Jan 12, 2010

Are Women Human?

"If women were human, would we be a cash crop shipped from Thailand in containers into New York's brothels? Would we have our genitals sliced out to purify us (of what?) and to bid and define our cultures? Would we be used as breeders, made to work without pay our whole lives, burned when our dowry money wasn't enough or when men tired of us, starved as widows when our husbands died if we survived his funeral pyre, forced to sell ourselves sexually because men won't value us for anything else? Would we be sold into marriage to priests to atone for our family's sins or to improve our family's earthly prospects? Would be we sexually and reproductively enslaved? Would we, when allowed to work for pay, be made to work at the most menial jobs and exploited at barely starvation level? Would we be trafficked for sexual use and entertainment worldwide in whatever form current technology makes possible? Would we be kept from learning to read and write?"

Catherine MacKinnon
excerpt from her book. Here's the link

1 comment:

Julian Real said...

Thanks for posting this. Just a note that because her name is so often misspelled, she's probably appreciate her name being spelled right with a quote of hers: Catharine MacKinnon. (On the web, I think her name is missspelled more than it is spelled right!)