Page Eiehi

SCARLET AND BLACK

Friday. November 2i. I969

Women's Deliberation: An Anti-Declaration

(Robert Finley, resident ad-
viser for East and west Nur-
ris Halls, is unmarried He
wrote the following article in
response to Sally Moore’s art-
icle in last week’s 5&3 entit-

led “Women’s Liberation: A De-
claration.)

By Robert Finley

Utterly without fanfare, in a
lemon grove in Southern
California, the wisest and most
ancient sage of China, Lao Tzu,
was recently reincarnated as a
migrant farm - laborer. l-litch.
hiking across the country to
Washington, last week he stop»
ped at Grinnell for a look at
the state of the ”small liberal-
arts college” Knowing his
espousal of tenderness and non
resistance as the true way of
life, you can imagine his
reaction on reading in the 5&3
the diatribe entitled, “Women’s
Liberation: A Declaration." His
legendary imperturbability was
blown, and he was moved to
speech. ”Is this the famous
American woman?” he cried.
Such blather was unimportant
in itself, be explained, but it
distressed him that young ims
pressionable minds be poisoned
He pleaded that his views be
passed on and quickly drunk
as an antidote. He remarked
that he was pleased to see that
in California, a land where half
the marriages and in divorce,
the pendulum was swinging
backi Young women were dis-
covering the joy of being them-
selves. They were abandoning
their Ph.D.s and finding again
the joy of baking wholesome
bread, preparing nutritious
meals, of being again the center
of the home.

In all cultures and all
religions, the sage reminds us,
the universe is conceived as a
play of opposites, in China
these were called Yin Yang,
Yin being the feminine, the
feeling, expansive, subjective.
negative pole of reality, Yang,
the masculine, thinking, cone
tractivc, objective, positive
pole. All opposites are comple-
mentary. Yin cannot exist with-
out Yang, nor Yang without
Yin; but properly they are in
free interplay and balance.

Never have they been more
imbalanced than today. All our
misguided efforts to create,
through force, a Heaven on
earth, all our science and
technology, our vaunted
“victory over nature" is the
positive, Yang way it is
at last becoming obvious to all
that there is no victory over
nature, that nature has the last
word. But this truth is not so
easily seen in human relations
as in man's corruption of the
environment, or his saving
through the wonders oi
medicine millions of llves only
to doom them [0 starvation.

The Yang way is the positive,
external, extroverted, outward
seeking way, and it is this way
we extol] to high Heaven
(another word for Yang). We
would deny altogether Yin,
putting always knowledge
before wisdom, achievement
before being, compulsive ac-
tivity before observation and
understanding. ideas before

feelings, seriousness and
egotism before play and enjoy-
ment. This is pure suicide, said
the sage. All the problems of
modern life are due to this one
cause—for it is the Yang-
polarized mind that makes the
problems. Most especially it
disturbed the sage to see
meen dcserting the way most
natural to them. and thinking
they Will find real fulfillment
in the outside world He said
they are dooming themselves to
lives of empty soliseeking. The
solution to all problems of life
is not to be found in striving to
mold the world to your petty
desires, in complaints and pro-
grams, in perpetual discontent
and reformation, but in
adapting the self to what is.
If you are empty, your world
is empty. If you are filled, your
world is filled. But Without the
feminine dimension the world
is a sterile, ugly, unieeling, un-
regencrate place tit only for
toads and newts. The sage then
quoted from his one immortal
work of twenty-five hundred
years ago, the Tao Te Citing
the only previous time he was
moved to recorded speech:

Understand the masculine, but
follow the feminine,

And you will become the whole
world’s channel,

Eternal virtue will not depart
from you

And you will return to the state
of the infants

Knowing every assertion has
a contrary, the master trans
slated “Woman‘s Liberation: A
Declaration” out of the shrill
and febrile air of intellect into
the deep reverberaticns of the
heart. The following is the same
article rendered paragraph by
paragraph into its authentic
emotional correlatives.

1) An old Woman is being
born, who thinks herself new.
She is the chromevplated, can-
dy-striped, stream—lined, 1969
gen-you-wine Viragoi this old
new woman has given over
her time-honored place to

technology, and she has found
herself without 2i place at all.
She rejects what she mistakenly
understands as the “superior
attitude of men,” and thus
rejects the wonderful. my-
sterious ccmplementariness in
which man is the leader,
woman his helper, who by
putting hcrsclf second is out
first.

2) Having forsaken her place,
the new woman is so insecure
and confused that she must go
about crying and demanding
her equality. Can he who must
demand his equality ever be
equal? He who is equal dmsn’t
demand.

3) She is prccessed through an
educational regime which could
not be better designed to
cripple and dcmean her
ingrained capacities as wife and
mother and render her fit only
to intellectualize about the
“problems of women." Since
she receives the identical,
irrelevant mindstutiing as the
malc, all sensitivity to, and love
of the inherent differences of
mm: and woman are destroyed.

4)- Deeply infected with the
disease of the times, she puts
herself before all things. Self-
exploitation is her end. Neither
happiness, children nor husband
can come before herself and
her desires.

5) So intellectualized is she.
she has lost contact with her
body, her hands, the joy of
movement and making. Her
home has become meaningless
U: her.

6) She is becoming a fulle
blown shrewi

7) She is utterly alienated
from her own emotional life and
the emotional life of simple
humankind. Her children are
such blank enigmas to her that
caring for them, nurturing and
guiding them is without
meaning.

8) She is worthless as a
mother. if her husband will not
relieve her of her burden she
will crack.

98:10) A Victim cf sociclogical

theories
reduce

which attempt to

masculinity and
femininity to mere acquired
role-playing, she will raise
Children as confused and lost
as herself.

11) She is full of self-pity,
blaming the meaninglessness oi
her home life on commercial
advertising. Because she cannot
distinguish herself from the
stereotypic images of the mass
media, she looks for fulfillment
in the “important concerns of
society.”

12) She has never known what
it feels like [0 be a woman.
She will do all she can to
spread discontent and destroy
the home

13&14) She has lost the sense
of gracious living, of simple
leisure, of meaninglul triviality.
She Will sacrifice all to self-ad-
vancement and "serious" o:-
cupation. Having no inner
security, she must seek identity
in a social definition.

15&16) She puts money and
self-aggrandizement before his
tangible rewards.

17) unavoidably afflicted with
a body that gets pregnant, she
begrudges the time necessary
to bear a child She will Wait
out gtstation, drug herself
during delivery, and quickly
rush back to. her “serious" pure
suits. She will 53 her best to
obliterate from her mind that
she is a mother.

18) Because she has nothing
to give her Children, she wil-
lingly (and perhaps for the
best) consigns them to nursery
homes and the care of
“specialists," rationalizing the
matter with copious verbiage
from child psychology texts.

19) She will submit to nothing
undcr Heaven.

20) She has lost touch with
the intuitive sense of play in
courtship. For the ancients.
Eros \vas a god. For the new
woman he is an intellectual
puzzle.

213122) She will have her
sexual gratification when and
where and how she wills it, and
demands that science rescue
her flom the consequences.

23) She is so humourless and
inscsure she cannot laugh at
the absurdities of commer-
cialism and advertising. The
images of the media overpower
her shredded feminity.

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24) She does nct feel beauti~
fuL

25) She longs so to give up
her ridiculous campaigns for
“women‘s rights," and return
to being just a simple woman.
but she's forgotten how. or has
never known. ‘

26&Z7) Having tried to cram
the world into pale and decep-
tive intellect, the beauty of play
and ritual is lost to her. She
is blind to the fact that in all
places and all times men have
loved and admired woman for
their physical beauty and
feminine charm. She would
strive to abrogate what Nature
has decreed.

Fudge Recital Set

Baritone James Fudge will
present a recital at 8 pm.
tonight in Herrick Chapel.

Fudge, a member of the
Grinnell College music faculty,
will be accompanied on the
piano by his wife Irene and will
present the following program:

Alma Mia (Floridante)—
Handel: lngrata Si Mi Svena—
Vivaldi; Da Te Lungi—
Scarlatti: Vado Ben Spesscm
Salvatore Rosa; From An Un-
known Past—Ned Rorern; Dichr
terliebe, 0p. 4575chumann,

Sneclal

GRINNELL

liiiiiiil

Service!

Direct to:
PES‘MOINES. IA.
$2.75 one/“Toy

CHICAGO. ILL.
$11.10 one/way

0 Ask about
convenient
relurn service.

0 Why lug luggage?
Send it by Greyhound.

o Buses leave from

BATTEY'S '
TEXACO STA.

For ticket and
information, phone

236-5122

WHY?

Eli tilinliuuiin

 

