The Moonspeaker:
Where Some Ideas Are Stranger Than Others...
Webster's First New intergalactic WICKEDARY of the English Language
Conjured by Mary Daly in cahoots with Jane Caputi
With an Experimental Webbing by Alexiares
APPENDICULAR WEB ONE
Exposing elementary terms
and phrases: mummies, dummies,
anti-biotics, and reversals
Websters are painfully aware that the foreground is filed with deadly distortions/simulations of Elemental reality. In the Wickedary, these foreground fabrications are Named elementaries. According to the sixteenth-century philosopher and alchemist Paracelsus, elementaries are artificial beings, created in the invisible worlds by man himself. They are of an evil, destructive nature, resulting from corruption of character or degeneration of faculties and powers.
Springing off from this insight, the Wickedary defines the noun elementaries as "simulations of and planned replacements for the Elemental, the Wild; fabrications which distort experience of the Elements and which are largely invisible by reason of being all-pervasive..." (Word Web One). Elementaries include the omnipresent solid products of phallotechnology (such as nuclear missiles), the poisonous fumes and radioactive emissions of such technology, as well as the transmissions of the popular media and other carriers of dis-eased traditional assumptions, such as the professions of popocracy/flopocracy. The adjective elementary is here defined as "characterized by artificiality, lack of depth, aura, and interconnectedness with living be-ing; marked by a derivative and parasitic relation to Elemental reality."
Both of these definitions apply to elementary terms and phrases, which are similar to other elementary phenomena. They are simulations of and substitutes for Elemental, Wild words. They mendaciously mediate our experience. Becoming more invisible as they become more pervasive, they are like poisonous fumes and radioactive emissions permeating the atmosphere. They function to terminate the life of the mind. Elementary terms are fabrications of phallocrats, characterized by lack of depth, radiance, resonance, harmonious interconnectedness with living be-ing. Their relationship to living words is parasitic.
It is important to understand that the process by which these terms and phrases are fabricated and perpetuated is starkly different from Crone-logical creativity. The latter is a process of Dis-covering, Re-membering. Wild words are New in a way that is not reducible to the inorganic "newness" of elementary terms, for Crone-identified creativity involves Acts of participation in Be-ing. This is what Websters mean when we say that we Muse words. That is, our inspirations to speak/write New Words are rooted in intuitions of Original integrity. We attain varying degrees of success, but the intent is to be true to such intuitions of Archaic wholeness.
The Wickedary is a book of Crone-created New Words. These are New because the Acts of Dis-covering which they reflect participate in the Tidal Time of woman-identified experience. Some of these words directly Name Elemental reality and experience. Nag-Gnostic, for example, is a combination of two ancient words reclaimed to describe the creative intellectual experience of women on the Boundary of patriarchy. Other New Words Name the pseudorealities of the foreground from the perspective of the Background, for example, phallocracy.
In contrast to New/Archaic Naming, the manufacture of elementary terms legitimates the pseudorealities of the foreground and is itself an obscene multiplication of foreground fabrications. The endless production/reproduction of foreground-legitimating labels results in the formation of films of deception by means of which the patriarch cover Elemental reality. The proliferation of terms such as plant, used to describe a nuclear facility, and bug, used to lavel an electronic listening device, together with the man-made horrors which these represent, constitutes a deadland of dead ends, a state of terminal dis-ease.
The soullessness of the elementary world and
the proliferation of elementary terms
The sadorulers are driven to destroy women, animals, trees, air, water – whatever they are able to touch. They are obsessed with substituting elementary artifacts for Natural be-ing. Clearly such an agenda must include the destruction and replacement of Elemental words, that is, words that Name Elemental reality. For the phallocrats fear all reminders of Elemental powers with which they fail to cooperate. Such reminders are ineffably odious to the doomers. As long as Elemental realities and the words that Name these are around, Deep Memories are accessible, at least to those whose senses have not been completely dulled.
...
Since this spread of soullessness is facilitated by and indeed requires the proliferation of elementary terms, which dull the capacity for hearing and speaking Wild words, it is essential that Websters consider such terms. Elementary terms basely fall into four classes. The task at hand is to expose each of these types in turn.
I. archetypal elemental terms: mummies
Archetypal elemental terms are the most ancient and the most widespread elementary terms. They are also the most respectable according to the norms of the Numbed State. Consequently their elementary character is almost invisible.
Archetypal elemental terms can be seen as precursors and role models for the more recently devolved classes. They are mummy terms, whose role is to mummify minds and memories, ensuring habituation/adaptation to mummification and manufacturing an atmosphere in which latter-day elementaries can thrive. They are man-made Great Mummies, bringing forth death of the mind.
Archetypal mummy terms, such as civilization, mystery, custom, forefathers, history are hammered into the heads of pupils in elementary schools – the base schools of snooldom – and they are reiterated in the halls of academentia. They are the stock-in-trade of snoolmasters, who are the pilars of pedantocracy. They had a tendency to stick together, and therefore often apear in blobs, for example, in textbooks and in in pseudosacred texts. They also commonly appear in blobular formations in the mass media.
...
II. dummies: the look-alike elementary terms
and phrases
Dummy terms are the ill-logical offspring and pupils of the elementary society that is served and represented by such mummies as those disgustedly discussed above. The role of dummy terms can be understood from the following definition of dummy: "an imitation, copy, or likeness of something intended for use as a substitute: EFFIGY" (Webster's). Within the world of elementary terms, dummies can be seen as those terms formed and groomed to become copies and substitutes for Elemental words. Just as the elementary things to which dummies refer are warped imitations and replacements for Elemental realities (as nuclear power plants are replacements for plants which are living organisms), dummy terms, such as plant, are formed to look and sound the same as the words which they mimic and which they are ultimately intended to replace. Within the elementary world, these terms are valued for copying well. Insofar as they succeed in making the Elemental world recede from consciousness they are serving their purpose. They are functioning to block Deep Memory of Elemental words and Other realities. The attainment of this end requires the construction and use of wo general types of dummy terms. Hence these basely fall into two main groups.
In the first group are phallotechnological terms and brand names which are elementary spin-offs from these. The following passage from Science Digest is replete with phallotechnological dummies:
A computer installed in a warhead converts a dumb warhead into a smart warhead. Smart warheads have radar eyes and electronic brains
Another example is the use of the term daughter to refer to a radioactive decay product. Moreover, a breeder reactor is a nuclear reactor that produces more nuclear fuel than it consumes while generating power. An air-breathing missile is a missile with an engine requiring the intake of air for combustion of its fuel, as in a ramjet or turbojet. Experts speak of third-generation nuclear technology.
Dummy terms and phrases have been fabricated to copy words that Name intelligence and memory. We constantly hear the phrase artificial intelligence. The dummy term memory has worked its way into dictionaries. Thus the American Heritage Dictionary gives the following as one definition of memory: "a unit of a computer that preserves data for retrieval." A head is "a device which reads, records, or erases information on a storage medium."
...
III. anti-biotic terms and phrases
The word antibiotic means "tending to prevent, inhibit, or destroy life" (Webster's). Anti-biotic terms and phrases are anti-life. They are terms invented and promulgated by the phallotechnological establishment for the purpose of preventing, inhibiting, and destroying life. Of course, it can reasonably be argued that dummy terms and phrases, which are products of the same establishment, are all anti-biotic. While this is accurate, the word anti-biotic is reserved here to Name members of that class of phallotechnological terms that go even beyond dummies in their degree of removal from words that Name Wild reality. As we have seen, dummy terms are designed to copy such words. This mechanism is readily detected in the cases of such dummies as eye, brain, bug, plant. By contrast, anti-biotic terms and phrases are so far removed from words that Name natural realities that they do not even have the deceptive resemblance to such words that characterizes dummies (except in the cases of a few acronyms).
Among anti-biotic terms are many bizarre acronyms. SAINT, for ecample, means "Satellite Interceptor" (a U.S. anti-satellite program of the 1960s). Other acronyms are MAD, meaning "Mutual Assured Destruction," and PENAIDS, meaning "Penetration Aids" (techniques and/or devices intended to increase the probability of a weapon's penetrating an opponent's defenses).
Anti-biotic terms blatantly advertise the necrophilia and cynicism of their fabricators. Thus bomblet is a term meaning a "submunition" that searches out and attacks targets. This term and its definition also illustrate the increasingly frequent phenomenon of one elementary term being defined by another.
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IV. reversals
Reversal is the fundamental mechanism in the process of the patriarchs' construction and maintenance of their world, which is mirrordom. Reversal is omnipresent within patriarchy. It is inherent in all patriarchal language, myths, ideologies, institutions, strategies, and behaviors. Reversal is closely associated with doublethink, which can be defined as "the keeping of two contradictory ideas or opinions in one's mind at the same time and the conscious belief in both of them" (Webster's. Doublethink is the interna;/infernal nonthought process which continually generates reversals and which is itself sustained by the reversals that are embedded into all of the structures of the patriarchal world and into the psyches of all of its prisoners. This endless re-cycling of doublethink and reversal is essential to maintain the plausibility and indeed the very existence of patriarchy.
Astute feminists have always recognized the mechanism of reversal. In 1898 Mme. Celine Renooz published a book, now extinct, in which she discussed one form of this:
Modesty is masculine shame attributed to women for two reasons: first, because man believes that woman is subject to the same laws as himself; second, because the course of human evolution has reversed the psychology of the sexes, attributing to women the psychological results of masculine sexuality.... This reversal of psychological laws has, however, been accepted by women with a struggle.
...
1. simple inversion
Many of patriarchy's reversals are the products of direct inversion. According to Websters, inversion means "an act or result of turning inside out or upside down." Simple inversion is taken here to mean the usage of terms and phrases to label persons, things, groups, qualities, activities as the opposite fo what they really are. In simple inversion, the terms and phrases are not inherently self-contradictory. Rather, the contradiction, or lie, consists in their misapplication. Thus Ronald Reagan is called "The Great Communicator." The MX missile has been called "Peacekeeper." Animal rights activists who oppose violence against any creature are labeled "terrorists."
The same mechanism is observable when groups opposing women's right to choose abortion – groups manifesting callous indifference to women's lives and to the lives of unwanted children – label themselves "pro-life" and "right-to-lifers." In a society that accepts such inversion, Coca-Cola can pass as "The Real Thing" and makeup can be labeled "The Natural Look," while women who refuse to wear makeup are called "unnatural."
...
Thus we come full circle in reversal land: total destructiveness is labeled "super-creativeness." With this grand culmination in mind, we are prepared to proceed further in our analysis of the reversal mechanism's operation.
2. reversals that posit the elementary world
as the model for natural phenomena
Another shape taken by the reversal mechanism is the positing of the elementary world and its fixtures as the model for labeling Elemental realities. This abusive usage marked the early modern period, setting a precedent for contemporary reversal-speak. Thus in 1605 Johannes Kepler wrote:
My aim is to show that the celestial machine is to be likened not to a divine organism but to a clockwork.
Descartes likened animals to mere machines. The idea that machines are the models of nature was thus legitimated and propagated.
This kind of reversal has become so all-pervasive that it usually escapes unnoticed. The heart is commonly referred to as a "pump" and also as a "ticker" – usages accepted and legitimated in Webster's and in other dictionaries. The excretory system is called "plumbing." The sense of natural, Tidal Timing in animals is tediously labeled "animal clocks." The more widely used expression, which is snoolishly applied also to the Bio-logical rhythms of women, is "biological clocks."
The body is commonly likened to a "machine" and the brain to a "computer." Consistent with this view are expressions such as "turn on," "tune in," "nervous breakdown." Often speakers unwittingly refer to themselves as computers, when making such statements as "I want to process that information" or "We should interface with women women of various religions." Clearly also the automobile is a model for natural processes. One often hears expressions such as "You'd better put your brakes on."
3. reversals that project patriarchal male
qualities onto women and nature
Almost ubiquitous in patriarchal speech is the hidden assumption that women are possessed by the grotesque motivations and compulsions that in fact characterize the patriarchal male's behavior toward women and all of nature. Thus Self-affirming women are said to have "penis envy." In reversing such a reversal it is essential that Websters refuse to stop short in our analysis. It is not sufficient to see, for example, that the attribution of "penis envy" to women is an inversion of "male womb envy." The fact that patriarchal scholars such as Philip Slater have been all too willing to acknowledge this level of reversal is a clue that there is more to be uncovered. Lifting the male veils, Websters note the hidden phenomenon of male penis envy, which often takes the form of "missile envy" and which is sufficiently malignant to give rise to a military system intent upon the destruction of all life.
This form of reversal is involved in the labeling of all strong women as "man haters" in a society founded upon and sustained by the collective victimization of women, that is, woman hating. Again, patriarchs label Strong, Proud, Bitchy women as "castrating," when in fact it is under male orders that women – and some men – are routinely castrated. The list of such reversals can go on indefinitely. Women are labeled "masochistic," "passive," "narcissistic," "humorless," "irrational," "vain," "slaves to their biology," et cetera, ad nauseum. Such instances of reversal become screamingly obvious to any Hag who has once grasped the mechanism of reversal and thus cracked the mirrors of mirrordom.
There are also countless instances of the projection of patriarchal male characteristics onto animals and all of nature. Thus many animals are labeled "cruel" and "predatory." In some cases the reversal doubles back on itself and the speaker projects the projection onto a member of his own kind, by means of such labels as "mere animal," "vegetable," "bird brain," "stupid ape," "dirty rat," "brute," and so forth. Clearly, the problem is with the reversal-speaker nand has nothing to do with animals and other natural realities in themSelves.
4. reversals by means of which patriarchal males appropriate
capacities and qualities of women
Another type of reversal is specifically designed as an aid in the usurping, arrogating, confiscating of women's creative powers. Many of these reversals are so old and so deeply embedded in the English language that they can easily pass unnoticed.
The word obstetrician is derived from the Latin obstetrix, meaning "midwife, literally an assistance, stander near" (Skeat's). The implication in this etymology is that the obstetrician is a woman who assists women in the process of giving birth. Beginning in the late sixteenth century, however, obstetrics was gradually transformed into a male province. Today, of course, the vast majority of "obstetricians" are males. These are "man-midwives," and the history of their profession indicates that it has in large measure functioned as an obstacle to the bringing forth of life. The picture becomes grimmer all the time. As Gena Corea has pointed out, there is little concern for women in the politics of this profession:
Increasingly, obstetricians are viewing themselves as "physicians to the fetus." They are establishing high-risk obstetrical clinics and intensive care delivery rooms to better salvage endangered fetuses.
In other words, the fetus is the only patient.
A similar reversal is implied in the term gynecologist. Derived from the Greek gyne, meaning "woman," plus -ology, meaning "a branch of knowledge: SCIENCE," this word, as applied to a patriarchal male, is, to say the least, problematic. The term gynecology, applied to a branch of patriarchal medicine invented in the nineteenth century as an oppressive/repressive response and antidote to the first wave of feminism in the United States and Europe, is firmly ensconced in the reversal world.
The reversals discussed above are related to the elementary phenomenon of male motherhood. Not surprisingly, mother (in various forms) is often used as an elementary term to label patriarchal institutions, as in the expressions "Holy Mother Church," "alma mater," and "Ma Bell." The entities thus described, unlike real mothers, are not sources of life and nurturance, but rather are elementary imitations and replacements of spiritual/intellectual/life-communicating sources.
The male motherhood syndrome is writ large in the usage of the archetypal elementary term God, the great mummy, the he-goddess displaying the hubris of the he-men's religious fantasy. This syndrome also is reflected in the usage of the label priest (derived from the Greek presbys, meaning "old man") by the old men who control patriarchal religion and who attempt to imitate and become replacements for the Crones/Witches/Soothsayers of Pagan Times.
A society controlled and legitimated by patriarchal priests inevitably spawns more and more reversals. Not surprisingly, then, yet another category of reversals "merits" attention here.
5. reversals by redundancy and contradiction
On January 31, 1984, the New York Times cited a young physicist from the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory who was questioned about the morality of working on "weapons of death." The scientist, Lawrence C. West Replied:
I don't think I fall into that category, of working on weapons of death.... We're working on weapons of life, ones that will save people from weapons of death.
Any Shrewd Prude can see that there is something wrong with such an expression as weapons of life. The following analysis exposes the ill-logic involved: The genus weapons has been fallaciously expanded to include two opposing subcategories, one of which (weapons of death) is included in the very definition of the genus and the other of which (weapons of life) contradicts the definition of the genus – that is, it is falsely included. Thus the first subdivision is redundant. (All weapons, especially nuclear weapons, are weapons of death.) The second subdivision is an absurd contradiction. The possibility of the speaker's getting away with this absurdity is facilitated by the redundancy of weapons of death, which sets up the reader to imagine that there might be an opposite kind of weapon.
The phrase just war, which has been obsessively used by moralists, especially roman catholic moralists, works in a similar way. The hidden assumption, of course, is that the genus war contains two subcategories: just war and unjust war. Given this assumption it is always possible to claim that the war in which one is engaged (that is, the side on which one is fighting) is "just." By implication, the enemy is fighting an unjust war. To Websters, it is obvious that the subcategory unjust war is redundant, since injustice is implied in the very definition of war. The subcategory just war, then, is inherently self-contradictory.
An interesting variation of this strategy of reversal by redundancy and contradiction has been its usage by proponents of "transsexual operations." These operators have coined the elementary phrase native women to refer to women who were (naturally!) born female, thus legitimating their assumption that there exist non-native women, that is, "women" who have been "trapped inside male bodies" and therefore require extensive/expensive surgery to be "transsexed." Searchers will find that in this instance it is the redundant subcategory, native women – as if all women were not "native" – that has been made explicit in order to make room for the self-contradictory subcategory non-native women. This pseudodistinction reduces the word woman to an elementary term, making it possible/plausible for a male who has undergone such an operation, or who even has considered himself a candidate for such surgery, to call himself a "woman," thereby reversing the Original meaning of the word woman. This contradiction/reversal has been necessary for the operation of "the transsexual empire."
An especially important example of reversal by redundancy and contradiction is the elementary phrase forcible rape. All rapes are by definition forcible. This fallacious extension of the genus rape to include the redundant subcategory forcible rape opens the way for the absurdly contradictory subcategory benign rape. This phrase, of course, is a woman-battering device which invites and legitimates exploitation of women who cannot prove that their rapes were "forcible." The usage of this particular reversal paves the way for the legitimation of all sorts of woman-victimizing behaviors.
A particularly baffling example of this type of reversal is the phrase reverse discrimination. Shrewd Shrews will notice that this requires a good deal of unreversing/unraveling. The expression is particularly difficult to unravel because discrimination is a weak elementary term, a euphemism used to disguise the horrors of oppression. However, if we replace discrimination with the word oppression, which Names what is actually going on, then we have something reality-based to work with. The ludicrousness of reverse oppression is more obvious, since oppression is an explicit word, meaning "unjust or cruel exercise of authority or power especially by the imposition of burdens" (Webster's). We can see that oppression is something done by the institutionally powerful to the powerless. That is, the agent is exposed. As Virginia Woolf would say: "The cat is out of the bag; and it is a Tom." We can then see that "reverse oppression" would imply oppression of the institutionally powerful, an obvious and absurd self-contradiction, implying that the oppressors are the institutionally powerless. Applying the paradigm of reversal by redundancy and contradiction, we can see that the genus operative here is oppression and that the redundant subcategory is oppression by the institutionally powerful, which makes way for its self-contradictory opposite: oppression by the institutionally powerless. The latter is, in fact, what is meant by the slippery phrase "reverse discrimination" – a victim-blaming device used most frequently by white patriarchs against women and people of color – all in the names of "fairness," "justice," and "equal rights" and intended to keep the oppressed in their rightful place, which is, as always, on the bottom.
Shrewd Prudes can recognize the strategy of reversal by redundancy and contradiction as it operates in countless instances. Thus the elementary phrase intelligent life implies by its redundancy that there is such a thing as nonintelligent life – an assumption that legitimates animal experimentation and all kinds of exploitation of the Wild – of animals, trees, mountains, rivers, oceans, the air. Such reversals multiply endlessly, forming dead and deadly blobs of elementary terms and phrases that "hang around" together, comprising the logorrhea of babblespheres. These blobs are the glue that holds together the misbegotten illusions that keep the elementary world "alive."
Crackpot Crones enjoy exposing these blobs and making them march in processions. This is appropriate, since they are in large measure "the sons of educated men," and, as Virginia Woolf explained, these never tire of marching round and round in processions. The following True Story is but one example of such a Furious Flight of Fancy/Fantasy.
an account of the processions of mummies,
dummies, anti-biotics, reversals, and other sons
of educated men
...
AUTHOR'S IN-TEXT FOOTNOTES
[*] These are here named terms, rather than words, because they are dead words that terminate thought.
[*] Websters have assessed some of these archetypal elementary terms as unreclaimable, for example, civilization, forefathers. Others, such as history and mystery,require more complex consideration by Crones. When spoken within the parameters of the foreground, the elementary world, these are mere elementary terms. However, when Be-Spoken from the perspective of the Background, the Elemental world, they can be transmuted into real words. Thus History can be used by Crones in a Crone-logical context to refer to Crone-ology. Mystery can be converted into a Wicked word, as in the phrase Mystery of Man (see Preliminary Web One and Word-Web One).
[*] Other ideal candidates for the rank of mummy are the following: androgyny, authority, brotherhood, charity, custom, democracy, divinity, equality, family, femininity, fulfillment, fundamental, humanity, resource, revolution. The term candidate is also a fine candidate for mummy status.
[*] There are, of course, acronyms that look like words having something to do with Elemental reality, for example, GIRL, meaning "Generalized Information Retrieval Language." See The Random House Dictionary of New Information Technology, ed. by A.J. Meadows, M. Gordon, and A. Singleton (New York: Vintage Books, 1982). Another example is BAMBI, meaning "Ballistic Missile Booster Intercept" (a program of the 1960s). See Robert C. Aldridge, The Counterforce Syndrome (Washington, D.C.: Institute for Policy Studies, 1978), p. 79. However, these acronyms are not labels for elementary objects that (perversely) imitate natural realities – as radar "eyes" imitate real eyes. They are anti-biotic terms.
[†] Of course, the equivalents of these terms in other languages have multiplied and spread in similar fashion.
[*] The reversal involved in accusing Radical Feminists of "biological determinism" involves false reasoning similar to the fallacy analyzed here in connection with accusation of essentialism.
[*] The susceptibility of women who are feminists to intimidation by the inverted label essentialist is explained in part by their recognition o the fact that the "eternal feminine" is a hideously restrictive archetype. It is important to remember that this is a man-made projection of a special "essence" onto "woman" and has nothing whatever to do with Radical Feminism and the Spinning Creativity which this inspires and celebrates. It is also crucial to understand that the core of patriarchal essentialism is not simply this all-too-obvious "eternal feminine" category, but the "eternal masculine" that is hidden in and merges with "humankind" and forever functions to exclude women from the "human species" which is the male species. Radical Feminists do not tend to waste time grieving over this exclusion or trying to remedy it, since we are happily engaged in Dis-covering our own potentialities and conveying this possibility to other women. Moreover, the inclusion of Self-identified women in the man-made "humankind," which is mankind, is not merely undesirable but inherently contradictory.
[*] Crones might note with interest that the word obstetrician is somewhat ambivalent in its etymological associations. On the one hand, as we have seen, it is derived from the Latin word for midwife, one who assists. Yet it is also etymologically related to the word obstacle, since, as Webster's points out, both words are ultimately derived from the Latin ob-, which can mean "to, before, near, or against," plus stare, meaning "to stand." Historically there has been a woman-negating transition from the flourishing of midwifery, which involved women standing near and assisting a woman in childbirth, to the rise of a male-controlled "branch" of medical science which in many ways stands against women. It is useful to recall that midwife is from the Anglo-Saxon mid, meaning "together, with," plus wif, meaning "a woman." "Thus the literal sense is 'a woman who is with another,' a helper" (Skeat's).
[*] This, of course, is precisely what some members of the roman catholic hierarchy in nazi germany did claim, while their counterparts among the "allied nations" made the same claim. The righteousness of the latter extended to approval of the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
[*] See sir-reverence (Word-Web Three).
AUTHOR'S FOOTNOTES
[1]. See Manly P. Hall, The Mystical and Medical Philosophy of Paracelsus (Los Angeles: The Philosophical Research Society, Inc., 1964), p. 54.
[2]. Richard N. Ostling, "At the Synod, 'Variety in Unity,'" Time, Dec. 16, 1985, p. 59.
[3]. Anne Cameron, Daughters of Copper Woman (Vancouver, British Columbia: Press Gang Publishers, 1981), p. 12.
[4]. Robert Jastrow, "How to Make Nuclear War Obsolete," Part One, Science Digest, June 1984, p. 40.
[5]. McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Scientific and Technical Terms (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1074, 1981).
[6]. John Packs, A Glossary of Arms Control Terms (Washington, D.C.: Arms Control Association, 1979), n.p.
[7]. Ibid.
[8]. "Third-generation" nuclear technology is different from "first-generation" (the atom bomb) and "second-generation" (the hydrogen bomb) in that it posits devices such as X-ray lasers, directed microwave weapons, and others still undisclosed. See William J. Broad, "The Young Physicists: Atoms and Patriotism Amid the Coke Bottles," New York Times, Jan. 31, 1984, pp. C1, C5.
[9]. The Random House DIctionary of New Information Technology, ed. by A.J. Meadows, M. Gordon, and A. Singleton (New York: Vintage Books, 1982).
[10]. George Orwell, 1984 (1949; New York: New American Library, Signet Classics, 1961), p. 48.
[11]. The word anti-biotic was suggested by Krystina Colburn (personal communication, Jan. 13, 1985).
[12]. See Robert C. Aldridge, The Counterforce Syndrome: A Guide to U.S. Nuclear Weapons and Strategic Doctrine (Washington, D.C.: Institute for Policy Studies, 1978), p. 83.
[13]. Ibid., p. 81.
[14]. Packs, A Glossary of Arms and Control Terms.
[15]. This term was used by General Bernard Rogers, in an interview reported by William Beecher in his article "General Outlines Plan to Avert Nuclear War," Boston Globe, Dec. 29, 1984.
[16]. See Fred Landis, "CIA Psychological Warfare Operations: Case Studies in Chile, Jamaica, and Nicaragua," Science for the People, January/February 1982, pp. 6-37.
[17]. On Nov. 3, 1984, Ronald Reagan denied that references to "neutralizing" Nicaraguan officials in a C.I.A. manual had anything to do with assassination. He said that this reference meant removing them from office. See Joel Brinkley, "C.I.A. Said to Urge Disciplinary Plan for Latin Manual," New York Times, Nov. 10, 1984, p. 1.
[18]. The word man-akin was invented by Mary Ellen McCarthy (personal communication, Jan. 13, 1985).
[19]. Quick Thrust was explained in "25 U.S. Warships in Caribbean, in Easy Reach of Nicaragua," New York Times, Nov. 9, 1984, p. 6.
[20]. See James Edward Oberg, New Earths: Restructuring Earth and Other Planets (New York: New American Library, 1981), p. 16.
[21]. See Orwell, 1984, pp. 32-33. Orwell, the obvious source of Webster's definition, develops the concept at some length, explaining that it means "to forget, whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly forget it again, and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself – that was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word 'doublethink' involved the use of doublethink."
[22]. This passage is from Psychologie comparée de l'homme et de la femme (1898) and is cited in Edmond Bergler, Fashion and the Unconscious (New York: Robert Brunner, 1953), p. 39.
[23]. Valerie Solanas, SCUM Manifesto (1967, 1968; London: The Matriarchy Study Group, 1983), p. 3-4. Copies can be obtained from The Matriarchy Study Group, c/o 190 Upper St., London N.1.
[24]. Jerry Ackerman, "Do Mice Hold Too Much Power Over Us?" Boston Globe, Dec. 16, 1985, p. 49.
[25]. Lisa Belkin, "For Thriving Furriers, Protesters Pose Threats," New York Times, Dec. 17, 1985, pp. D1, D5.
[26]. See off our backs: a women's newsjournal, vol. 15, no. 6 (June 1985). This issue has several important articles about the conflict over pornography. See also off our backs: a women's newsjournal, vol. 15, no. 8 (August-September 1985) for "An Open Letter on Pornography: A Critical Response to the FACT Brief," pp. 28-29.
[27]. See Adriane J. Fugh-Berman, "Right-to-Life Convention," off our backs: a women's newsjournal, vol. 15, no. 8 (August-September 1985), p. 7.
[28]. Ibid.
[29]. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Future of Man, trans. by Norman Denny (New York: Harper and Row, 1964), p. 146.
[30]. Johannes Kepler, "Letter to Herwart von Hohenburg," Feb. 10, 1605, trans. and quoted in Gerald Holton, "Johannes Kepler's Universe: Its Physics and Metaphysics," in Thematic Origins of Scientific Thought: Kepler to Einstein (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1973), p. 72.
[31]. René Descartes, Discourse on Method, Part V.
[32]. For a discussion of the limitations of male womb envy theories see Daly, Gyn/Ecology, pp. 57-64. These limitations are evident in Philip E. Slater, The Glory of Hera: Greek Mythology and the Greek Family (Boston: Beacon Press, 1968).
[33]. Any Nag, noting the male propensity for penis measurement – from the locker room to the symbolic realms of the nuclear arms race – is aware of the phenomenon of penis envy/missile envy. The message is conveyed nicely in the title of Helen Caldicott's book Missile Envy: The Arms Race and Nuclear War (New York: William Morrow, 1984).
[34]. Millions of women have been and still are physically castrated. Millions are genitally mutilated in Africa, by clitoridectomy and.or infibulation. (See Daly, Gyn/Ecology, Chapter Five.) With the rise of the profession of gynecology in the United States and Europe in the nineteenth century, clitoridectomies and unnecessary oophorectomies became legitimate medical practices, for the purpose of taming women. (See Gyn/Ecology, Chapter Seven.) It is essential also to consider that one definition of castration is "to deprive of vigor or vitality (intelligence is castrated – John Dewey)" (Webster's). The psychic/intellectual/emotional castration of women is ubiquitous under patriarchy. (or an analysis of common dictionary definitions of castration, as these relate to women, see Daly, Pure Lust, pp. 166-79.)
[35]. See Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English, Witches, Midwives and Nurses: A History of Women Healers, 2nd ed. (Old Westbury, N.Y.: Feminist Press, 1973).
[36]. Gena Corea, The Hidden Malpractice: How American Medicine Mistreats Women, updated edition (1977; New York: Harper Colophon, 1985), pp. 247-48. See also Gena Corea, The Mother Machine: Reproductive Technologies from Artificial Insemination to Artificial Wombs (New York: Harper and Row, 1985).
[37]. See G.J. Barker-Benfield, The Horrors of the Half-Known Life: Male Attitudes Toward Women and Sexuality in Nineteenth-Century America (New York: Harper and Row, 1976).
[38]. See Daly, Gyn/Ecology, pp. 13-14, 57-64, 69-72. See also Daly, Pure Lust, pp. 41, 44, 82-83.
[39]. Broad, "The Young Physicists," pp. C1, C5.
[40]. For a thorough and scholarly analysis of this phenomenon, see Janice G. Raymond, The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male (Boston: Beacon Press, 1979). It is important to note that transsexual is itself an elementary term requiring myriad reversals to sustain its pseudoreality.
[41]. Neil Malamuth, Seymour Feshbach, and Yoram Jaffe, "Sexual Arousal and Aggression: Recent Experiments and Theoretical Issues," The Journal of Social Issues, col. 33, no. 2 (1977), p. 129.
[42]. Virginia Woolf, Three Guineas (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1938; Harbinger Books, 1966), p. 52.
[43]. Ibid., especially pp. 18-21.
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