughed at her before.
“You seem to be enjoying your revenge,” I said, peeved. “It’s your turn to laugh now, isn’t it?”
Suddenly serious, she said, “It’s not the same at all. You laughed at me because you felt superior. A slave that talks like a master always delights the master for a moment.”
I tried to interrupt her and tell her that it hadn’t even crossed my mind to think of her as a slave, or of me as a master, but she ignored my efforts. In the same solemn tone she said that the reason she had laughed at me was because I had been rendered stupid and blind to my own womanhood.
“What’s with you, Delia?” I asked, puzzled. “You’re deliberately insulting me.”
“Certainly,” she readily agreed and giggled, completely indifferent to my rising anger. She slapped my knee with a resounding whack. “What concerns me,” she went on, “is that you don’t even know that by the mere fact that you’re a woman you’re a slave.”
Mustering up all the patience I was capable of, I told Delia that she was wrong: “No one is a slave nowadays.”
“Women are slaves,” Delia insisted. “Men enslave women. Men befog women. Men’s desire to brand women as their property befogs us,” she declared. “That fog hangs around our necks like a yoke.”
My blank look made her smile. She lay back on the seat, clasping her hands on her chest. “Sex befogs women,” she added softly, yet emphatically. “Women are so thoroughly befogged that they can’t consider the possibility that their low status in life is the direct end result of what is done to them sexually.”
“That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard,” I pronounced. Then, rather ponderously, I went into a long diatribe about the social, economic, and political reasons for women’s low status. At great length I talked about the changes that have taken place in the last decades; how women have been quite successful in their fight against male supremacy. Peeved by her mocking expression, I couldn’t refrain from remarking that she was no doubt prejudiced by her own experiences; by her own perspective in time.
Delia’s whole body shook with suppressed mirth. She made an effort to contain herself and said, “Nothing has really changed. Women are slaves. We’ve been reared to be slaves. The slaves who are educated are now busy addressing the social and political abuses committed against women. None of the slaves, though, can focus on the root of their slavery—the sexual act—unless it involves rape or is related to some other form of physical abuse.” A little smile parted her lips as she said that religious men, philosophers, and men of science have for centuries maintained, and of course still do, that men and women must follow a biological, God-given imperative having to do directly with their sexual reproductive capabilities.
“We have been conditioned to believe that sex is good for us,” she stressed. “This inherent belief and acceptance has incapacitated us to ask the right question.”
“And what question is that?” I asked, trying hard not to laugh at her utterly erroneous convictions.
Delia didn’t seem to have heard me. She was silent for so long I thought she had dozed off. I was startled when she said, “The question that no one dares ask is, what does it do to us women to get laid?”
“Really, Delia,” I chided in mock consternation.
“Women’s befogging is so total, we will focus on every other issue of our inferiority except the one that is the cause of it all,” she maintained.
“But, Delia, we can’t do without sex,” I laughed. “What would happen to the human race if we don’t…”
She checked my question and my laughter with an imperative gesture of her hand.
“Nowadays, women like yourself, in their zeal for equality, imitate men,” she said. “Women imitate men to such an absurd degree that the sex they are interested in has nothing to do with reproduction. They equate freedom with sex, without ever considering what sex does to their physical and emotional well-being. We have been so thoroughly indoctrinated, we firmly believe that sex is good for us.” She nudged me with her elbow, and then, as if she were reciting a chant, she added in a sing-song tone, “Sex is good for us. It’s pleasurable. It’s necessary. It alleviates depression, repression, and frustration. It cures headaches, low and high blood pressure. It makes pimples disappear. It makes your tits and ass grow. It regulates your menstrual cycle. In short, it’s fantastic! It’s good for women. Everyone says so. Everyone recommends it.” She paused for an instant, and then pronounced with dramatic finality, “A fuck a day keeps the doctor away.”
I found her statements terribly funny, but then I sobered abruptly as I remembered how my family and friends, including our family doctor, had suggested—not so crudely to be sure—sex as a cure for all the adolescent ailments I had had growing up in a strictly repressive environment. The doctor had said that once I was married, I would have regular menstrual cycles. I would gain weight. I would sleep better. I would be sweet tempered.
“I don’t see anything wrong with wanting sex and love,” I said defensively. “Whatever I’ve experienced of it, I have liked very much. And no one befogs me. I’m free! I choose whom I want and when I want it.”
There was a spark of glee in Delia’s dark eyes when she said, “Choosing your partner does in no way alter the fact that you’re being fucked.” Then with a smile, as if to mitigate the harshness of her tone, she added, “To equate freedom with sex is the ultimate irony. Men’s befogging is so complete, so total, it has zapped us of the needed energy and imagination to focus on the real cause of our enslavement.” She stressed, “To want a man sexually or to fall in love with one romantically are the only two choices given to the slaves. And all the things we have been told about these two choices are nothing but excuses that pull us into complicity and ignorance.”
I was indignant with her. I couldn’t help but think that she was some kind of repressed, man-hating shrew.
“Why do you dislike men so much, Delia?” I asked in my most cynical tone.
“I don’t dislike them,” she assured me. “What I passionately object to is our reluctance to examine how thoroughly indoctrinated we are. The pressure put upon us is so fierce and self-righteous that we have become willing accomplices. Whoever dares to differ is dismissed and mocked as a man-hater or as a freak.”
Blushing, I glanced at her surreptitiously. I decided that she could talk so disparagingly about sex and love because she was, after all, old: Physical desires were all behind her.
Chuckling softly, Delia put her hands behind her head. “My physical desires are not behind me because I’m old,” she confided, “but because I’ve been given a chance to use my energy and imagination to become something different than the slave I was raised to be.”
I felt thoroughly insulted rather than surprised that she had read my thoughts. I began to defend myself, but my words only triggered more laughter. As soon as she stopped, she turned toward me. Her face was as stern and serious as that of a teacher about to scold a pupil. “If you are not a slave, how come they reared you to be a Hausfrau?” she asked. “And how come all you think about is to heiraten, and about your future Herr Gemahl who will dich mitnehmen?”
I laughed so hard at her use of German I had to stop the car lest we have an accident. More interested in finding out where she had learned German so well, I forgot to defend myself from her unflattering remarks that all I wanted in life was to find a husband who would whisk me away. Regardless of how hard I pleaded, however, she disdainfully ignored my interest in her German.
“You and I will have plenty of time to talk about my German later,” she assured me. She regarded me mockingly and added, “Or about your being a slave.” Before I had a chance to retort, she suggested that we talk about something impersonal.
(Florinda Donner, Being in Dreaming)
