When I was 16 34 years ago. My high school decide to get modern and give us all a battery of tests personality test interest test IQ test and then a couple of weeks later each of us had an interview with the one and only guidance counselor Amana 50 or so who was a former wrestler and a coach wrestling and other sports without a doubt. Mr. Boyd was the most popular teacher in our high school all the girls adore him. They loved his sweet smile is gentle ways even his totally bald head. The boys loved him too. He was a good Joe. And this is very important. I love him. I took everything he said very seriously. Mr. Boyd had a true solicitude for all of us and we all knew it. In our 5-minute conference. He revealed himself to be deeply concerned about me. In the first place. My interest test had revealed that I was interested in absolutely everything. He gave me a little pamphlet to read on the dangers of having a range of interests. That was too wide. But what concern him even more was my score on the intelligence test, he gave me another little pamphlet on the dangers faced by persons who learn to easily. All of that took up about one minute of the five minute conference the other four minutes. Mr. Boyd devoted to a kindly and sympathetic lecture on my major handicap. I'm sure I don't need to tell you what that was. I was too smart. Boys, and he smiled at me with that big affectionate understanding grin boys don't like girls who are too smart. I should be going out with boys. It was a small high school and he knew what everybody in that small town. Did he knew I never had dates. Even if I knew the answer in class and nobody else did mr. Boyd said I should not raise my hand. You know what? I mean? Mr. Boyd said just keep it to yourself. If I look only at the manner in which it was done, I suppose I must say that that was one of the kindly rapes in my life. Most of us interpret Freud's much too often quoted dictum biology is Destiny as a statement that women will never have the opportunity and energy to create artistically that men have because we are destined to be mother's motherhood is the prime reason why women have not been and never will be as intellectually and artistically creative as men. And indeed being a mother certainly requires enormous Creative Energy that could otherwise go into artistic or scientific or other creative Pursuits. I would like to remark here that a I have found that motherhood is itself a creative challenge of the very highest order. And be in my own life motherhood became a major curtailment of my own artistic life only after I had to become the sole support of two children in a world where one I was paid so much less than my male colleagues. So I worked at least it's hard and my job is they did and to all of the men with whom I had and have to compete have wives at home to raise the children and run the house. It hasn't been motherhood that has been the obstacle but the general situation of women who must do two jobs a male married Professor can spend his evenings weekends quarter breaks doing his own writing, but you all know how I spend mine, don't you? At the end of each quarter. I spend most of my brake getting all the chores done that where I married my wife would have done. And because I am paid so much less than the male Professor. I must teach night school and summer school to make ends meet while a man salary gives him time. I didn't go off into this digression to express resentment over the inequities between men and women in the job world. I merely wish to emphasize that I do not believe that it is mother would itself which is the major obstacle to women's creativity. What is the one thing that we know biology is Destiny means as applied to human females. It means of course that human females alone of all animal species can be raped. Here, I would like to quote at length from A Fine book written by a male Canadian biologist and Jay Barrel. The book is called sex and the nature of things published in 1953. His book explains in terms that somebody like making understand how and it's a very beautifully written book by the way, his book explains how we're having two Sexes is giving us variety made individuality possible culminating as we humans see it. Anyway, dating in The Marvelous piece of work. That is man and he saves his most important point. Is most important point? For the very end of his book. What is the most concerned about? Of all the results of the evolutionary processes. What is he most concerned about? Let me read you the last page and 1/2 of his book. There is a distinctive human trait. Which is disturbing. And is an accidental consequence of another? During the final skeletal adjustment that had to be made in order that we should walk and run upright and well certain changes came about and hips leg bones and muscles which set us apart from other primates. The consequence was a change in the position assumed for mating from the almost Universal rear approached the sexual Union front to front this may not seem important enough to emphasize but it has introduced something new and unexpected. For the first time in fifty or a hundred million years of mammalian history. The mail has become able to inflict his will upon a female whether she shows willingness or not. In all of the mammalian world, except the human the female controls the sexual situation a male can mate with her when she is good and ready and not at any other time masculine and patience is kept in its place and in the case of birds, the male has more to do than wait then in most cases for stimulate the female with his song and dance man alone in all the living Kingdom except for a certain spider so far as I can tell is capable of rape. And it is more than an occasional crime of our own civilization. The control of the sexual decision has passed ostensibly from the female to the male and much of the subordinate position of women has been the result of it. Amount of North American Indians Australian Aborigines various tribes in Africa and Indian solitary unprotected women are or until recently were abused on site. and out of this General situation out of this General situation Apparently I was General situation many of the curbs on women's freedom and occupation apparently have risen. Institutions like the purdah of India and Persia are primarily protective while child marriage common in India in Aboriginal Australia, which sanctions the physical injury of small girls. Why grown men is a social exploitation of a human male prerogative. So here we stand free of the old restraints influenced by hormones, but not controlled by them free from the bonds of a breeding season conscious of sight Above All Else. Using the symbolic processes our minds have developed to reach out and master the external world. Yet our New Freedom which in terms of evolutionary time is no older than yesterday brings disadvantage with it for so far. We have failed to agree about the shape that Human Relationships should take Get out of sex cells came Evolution from sex hormones came the sexist and a certain Mutual bondage from milk came maternity and the concern of Parenthood in general climbing a tree brought color a hand and a mind and something of a voice and on descending we find ourselves endowed with a mixture of unwanted Heritage and the beginnings of spiritual Grace we start with life and sex and we are left with love and a mind with an eye for beauty where we go from here. I do not know. Back to my last moving Pros here. I will have some things to say about his moving final sentences short. I would like to refer to his statement that in almost all cultures solitary unprotected women are or until recently were abused on sight and out of this General situation many of the curbs on women's freedom and occupations apparently have arisen. For those of you who feared I might have forgotten my main title relax. Here it comes. What is a bed of finer occupation for a woman whose male owner wants to make sure she is safe indoors protected from other males. What is a better occupation than a tea party? When Virginia Woolf road that a writer should not have to worry about tea parties and drain. She was speaking of course of the routines and which women are expected to spend their days and their creative energies and all these daily chores and minor emergencies are supposed to fall in our Province leaving the mail creative mind free of constant distractions. But does Virginia Woolf really address the fundamental question of why we were relegated to tea parties and drains in the first place. I believe that we missed that fundamental reason if we say that are major curtailment is either motherhood or being stuck with deadening routine after all are a number of tremendously productive men who have had the slave at routine jobs. They hate it year after year. The first man who comes to mind is Melville and his long years in the New York customs house. But before Melville wound up in that job. You hate it so much. What did he do? He say, oh, he say all he sailed all over the world. He was at catching whales and bedding down lovely maidens in the south sea Islands while his New England sisters lived in the society in which no one in polite company even spoke the words woman and legs in the same sentence and his New England sisters were being raised by their mothers and grandmothers to know everything there is to know about how to dress for a tea party how to behave at a tea party and how to give it to a party. And being taught that men go willing and women go to tea parties. Until I went away to college. I had lived all my life on a farm and I could walk alone at night whenever I felt like it which was frequently that first year in a dormitory. I nearly went crazy. There were thirty two of us is with just I started college in the fall of 1945 and the there's just suddenly a burgeoning of college population and they put a whole bunch of us freshman in the basement of the door and there was no one there were 32 of a song with one big is 32 of us stacked and bunks and I having room for Miles all my life was as the kids would say nowadays freaked out at night. I would climb out a window and walk the streets around the campus. This was in a high-class residential neighborhood in Tacoma Washington, but of course I shouldn't have done it. I was in the most romantic of all my romantic periods, then romantic poetry. That is the moon the stars the Universe. I was taking an astronomy course and trying to understand it all just like Keats and Shelley and Byron and Wordsworth Except that one evening at 10 or so is I walked composing a poem about the moon a young man appeared from nowhere. He made a terrible gesture with his hands. He never text me, but I was terrified and I was raped. He made me feel totally filthy totally degraded. I loathed myself. And he took away the last little bit of physical Freedom my head. Never again. Could I escape the long nights in the dormitory locked in at dark not locked in because I had done anything wrong, but because of what men might do to me. Why is it so silly by the way for us to suggest that says it is the men who suggested as men who should have the curfew since they are the ones who commit the crimes what I want to lead up here to hear is that since it is we who get locked up. We frequently feel terrible a subconscious guilt or responsibility. It is somehow our fault that we cannot like male poets wandered lonely as a cloud walk by ourselves at night and gaze at the Moon listen to nightingale's. We must deserve what happens to us. How many women buy this? That's what my friends told me when I got back to the dormitory. This is what you asked for. And because so many of us bought by this I submit that. almost all of us have subconscious beliefs in Editions and these are the things that interest me. When were talking about that when we were talking about comparing the creative output of men with women? Disagreements among various schools of psychology there are points on which almost everyone agrees one is that we don't know very much about what we call a creative process. But we do know that creative insights whether they be inside switch flash a marvellous metaphor into our heads inside switch enable us to put together a story or novel or insights that produce scientific discoveries all these insights arise somehow from our subconscious when a writer complains of writer's block. She or he is saying that something is interfering with whatever it is that liberates our insights from our subconscious. Now let us look at what happens to the subconscious of just about every single human female and any time or any place. Every one of us knows that we are at the mercy of just about every physically normal male between the ages of 13 and 75. I hope that you're not dead misunderstanding me hear. This is not a tirade against men. This is against rape. And I don't think that very many men are rapists. Of course. I'm problem is we never know which or which do we We may not let ourselves think about it as numbers of young women who insist on hitchhiking say have said to me but it is always there that knowledge we've had since we were very young and most of us have had terrible experiences by the time we are 10 years old. I know several women who have been raped by their preachers when they were very young. And their stories do not appear in any statistics. And where will we ever find Reliable statistics on the number of children and teenagers who have been raped by their preachers? Mr. Betts did not rape me. He followed me into the woods when I thought I was alone. I was nine. He fondled me. I cannot describe my Terror not even today nor can I describe my feelings of guilt? I must have done something hideously wrong. Out exploring alone in the woods when he came upon me. Otherwise How could a preacher the father of my mother's beloved friend? How could he have done? And what was it that was wrong with me? When I was 10, I was nearly raped by a young man in the pear Orchard where my parents were migrant laborers. How is the ride to Kirkland with mr. Ramen go to the dentist and wait for my father to pick me up there on his way home from work at Boeing? Mr. Ramen, the father of 13 children including three girls who were my best friend took a back route through what was it that time of Forrest? He stopped the car and turned to me with the look in his eyes that again. I cannot describe. He pulled me to him his hand over my new breasts kissed me with his tongue in my mouth. I've Never Been Kissed in my life by anybody except my mother. Mr. Ramen incidentally is one of the reasons why 3 years later. I didn't date boys to the consternation of the conscientious guidance counselor. He was trembling but for the first time in my life, I really understood all the implications of male strength. I was unusually strong athletic girl. I had my full growth, but I knew I was helpless even so I thought of how I could somehow manage to break away and run into the forest. No, I thought he can catch you. It's better to beg. So I begged. What does it do to a human female to have to beg for her survival her plane? Simple physical survival from the time. She was 10 years old. What does it do to us to be talked too big to flatter to cajole. By both men and women from the time we are tiny. I'm not talking right now. Even about Optimum conditions for creativity talking about survival physical survival. What does this do to our sense of ourselves as creative human beings? I submit that the created woman has surmounted obstacles that most men have never imagined. I begged him. I made myself into nothing and big. And after a few more agonized agonising squeezings of my new tender breasts and a few more kisses with his disgusting saliva all over my face. He stopped trembling and let me go In a shaky voice, he told me he would let me go if I promise never to tell anybody, of course, I promised so far as I can remember. That was the first time I made a promise. I knew I didn't intend to keep oh, yes. We women are Sly and cunning. That was the first time my dope integrity was raped. I did finally after I recovered from the worst of my own self-loathing after I scrubbed my mouth. So many times that it no longer felt quite so filthy that I couldn't speak of it. I did finally tell my mother I knew it would hurt her, but I had to and I must insert here how many girls can't tell their mothers how many girls have mothers who have been so frightened by men, but they have in subtle ways made it clear that they do not want to have here any such stories from their daughters. My mother was certainly one of the best mothers who ever lived. But even before she tried to deal with my Terror and self-hatred she explained. In fact, she never did really deal with my feelings at all. Her overwhelming fear was that my father would commit murder? And when I think of my father at that time, I am nauseated. Every time the Almond girls came over to our house. He had to get his hands on. There was always a funny laughing reason to give them a hug. He never course hug me always a reason to whistle at them pinch them slap their fannies. I know that my father would never have done any more than that, but I could tell how they hated it. And I knew how they would feel if they ever knew what their father had done to me. So we never tell do we I can't take the time to tell you many other experiences. Do I need to have its most of you had them? I want now to refer to a book published that's 4 years ago by woman professor of Sociology at Mills College Diana. Eh Russell, her book is called the politics of rape. Most of it consists of interviews with women who have been raped will come to understand how the society views them as objects. Not just the men but the society for women also view themselves as objects and teach other women to view themselves this way tea parties. It's a woman's job to please men. A little digression here the other day. I saw a television interview with a 49 year-old woman who is organizing an all-woman climbing team to scale Annapurna. The male interviewer asked the inevitable question why aren't you? Of course what interviewers ever asked an all-male team? Why aren't you including any women? Anyway, her answer to the male interviewer was revealing. Well, we're just more he's with all women, you know, we don't have to worry about protecting anybody's eagle. And one more personal digression on the subject of eagles. At a cocktail party for me is author a man. I knew fairly well colleague of my husband's said to me with the greatest of admiration lowest. I can imagine how much guts it takes to be a writer. You must have to have the eagle of a Prizefighter. I agree. You have to have an ego that will make you get up again. No matter how many times you've been knocked down not just by getting rejection letter the buy your own failures get up again and try again to do anything creative and Science and business anyting you have to do this. Do I need to ask the rhetorical question are women because they are women just a bit handicapped in this regard after all isn't it masculine to have an ego that makes you keep getting back up? Men ask often in a very ego destroying supposedly objective kind of wonder. Why aren't there more creative women? To me. This is like the Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan standing up in front of a black audience whose families have been raped murdered by KKK members and asking and bewildered solicitous seriousness. Well, what do you people want? But back to Professor Russell's book. I just picked it up at the bookstore knowing that the first book I picked up would give me more case histories and more instances of the destruction of female egos than I could possibly use. I do recommend. This book is Russellville powerfully to her final point, which is that the whole power structure must be changed before we can even have any idea of how creative human females might be. For example. We must have equal representation in the economic structure. And on that point here is the statement of the executive secretary of the very elite San Francisco Club where all the men meet to decide the fate of that area. Shall we preserve what is left of the great day of San Francisco or shall we build on it develop it? He said an interview and business week. Yes. This is a man's club. We don't have any need of the ladies. That's right. And then there are the ones who specifically forbid the membership of women in the Elks male Elks, of course moose Eagles Lions the back to Professor Russell's book. I did not even have to get into the main text of the book Define agonizing evidence of what rate does to women's Minds their egos their creativity. I found it in Professor Diana Russell's own words in the introduction. An introduction which I must assume contains her own most careful writing. And speaking of the scientific ways in which this book was put together. She says the 90 women willing to be interviewed for this book were obtained through word-of-mouth advertising Saint Joseph. Where is there something in that syntax and diction that speaks to you? First of all the passive mode. She didn't use the active voice. She didn't say we found we did and once you fall into the passive mode all else follows the women were obtained. Not the interviews mind you. the women were obtained this from a woman who is put together a first-rate study of rake. If a study by a woman who believes that week to have the right to exist to have egos if she can introduce her study with such a sentence, how can anybody possibly say how creative we might be if we could be free of the fear of rape? This woman has been raped by language. She subconsciously believes that women are obtained. Do you see what I'm trying to say? How deep is the fear the curtailment in US? Professor Russell's interviews point out many things the guilt we have been taught the field because men want to rape us did not Freud himself suggest that women want to be raped. Accidentally found out the other day Freud never rocked Fred was celibate after the age of 40. Did you know that? Our lack of self-confidence are fear of admitting even to ourselves that we have a right to our own bodies. And if something terrible has been done to us. So, who are we if we have no right to our own bodies, how can we have the right to our own Wills? It's hard to have the eagle of a Prizefighter when you know that any Punk kids may take a notion to rape you. And most of all are feeling that we don't have a right to our own feelings. I believe that the belief that one has a right to her own feelings has got to be the faces of any creativity. You have got to feel that what you see what you hear what you think. That these things are totally valid. But what if you were told in a thousand ways from the time that you were born that you can and will be raped what if you were told that whether you want sex or not whether you want to cater to another person's ego or not. This is what you were put on Earth to do. What rights do you have then how do you dare to have your own feelings? And what great artist does not express his or her own feelings. The subconscious Professor Russell found that many women who had been raped did not at first even perceive what had happened as rape they were well, I would say after all he had invited me to his fraternity party and then I fought him for 2 hours o I don't know how long but finally he did it at the time. I thought well you asked for this. What besides the right to her own feelings does any creative person have to feel you have to feel like you're in control? This is a story. This is an essay. This is a novel. This is a painting. This is a musical composition that I will control. This is what I want to say and I will say it. And if you are a human female somehow you have to decide that you do have a right to your own feelings a right to control what you are doing and that despite everything that everybody has talked to you will assert that right and this is a subconscious thing. I'm talking about this peculiar handicap of human females because they must always live in the knowledge that they can be raped. Let me just recapitulate the obstacles which I believe are present in the subconscious of every woman be she a mother or not the obstacles place. They're so very early in our lives as human females one guilt. even a nine year old girl raped by her father and I know my number have young women Who are raped by their fathers regularly from age nine or so on? And they feel guilty. Some of them have to spend years in Psychotherapy usually with a male therapist and trying to get over the idea. That was their fault. Some of those young women are at least potentially very good. And by the way, how can we know statistically how many potentially brilliantly creative women have been totally blocked by being made to feel guilty because of what their fathers uncles Brothers on young woman of student of mine had five older brothers and every single one of them had the mess with every single one that's time. She was 8 or 9. Lack of confidence in our number to lack of confidence in our own feelings and reactions. Any creative person must have confidence in his or her own feelings? But from the time we are tiny most of us are taught in one way or another to assume that the feelings of the male are more important and therefore more valid mothers of sons hear me I give you an example. One of my best friends when my own little girls were tiny had a boy a year older than my oldest daughter and a girl she was too he was about to Rihanna and her little girl was about 18 months younger from the time that Mark was born. Marilyn was convinced that he was going to be artistically gifted like his father. She did everything she could to encourage his creativity, but with her daughter named Lee interesting Lena things for quite different when Lili at age 15 months or so started doing all the wonderfully creative things that Mark had done that age building finds things with blocks that went down with one of those nice little cloth books for children. So on what happened I watched it happen every time lately started reading a book her big brother took it away from her every time. She got a good thing going with blocks Mark knock them down and Marilyn would say in gentle loving tones omark. You shouldn't do that. Never once did I ever see you're stopping? A couple of years later when they lie was not quite four. Marilyn said to me Louis. I'm really worried about Millie. She just doesn't seem to have the attention span that Mark had at her age. My my wonder why females are not as creative as mailed before she was 4 years old really had learned that a male could stop with total impunity anything she wanted to do and my friend Marilyn was supposedly a very liberated woman. With women for friend. I asked you how many women have you watched raise their children this way if the older child had been another girl. I wonder if Marilyn would have let her an older sister behave towards the little girl that she let him older brother. And if we're going to raise little boys that way why do we wonder about why most adult male see absolutely nothing wrong and indulging themselves and locker room jokes about human females as objects. And who knows this is another thing statistics can hardly tell us who knows how many men in those locker rooms hear those jokes and because of their own troubles decide that it is perfectly. Alright to write. Number 3 difficulty in expressing anger. I am referring again to the interviews and Professor Russell's book and to any number of books of dressing themselves to women's comparative helplessness. The group designed to help women be assertive are feeling that we must always be subordinate to someone else's needs. Now. Does that feeling come from the very legitimate demands of a helpless infant and child that these demands which are made on a mother or does it come from an even deeper more fundamental anatomical fact the fan and all of us mothers or not are vulnerable to Great alone among all females of any species. We don't dare Express anger because that is not a thing. We have a right to do yet. Most great artists Express a lot of anger. What's the testics can tell us? How many potentially brilliantly creative women have knuckled under to the sheer physical dominance of men? And one more point a very important Point since we are trained never to say no that don't express anger. Don't say no. When we do find ourselves in professional positions, we still feel we must say yes to men to other women to students. You name it. We never feel we have the right to say no. I have been trained never to say no. I wouldn't want to make anybody mad at me. I can't express anger at being used at being obtained if you will. And in purely physical terms that is the time that I have on this Earth. It is a terrible handicap to my creativity to be raised not to be able to say no. I think of my reaction to longfellow's poem hear a poem. Which offended me when I first read it in the third or fourth grade though. I could not have articulated at that time why it offended me but I remember my feelings is the female when I first read it when it was presented to me by a female teacher, of course is a wonderful work of art The Children's Hour. How many of you had to memorize? The children are all little girls don't remember and they are all Quote locked in the round Tower of my heart says Longfellow. And he gave them one hour a day. For the rest of the day. They were locked in the round Tower of his heart and you know when your 8 or 9 you take things very literally. I hated that poem when I was nine. I wanted to say no, I don't like this. But did I ever have a chance to express my anger about it to anybody did I ever even think I had a right to find it offensive? For vulnerability the conviction that we are never in control of our own lives. What does it do to the creativity of women that they must always feel vulnerable in every possible way physically, which is always the basis for the other vulnerabilities, but in every possible way socially here's an idea which is of course, it's not true but still people believe it that a woman who is unmarried has never had any other choice a bachelor course is chosen. chosen control economically rate and I think that if we think that we don't think about it. That's maybe a real sign of our vulnerability were even afraid to face it. So we're very careful and we attended tea parties and drains. And we don't ever think about anything else. What does that do to our creativity? Let me ask you this doesn't seem plausible to you that a person energy just in dealing with that fear. I should pull out here. I should say. I'm I'm I'm not somebody was paranoid that my sister has a friend is about 30 years old and she's finally gotten so freaked out by some of the got. I suppose. I admit her Ted Bundy and in if you haven't had but anyway, I was about eight or nine young women murder just with their mother found our skeletons within about 5 miles of where I live and all Young University women and and this friend of my sisters. This is absolutely she won't leave the house. She just absolutely Anyway, what does this do to your creativity? How much energy do you use? Let me ask another question is a person who must always see herself as a potential victim in as good a place as a person who sees himself as a master is this person in as good a place creatively as a person who can wander lonely as a cloud? Women and creativity. Yes. I think that women in business can be creative to a recent survey revealed that 80% 80% of women and offices receive unwanted sexual attention. 80% think of the energy that these women have to spend just dealing with this day by day. Ain't it a drag? It tells you something doesn't it? Tells you how women are expected to come through and it also makes you wonder what kind of super endowed human beings people like George Eliot and Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte and Golda Meir. My stay and have been. I'll tell you another person's story couple of months after my first book was published. I was invited to be one of the authors at the Denver book an author's convention. This was a big deal. We were there for 3 Days stay in the Brown Palace Hotel appeared on television radio. We were always getting whisked off to an interview here and there there were three men and me this guy start wanting me at the first of our success rates convention cocktail parties lunch and dinners what it turned out that he had the hotel room next to mine and he was very explicit. Hell you're here without your husband. Well, he'll why don't we get together. Well, he'll why don't you want me to go? Why don't you want to go to bed with me after all your husband isn't here. He would always get very very drunk at all these things and it scared me. Very much and I was forced to latch on of what do you do when you're being threatened by a man? You find another man. I mean, that's what you have to do. I was I was forced to latch onto some men at every party and I'd say hey, I think I can trust you. Could you just get me to my room tonight? I was very frightened of this guy really was. Who shared the speakers platform with me? He would bang on the wall. We so unfortunately shared when I did not respond to his banging he would ring the telephone every 15 minutes while I was trying to go to sleep that's rate. You may ask why didn't I call the hotel desk and stop his calls? I couldn't do that to him. I could not. Yes, that is what I thought what I had been trained to think. I was younger than my dears. And the next day is all four of us stood at the big elevated speakers table addressing 500 people at the Denver book an author's bandwidth. Do you know how much I want to say to the women who would put this whole thing on the American Association of University women. Do you know how much I want to say this guy sitting to my left here on this platform is a rapist. Just let me tell you what he has been pulling for the last three days. Just let me tell you what he did last night all night. But of course I didn't I had respect for the male ego. I wouldn't have any right to do that to him. Even though he spoiled all the fun. I could have had. Still somehow it was his right to do that. I could just keep on never letting me out of his sight always reminding me that we happen to have adjacent hotel rooms that he would always be right there. I asked you to think about this when you are asked to consider that wonderful question. Why aren't there more creative women? In the subconscious of any female human being are all those things. We have been taught and go on teaching our daughters and our sons. At any moment a woman can find herself in an impossible situation. She did not ask for she cannot take a night stroll to think about the latest discoveries of the astronomers and their wonderful extensions of the universe. She cannot even be one of the authors at the Denver book and author convention. See she had she's asked for it because she hasn't kept it to herself. as our guidance counselor would say And of course, I really wanted it so I told him that. It was just that my fragile shilly-shallying indecisive little female ego needed some bolstering a clear sense of direction, which of course still more begging boorish and frightening behavior on his part could provide. But it would be unfeminine of me to be angry. What can we women do what must we do if we want the next million years to be different from the last million we can stop being the kind of mothers of sons that we have been talk to me. We have been caught the most we as human females can hope for is to be with enormous effort the very best of the second graders. Therefore the most wonderful thing we can possibly do is to produce for my own body's a baby who is simply by virtue of being born male or first grade human being The woman who subconsciously feels this of course communicated from the moment. He is born to the sun. She is so proud of buried in what culture has this not been the case. It was not only in China that baby girls were drowned as though they were unwanted kittens. This was not an uncommon means the population control and Europe either a lot of people don't know that but that's pretty well-documented the point being of course that well women can be raped with impunity. They're also responsible for controlling the population. Just read Mary and home Kingston's the woman warrior. Who would even want to speculate on how many potential women Geniuses were bound Earth or who can assess the impact that this knowledge has had on every potentially woman. I can't be the only woman in this room who still remembers the conscious Terror she felt when she first found out about the practice of drowning baby girls, right? I'm not worth anything. I'm just lucky I wasn't drowned. And of course we can and must help each other really to perceive I won't go on about this because many other women have eloquently done. So and we can help men to perceive if women must be taught to perceive rape. We can hardly fault men for not perceiving it as they should most men are not rapists fortunately for us. But as I say, unfortunately for them, we never know which But since most men are not rapist. I know I've got to look past my 50 minutes. I'm almost there. Let me tell you a couple of stories from my vast repertoire about a couple of my young male students. The first is about a fine young man, who told me that one of his and his wife's dearest friend. So just been raped she kept it to herself for a couple of days perceiving it and then could not bear it by herself any longer she went to a minister. He was at first very solicitous and concerned then he asked her when it happened. She told him it was last Saturday. Her ministers whole demeanor changed. Well, then he told her you ought to be pretty much over it by now. My student was appalled hearing this. He was an enormous rugged guy six feet six would had coaches try to turn him into a Mindless jock all his life. He told me about 2 in the afternoon. I just sat down and tried to think about what it would feel like to be raped when it was time for dinner. My wife called me and I told her I just could not eat right then. I just kept on concentrating trying to be in the mind and body of a hundred pound woman. At about 3 or 4 the next morning. I suddenly felt it. I suddenly knew what it would be like. And I suddenly was so shake so Shake. I can't describe it. And this was a couple of years ago, but I still feel the same way. I felt then I don't even believe in capital punishment, but I do believe that if there was any crime that merits capital punishment that crime is rape. Unquote don't tell me there are not sensitive man in the world. But we have got to help educate them. One More Story, this was a young man I loved He was so gentle so bright such a potentially gifted writer just a real, sweetheart. One of the reasons he had fun with me from class to class was that he wanted to study with a woman writer. I was the only woman right around our staff at that time as of this ball we have to Anyway, he realized he had a problem. He realized that he did not write well very well from a woman's point of view. Don't knock it. My friends many of my young male students. Don't even recognize the problem. after all how many men how many people have ever even mentioned that if you can write from the point of view of only half of the human race might be slightly handicapped and writing about The Human Condition One day as he sat across my desk from me and my office. He said rather desperately. How can I get into the mind of a woman? I said, why don't you start by trying to imagine what it's like to live all of your life because this is a kid with an awful lot of hitchhiking play the guitar and he would hitchhike and he's getting another town and he'd get with somewhere where you could find so I had all kinds of marvelous stories to tell already and he was only about 20 And ice in other words you had the freedom to do this. He never been afraid. I said well, why don't you start by trying to imagine what it's like to live all of your life knowing that you are always a potential victim of the other half of your species. He didn't even understand me. I said that I said most men don't think about rape at all. I said look, how would you like to live your life never knowing? Which Charming Man might attack you a woman always has to be on guard. This does something to the way our minds work. What would it do to you to live your life that way I'm trying to help him get his mind into another mind. Okay. For a minute. Suddenly he jumped up. Let out a wild Roar and grabbed me across my desk. His hands never came within two feet of me, but I had a wild reaction I jump back that gut reaction pure Terror. And he entered nearly died. He stuttered and stammered. I was just kidding. I thought you just being funny. I mean, I just thought I mean hear something He learn something about how I'm a woman's mind works. In that moment and he was anguished. He recovered himself and said that terrible Casino what you've been saying. I think I'm beginning to see terrible. What can I do to make things better never thought about it? I could bet that nine out of 10 of my charming young male students. Haven't I really think that do I see you nodding marry you agree that that's I said will tell me tell me what I can do. And I said well in a roundabout way it would help you understand women. If you did this. First of all, you could refuse to tell jokes about women as objects in the locker room. And he said yes, he could certainly do that. I have a feeling he'd never told a locker-room joke in his life anyway. I said next knowing that maybe a really sick self-indulgent male may be listening to somebody else tell those jokes. You could speak up and say that isn't right. We shouldn't talk about women that way. That would be a very good thing to do a beginning. Would you do that if you really want to help? Now he was really in English. He respected me so much as a writer and as a human being that he couldn't bring himself to lie to me and he said no, I can't do that. But I hope someday I will be able to. I hope so too because I told him that will be a beginning a beginning in a long educational process first educating ourselves not to let men tell us how creative we are or aren't next to speak to each other to admit that we often undercut each other because men have told us that every woman wants so desperately to snag a man that any woman will betray any other woman to snag him and that therefore women can never be true friends to each other. When I said I think applies other things that we can do and closing ask a question once more. Why aren't there more creative women? I will treat this rhetorical question with the response. All ridiculous rhetorical questions deserve silence and finally not really an answer to that rhetorical question. But why haven't there been more creative women but a description of the Silence with which I answer it this form of course is an elegy to all the potentially brilliant men who lie in a country churchyard all the village Hamptons and mute Inglorious Miltons, but I remember how this stanza spoke to me when first I read it. It said something to me about what Mr. Boyd had said just you know, keep it to yourself. Full many a gem of purest Ray Serene the dark unfathomed caves of ocean Bear full many a flower is born to blush unseen and waste its Sweetness in the desert there.