Sonia Johnson describes
the process by which she became a radical feminist:
Long ago. . . I had a professor whose arrogance thoroughly intimidated me.
. . I remember the day he warned us, in falsetto, against the fatuous horrors
of the "suddenly she realized. . .!" genre of literature. . .
One night in April 1977, in a Mormon church meeting in Sterling, Virginia,
my mindfinally burst the chains that shackled it to the known world and
leapt spiraling upward and outward in quest of a new world, the journey
for which I was born.
The knowledge-deep and pervasive. . .that men have built all they have built
out of the bones and blood and entrails of women, exploded into my consciousness
that night. . .when on the one hand I was angry and wretchedly miserable,
on the other I was ecstatic: despite everything, women were rising. . .The
classic feminist awakening: twin births of fury and ecstasy. . .
Growing up Mormon gave me distinct advantage over those feminists who grew
up in "liberal" churches- Methodist, Episcopalian, Presbyterian,
Unitarian, Quaker. For them, patriarchy as a habit of mind, a system of
values, a method of operating in the world, has been camouflaged, rendered
murky and ambiguous, hard to pin down. . . . Mormonism is patriarchy at
its most arrogant and blatant. . .When I became a feminist I realized that
I knew patriarchy inside out, thoroughly, intimately. I knew how it functioned
from its bones through to its muscles and flesh, out to its skin and clothing-its
odor, its aura, its ambience. . .
As I looked about myself with new eyes, I lost illusions about organized
religion as a means to moral ends. I saw that all churches were the Mormon
church. . . I saw clearly that religion was the central pillar of patriarchy,
the means through which male supremacy became and remains dogma. . . because
its social and political and economic function is to justify and perpetuate
the slavery of women, the religion of the churches is not only incompatible
with genuine spirituality; religion and spirituality are downright incompatible.
. .
One day, shortly after I recognized all churches as the Mormon church in
various guises, I was surveying the national and international scenes through
my new wide-angled lens when suddenly everything clicked into place. Of
course! I should have known! The whole world is the Mormon church! I realized
that, far from being politically naive, as I'd thought, I was surprisingly
and uncommonly savvy. . . having studied these habits of thinking and acting
for so long and so thoroughly in the microcosm of the Mormon church, I found
their extrapolation to the macrocosm a simple matter.
(1987, pp. i, 1, 3, 8)
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