Part 2: Systems In and Out
by
Lizzard Amazon
published in the zine Slut Utopia in 1993
The Slut Manifesto, Part 1: Ranting
The Slut Manifesto, Part 2: Systems In and Out
The Slut Manifesto, Part 3: What To Do
The first part of the Slut Manifesto established that all of us, wheter we like it or not, are pussy. We think that
we're free, like free will, freedom, independence; but when we fuck somebody we're really giving "ourselves" away
for free. Women deal with this in a lot of different ways but essentially I think there are two responses. One is to
try to work within this sexual market system and another is to try to remove yourself from the system.
In the System
Women that get
married, women who have
boyfriends and
serial monogamy relationships, and
women
who directly sell their pussy for money, are all acting to get the most value possible from their status as a
commodity.
These are all good ways of managing the value of your pussy, although being a professional pussy seller is the most
risky option, because it is more likely that men will be hostile to you. Because you directly acknowledge your
commodity status you are "cheapened" and more likely to be raped, and your rapists or even murderers will get away
with it. This is so disgusting and complicated that I could rant about it for pages and pages. I'll save it for
later. So let's go on to. . .
Women who promise a man that they won't fuck anybody but him are exchanging the
ownership of their pussies for relationship security- a sense of being loved and having someone to love, a primary
attachment object for most of their intense emotions- and for heterosexual privilege. They must convince everyone
that their pussy is not "cheap"; it's not for just anyone. They bestow its valueableness on the (one at a time) man
of their choice like queens conferring a favor.
In fact, even without getting a Relationship Contract, women with
a "good reputation" can easily get a man to fuck them (because it's assumed that men will want to fuck any available
pussy) and then expect the man to treat them AS IF THERE WERE SUCH A CONTRACT. After they have fucked, than the good
reputation, high value pussy woman can assume that the man will treat her with respect, he will not fuck anyone
else, and he'll maintain the highest standards of truthfulness- and also share his privileged status with her, i.e.
she gets to be introduced into his public and private social kinship circles as His Girlfriend, or she gets to begin
sharing his material wealth and goods.
If he doesn't do these things, then the high value pussy woman has
society's permission to be outraged and to tell everyone possible that the man has treated her badly. She is now
justified in most people's eyes, in wreaking revenge upon the man in any way available to her. She can slap him, hit
him, enact public melodrama, slash his tires, sleep with his best friend, destroy his possessions, and slander his
character.
Usually the high status pussy woman can do some of these things, but she runs the risk of retaliation or of being
dismissed as a Crazy Bitch. In any case, most women don't do anything nearly so active- they turn all hostility in
towards themselves and threaten suicide, get self-destructive or depressed, and blame the man for all their
troubles. Being self-destructive, after all, shows everyone you're a good girl who has been destroyed by this evil
bastard boyfriend!
Of course, this implied or explicit Relationship Contract works both ways- once they've
fucked, if the man suspects that the woman has given her pussy away to somebody else he can do all the above things,
plus he can beat her up, intimidate her, convince her she's now a low status cheap pussy woman, and he can easily
gain even more ownership and control over her now in an ever deepening spiral. Or, he can do all these things as
revenge and refuse to have anything else to do with her, and everyone will feel that he's perfectly justified. He
can do all the evil shit I mentioned above, including murder, and GET AWAY WITH IT. Lest you think I am
exaggerating, take a look on the death statistics for women- the leading cause of non-health related death is being
murdered by husband or boyfriend. Men are almost always assumed to be justified in their jealousy, because of
women's natural tendency toward badness, while jealous women, even if they are 100% Pure High Status Pussy, can be
easily dismissed as Crazy Bitches.
Out of the System
Women who declare themselves
lesbians and
women who never fuck anybody are trying to
remove themselves from the sexual market system.
By "becoming a lesbian" a woman is declaring that she's not
available to men anymore as a pussy. She only gives her pussy to women. Everything is supposed to become magically
different from that instant when it is decided not to fuck men ever (or ever again).
This is the crucial
difference between women who call themselves bi and women who call themselves dykes or lesbians. Behavior doesn't
matter for anything. If you say you're bi, then men will still treat you like pussy, i.e., you are still available
to them. If you say you're lesbian then a significant percentage of men will just leave you alone, because they
consider you out of the market, unavailable. They might think of you as competition, even- a fellow consumer of
pussy.
It is assumed that all women are of equal status- equal "oppressed" status. This assumption is obviously
untrue as women may all be Pussy but they certainly come from different economic backgrounds and racial/ethnic
backgrounds. They have different levels of perceived attractiveness. Age is also an important factor to keep in
mind. This can have a big influence on what kind of pussy the world thinks you are, as well as what your options are
in life, whether you even have much of a choice to be "in" or "out" of the system. There is another big
essentializing trip which says that because you're a lesbian and outside the system, you aren't going to be an
asshole to your lover, like men and women frequently are to each other. Since ostensibly neither of you own the
other, there is supposedly no "power relationship" and so no jealous rages about pussy ownership. You're outside the
system, since you're lesbians, there isno danger you will "act like a man" and fuck around, since women are
supposed to be more naturally monogamous, and there's no danger you'll fuck a man, either, since then you'd a "a
bisexual" and Not a lesbian.
This kind of thinking can have hideous consquences; think of the power of these
assumptions in safe sex education!
Unfortunately the above assumptions are just not true. People of all
categories are pretty much the same. In practice, either it's assumed that one woman in a couple will act "more
masculine" or both women are making the same assumptions about each other. Very butch dykes that act like they're
Not Pussy, start to act like men and compete for the femme dyke pussy- they commodify their sisters by pretending
they aren't a commodity themselves. I have experienced this directly working as a stripper in lesbian bars, as well
as in relationships. The butches have to guard their Non-Pussy status carefully by not letting anyone know that they
like to get fucked or that they are attracted to other butches. Androgynous or "cult of natural wimminhood" lesbians
are just as bad if not worse. These relationships have the worst "dyke drama" problems because the validity, the
meaning, the survival of the relationship completely revolves around both women faithfully pledging their pussies to
each other. The least suspicion of one woman acting femme or butch or flirtatious or holding back information about
private thoughts, is grounds for a jealous fight over what exactly she is doing or thinking of doing or might do
someday with her pussy!
And to top this all off, no matter how much a lesbian might be firmly committed to Not
being Pussy within her own lesbian community, in the eyes of many men, she will ALWAYS be pussy. We've all heard men
who are convinced that lesbians wouldn't be lesbians if they'd been fucked by HIS awesome rod of power. They just
haven't had the right one yet! says Dickhead Bubba. And men that rape women sure don't stop to check if you're a
lesbian first. Lots of more law-abiding men completely infuriate lesbians by not respecting their declaration of
identity in other ways- for example by trying to seduce them, repeatedly. Because of their inaccessiblity, lesbians
are percieved as High Status Pussy- what man wouldn't brag about fucking a lesbian? What better proof of his
manliness, and for counterculture boys, what better proof that you're a Good Man, a feminist, than the fact that a
lesbian accepted your evil penis? It's like a trip to feminist mecca or being blessed by the lesbian pope.
There
is also the fact that no matter how lesbian you are, you can always change your mind. You can say till you're blue
in the face that you were born a lesbian, and that it is some sort of hormonal brain chemistry or genetic thing
determining your sexual orientation, but you've still got the pussy and you can still decide to fuck a man.
Personal Decisions
Now personally I call myself a dyke or lesbian, I flaunt my dykehood to the world, and
accept the lowered status that I get from it in this culture. But I fuck men and have emotional attachments to lots
of men as well as to women and so by anybody's definition, I'm really bi. I'm not trying to hide that particularly
and I have gotten lots of shit from lesbians because of it. But by declaring myself lesbian, at least some stupid
men will leave me alone, thinking of me as unavailable. Men are forced by their own stereotypes to think of me
differently. Women that are vaguely dissatisfied with being nominally bi or "bi curious" yet are in a relationship
with a man, will have me as a visible
queer girl to talk with. Saying I'm queer or a dyke just carried a hell of a
lot more social meaning to people right away than saying I"m bi and then explaining my whole philosophy of life,
gender and the universe. Saying that I'm a
slut, on top of that, is usually very challenging to people who think of
slut as a negative term. They just can't figure it out. They either decide right away that I'm stupid or they ask me
lots of questions and their world view is shaken somewhat which is generally a Good Thing.
Still, I realize that
in some ways, my doing this just further undermines the definition of lesbian, since people will know I call myself
a dyke and yet they will figure out eventually that I fuck men. They might assume all women who call themselves
lesbians are that way. Still, I would rather explain I"m a slut and proud to someone, than explain how I'm a
bi-dyke, it's just more convenient- sorry.
*note: 3 years later I have decided since my entire life
has been evenly divided between attraction to/involvement with men and women--- I can't escape calling myself -
smack on the middle of the fence - bisexual. I am also now married and monogamous. Go figure.
Out Again
Back to value and the market system. The woman who doesn't fuck anybody, who is virgin or celibate, is not going to
have her boundaries respected any more than the lesbian. As the Ultimate high value pussy woman she will be hotly
pursued by more men than anyone. In fact this is so true that many people assume that a celibate is not sincerely
committed to being celibate. They are percieved to be "holding out" for the best man around, trying to make the
competition more intense. Worse, the longer they insist on remaining celibate, the more they will be accused of
being deliberately cruel, unfeeling, unnatural, unwomanly, probably a dyke anyway, by the men who declare their love
and promise anything and work terribly hard to get the woman's prized unavailable pussy. She might, if she's
particularly unlucky, turn into an Ice Queen or a Bitch Who Thinks Her Pussy's Made of Gold. In which case why the
man is practically justified in raping her! Or so the awful evil of gossip goes.
It's not just men that keep
all these shitty ideas going- women's romance novels are fucking full of them, these celibate virgin women who are
so fiery and powerful and determined and of course beautiful, and finally the man pretty much forces them into a
sexually compromised situation, and they discover, swooning and with bodice ripped, that they like it, becoming so
happy and fulfilled with the penis of the man they used to hate, that the novel ends.
Stuck
My point is, or was, that there's not really any way "out" of the market system. We are stuck.
So, we're back to where we were at the end of The Slut Manifesto Part 1. If all the above is even partly true, what
hope is there? What can we do?
Is there any way to be a free pussy in the best sense of the word "free"? Can we
have a Pussy Revolution? The Revolting Pussies? The RPA; Revolting Pussy Army? Labia Liberation? At least I got some
good slogans and acronyms. . .
And again, I get to pretty much the same place. The only thing to do is talk
about these ideas a lot and be as conscious as possible of them, and try to build communities where you're speaking
the same language about sex and gender and fucking and relationships. Or at least, a community where things are
assumed to be flexible, defined case by case, and problematic.
Because no matter what one person theoretically
proves or decides or believes, all this stuff is controlled by what meaning people give it in a community or larger
social context. You have to start with small communities of shared meaning and go from there. Unless you have a
fuckload of people and machine guns and stuff to start your own small country and be its tyrant. 8-)
***Important Disclaimer!*** I'm not trying to say that he or homo relationships can't work. I know people have OK
relationships and are happy- I'm not trying to generalize that far. I'm not trying to threaten anyone's precious
lesbian identity, either! All you earthmother granola crunching peace loving lesbian wimmin named things like Nuance
Moonglowdaughter, if anyone like that would possibly read this zine all the way through to this page, I want to say,
I'm glad you exist as long as you don't burn me or my zines, I wish you had your own space that nobody violates, I
hope your relationships work out fine, and all that. And, to bi women who are very committed to changing the meaning
people attribute to "bi", more power to you, I might change my mind on calling myself bi in the future. To men
reading this: try glean whatever grain of truth you can from this, because it might be valuable to you, and don't
waste your time getting your back up or accusing me of reverse sexism. Just feel lucky you have the opportunity to
see a bit of my mind on these issues and don't send me hate mail, or I will curse you forever.
-----------------> Onward to The Slut Manifesto, Part 3: What to Do