"When I say there is an all-out global war being waged against women, there are always some people who shake their heads and say, "Really, Sonia! War is a very big word. Obviously, things aren't good for women, but you mustn't overstate your case. If you exaggerate, nobody's going to believe anything you say. Why not tone it down a little?" I tell these people how fervently I wish war were too big a word for what happens to women in this world every day, how I can't wait for the day when war is too big a word and I am overstating my case. But the fact is, war is far too small a word. There isn't a word in the men's dictionary monstrous enough for what happens to women on this planet, and has happened unceasingly for thousands of years.
Men speak humorously, or so they say, of "the war between the sexes" - a transparent and guileful attempt to mislead us into thinking that there is a natural enmity between women and men, and that the "sides" are evenly matched. Nothing could be further from the truth on both counts. The "war between the sexes" is man made, and it is not between anybody. It is against women. We know that to be born female in patriarchy is to be born behind enemy lines.
But because everything associated with women is degraded by that association, something subversive happens to the glorious male vision of war when we insist on calling women's lives with men on this earth "war." War, to the patriarchal mind, is heroic, grand, full of magnificent courage and color, camaraderie, idealism, moral and physical strength - the whole shot through with religious fervor: God is always on our side because we are right and good and noble. The Old Testament is all the proof one needs that war in patriarchy is the holiest of holies.
Then feminists come along and sully that splendid word. What could be less noble and heroic and grand and magnificent than the furtive ugly sneaking weak and cowardly acts of rape and battering and incest and pornography-inspired sadism, and sexual harassment and pauperizing and sterilizing and obligatory motherhood - to name just a few of the less heroic aspects of this most invisible and vicious and widespread and prolonged and prototypical of all wars in human history. No wonder people become alarmed, even outraged, when the holy word "war" is used for the disgustingly two-bit work of bullying and brutalizing women into submission. Even to use the words "war" and "women" in the same sentence makes a mockery of all they reverence.
Yet, the screams of women, their moaning, the crying of the women of the world, past and present, echo through the chambers of the unconscious in every human being alive. On some level, each of us knows what is going on, but it is as if we have signed a pact not to let on that we know, have sworn to keep it secret. What else can account for the public aghast when one minute fragment of the hidden hoard of evidence escapes into public awareness?"
- Going Out of Our Minds by Sonia Johnson