Ursula le Guin

This is from Le Guin's 1983 Commencement Speech at Mills College, via Kiita:

Machoman is afraid of our terms, which are not all rational, positive, competitive, etc. And so he has taught us to despise and deny them. In our society, women have lived, and have been despised for living, the whole side of life that includes and takes responsibility for helplessness, weakness, and illness, for the irrational and the irreparable, for all that is obscure, passive, uncontrolled, animal, unclean - the valley of the shadow, the deep, the depths of life. All that the Warrior denies and refuses is left to us and the men who share it with us and therefore, like us, can't play doctor, only nurse, can't be warriors, only civilians, can't be chiefs, only indians. Well so that is our country. The night side of our country. If there is a day side to it, high sierras, prairies of bright grass, we only know pioneers' tales about it, we haven't got there yet. We're never going to get there by imitating Machoman. We are only going to get there by going our own way, by living there, by living through the night in our own country.

What she says is strongly informed by Freudian thought, of course: the notion that women are lesser beings, not being in possession of a penis, with the corollary that men can easily be unmanned by associating with women's concerns, that main concern, of course, being the nurture of children.

I'm glad to see how feminism has brought motherhood into the light in new ways, and I can see how much easier it is for my daughters than it was for me to thrive as mothers, that they have reached the "high sierras, the bright grass," bringing their children with them.

Comments

[Kathleen McGraw]

Ursula K. Leguin is one of my heroes, too. Simone de Beauvoir wrote like that, in "The Second Sex"--describing what women were, how they saw themselves then. If women can be mothers these days without feeling "trapped"--which is how I sometimes still envision motherhood--Yay!

[Hattie]

Kathy: I'm so glad to hear from you. My e-mail seems to have lost your address, and I lost my address book! I was on the point of going up to leave a note at your place.
Anyway, I'm in town until Jan., when I'll be in the Bay Area for a few days.
As to the posting and your reply:
My daughters don't feel trapped, and they haven't suffered any career consequences as a result of having children.
I think femaleness is the real hindrance to getting to the top, which is why I'm so pro Hillary Clinton. Not because I think we all have to be world beaters, but an older woman in a position of power could really help improve our visibility. As it is, our concerns are not taken seriously. What we do is simply taken for granted, at best. You're too young to know what I'm talking about, of course!
On Le Guin:
When I was at Portland State, one of my favorite professors, Tony Wolk, was a Le Guin specialist who had team taught several classes with her, so I got some good insights into her work from him. I also heard Le Guin speak a couple of times. I always thought about Kroeber and that whole Berkeley thing that was still going strong when I was a freshman at Berkeley in '57. (my one and only disastrous student year there, but boy did I have fun!) I'm reading some travel journals and anthropology now, including a strong critique of American anthropology by Michel-Rolph Trouillot.

Hey, we can have a nice talk about this stuff!

[Jennifer Cascadia]

And herein lies her blindspot:

...."can't be chiefs, only indians."

For she could learn to watch out for the Indians more!

[Hattie]

Well, the mote in the eye and all that.

[gerry rosser]

I don't really need lessons about women and their value. My mom was widowed with 6 children when she was only 35, and kept us together, fed, housed, and educated.
To this day I am amazed.
Yay, women!

[Paul]

I'm glad to see this post on a favorite author.

The entire commencement speech makes for worthwhile reading. As a father, protector, nurturer, I feel spoken to.

May we all find our way safely through the darkness of Machoman's dysfunctional politics and reach those high Sierras.

[gerry rosser]

If you glance at my latest blog post, it's a bit of a tribute to the swell women I've "met" blogging. Even though I just discovered your web page, you were one of those I thought of.

The little videos are pretty nice, if you want to watch them.

[Rebel Girl]

Thanks for this.