On Sunday 20 July 1997, Susan Marie wrote:
>
> Equality, in the social sense, has never meant erasing differences.
> In Mattapoisett, everyone had the same opportunities, regardless of
> how different they were from each other.
>
Susan, that's only your opinion. You might like to consider the large body
of feminist literature struggling with equality and/or difference. You
might like to consider the way feminist discourse has been appropriated by
the mainstream so that of course, e.g. women can have equal access to
employment as long as we flatten out difference by equating pregnancy with
sickness and therefore employment rights don't have to deal with pesky
things like women having wombs.
In Mattapoisett, there has been a huge - not to say violent - erasure of
difference as women can no longer give birth. And I think if you read
WOTET closely, you will note that there is _no_ discussion of contraception
so I think you can infer that something fairly drastic has been done to
reproductive organs. And what about race? Mattapoisett's answer to race
is to divorce cultural identity from racial heritage and to make a
conscious decision to reproduce more mixed race babies. Erasure of
difference by the back door?
I completely applaud Piercy's attempts to portray a society that gives
equal opportunities to everybody, but I think that some of the strategies
she depicts for achieving this are questionable. And I really think you
need to think again about your statement - Equality in the social sense has
never meant erasing difference -. Never is a long time - what is the
history of the discourse of equality? And what difference can be perceived
in the discourses depending on who is creating them - white middle class
women, white working class women, black working class women, black middle
class women and so on?
Joan Haran
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