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and perpetuate a hard and mean tradition of exploitation: there is

some splendor and some honor in the association. The association

has a deep resonance for men too, though not the same sentimental

meaning: they after all did the plowing. The cultural and sexual

intersection of women and earth is potent for men when they

bomb “her, ” strip-mine “her, ” scorch “her, ” torch “her, ” denude

“her, ” defoliate “h er, ” pollute “her, ” despoil “her, ” rape “her, ”

plunder “h er, ” overcome, manipulate, dominate, conquer, or destroy “her. ” The significance of the farming model is both wide and deep. It has been the major w ay of using women— as mothers

to produce children; metaphorically speaking, men have used the

earth as if it were female, a huge fertile female that— one w ay or

another— they w ill fuck to death. There are limits to how much

the land can endure and produce, plowed so much, respected so

little.

Both the farming model and the brothel model dispose of women

as women: they are paradigms for the mass use of a whole class; in

both there is no hum anity for women. The brothel model has been

efficient. It uses the women in it until they are used up. Men get

sex from them with a graceful economy of means: effective force;

hunger, degradation, drugs; rare escape. The woman is easily reduced to what she sells. Women under the yoke of the brothel model do not organize political movements; they do not rebel collectively; the yoke is too heavy. Quite sim ply, a percentage of the class women is given over to the brothel model; whatever its laws,

societies accept this disposition of a significant number of females

for sex service. Once within that model, these women are controlled and used; what men want from them they get; their bodies go where their sex is wanted; there is an absolute equation between

what they are and what they provide, between their physical

bodies and their function, between their sex and their work. There

is no wasted energy here: a prostituted female serves her purpose

absolutely. The farming model has always been relatively ineffi­

cient. It is sloppier. Picking a woman who lives in the home with

the man on a continuing basis is harder. Picking a woman who can

and will have children is harder. There is more leeway for her

attitudes to interfere. She has ways of saying no or subverting male

sexual and reproductive intentions. The brothel model simply requires that the women under it be women: it does not matter who they are or what they are like or where they come from or what

they think; they get worn down fast by being used the same way

and being reduced to the same common denominator; nothing is

necessary except that they be female. The farming model requires

the constant application of force (explicit or implicit, usually a nice

combination), incentive, reward; and a lot of plain luck with respect to fertility and reproductive vigor. When a man wants sons, as most do, the inefficiency inherent in the model is particularly

emphasized: no matter how many babies she has, there is no certainty that any of them will be male. And, for all the coercion of the farming model, the women subject to it have organized politically, have found ways to seize the time between babies and domestic chores—here and there, now and then—to foment some rebellion. The very fact that such women have been involved in

movements, especially feminist movements, argues for the inefficiency of the farming model. The farming model has haphazard success: there are too many factors besides the efficacy of the fuck

that can interfere with the harvesting of the crop. The quality of

the crop cannot really be predetermined either. Men, recognizing

the inefficiency of the farming model, have simply imposed it on

all women not prostituted so as not to miss a chance: they use

social and economic sanctions to punish women who try to live

outside it, especially so-called spinsters and lesbians. To anticipate

and counterbalance the failures, the losses, the tremendous element

of chance, the bad breaks, the power of men as a class has been

exercised to keep all women not prostitutes reproducing under the

explicit domination of a husband. This has been the best way men

have had to control reproduction, to appropriate the uteruses of

women in order to have children, to keep the women subject to the

reproductive w ill of the men. The use of women by men in this