Last night Kathie Sarachild Amatnik called to say she was scanning a copy of my Liturgy for the Burial of Traditional Womanhood and emailing me a copy. Kathie read the Eulogy at Arlington Cemetery over the effigy Shulie Firestone and I had made, while I read the Liturgy on the Capitol steps at the end of the Jeanette Rankin Brigade, January 15, 1968. I am very grateful to her and the Redstockings Archive.
Here is the text. I'm resisting the urge to edit it. For years I told people it was a Litany for the Burial of Martyred Motherhood.
But that's obviously not what I typed as the title to hand out.
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LITURGY FOR THE BURIAL OF TRADITIONAL WOMANHOOD
Chorus:
Oh women of Chalcis and Argos
Of Manhattan and Chicago
For three thousand years of western wars
In submission
We have sinned.
Bemoaning death
HYPOCRISY (response)
Affirming life
COMPLICITY (response)
Where have we stood to turn the tide
Of civilization
OF PACIFICATION(response)
Of civilizing ourselves
OUR MEN (response)
By war.
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I
Oh women
YOUNG WOMEN (response)
Civilized women, we have sinned.
We have sinned to the trill of
martial trumpets
And patriotic hymns
For the thrill of pride and power
And to glory in lusty men
We cheered and waved and goaded
Our men to murder and maim
For heroic virility in our eyes.
Chorus:
Oh women from forests to savannahs
From tribes to urban centers
For ten thousand years of human wars
In submission we have sinned
Bemoaning death
HYPOCRISY (response)
Affirming life
COMPLICITY (response)
Where have we stood to turn the tide
Of civilization
OF PACIFICATION (response)
Of civilizing ourselves
OUR MEN (response)
By war.
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| Liturgy for Burial of Traditional Womanhood read to women of Jeanette Rankin Brigade Jan 15, 1968, Capitol Steps, Washington, D. C. |
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II
Oh women
WIVES AND MOTHERS (response)
Civilized women, we have sinned.
Since the first expulsion from Eden
Since the sex were split asunder
And we lay with belly buldging
Licking our sleek skin and learning
That Adam would forage still further
And to bring back more than he needed
would kill
As long as we kept the immortality
Of our shared species to ourselves.
Primary division of labor
Destruction of our intellect and courage
Fair exchange for denying gentleness to men
Preening, posing, and proding
Adam to forage still further
To bring us furs, kelvinators, and empires
With the bribe we might let him back
Into our warmth and with him share
The glories of our births.
Women, widowed by sin
Simpering and spineless now
The blame is ours if they heed only
The wit and power of generals' glory
And seek warmth in the comradeship of me
Chorus:
Women of Cleveland and Baltimore
Of Philadelphia and Newark
How many more years of human wars
In submission shall we sin
Bemoaning death
HYPOCRISY (response
Affirming life
COMPLICITY (response)
When shall we stand to turn the tide
Of civilization
OF PACIFICATION (response)
Of civilizing ourselves
OUR MEN
By war.
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III
Oh Women
WOMEN TODAY (response)
Civilized women, we sin.
Wiser than virgins awed by important men
Hearts stronger than ambitious wives
Who use men and children to gain their ends.
Women unabashed of feelings
Loving peace
And lively bodies
More than efficiency
And exigencies
Of war.
We also
We have sinned.
Acquiescing to an order
That indulges peaceful pleas
And writes them off as female logic
Saying peace is womanly
We sin with brimming hearts conceding
Our arguments are filled with feeling
And feeling must give way to legalese.
We sinned today
If we indulge our hearts
And leave thought and action to men.
We sin tomorrow
If cool computators act out their part
Blamelessly, if we cannot find our minds
and courage
To force the rediscovery of heart.
---Peggy Dobbins
Radical Women's Group
185 East Third Street
New York, NY, 10009
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