It is the only job in society taken up as a direct result of an emotional commitment to another person. The pressures towards marriage are predominantly psychological and cultural- even the very real economic factors are obscured by this. This fact alone differentiates the position of women from that of other oppressed groups. Once within the family its contradictions affect woman in a very direct and personal way. The family is an arena of constant conflict, and the woman, faced with the fact that she can have very contradictory feelings about her child and husband-that she can love them passionately and hate them violently at one and the same time, is cons. We have to redefine ourselves on every level, economic, cultural and political. We have learnt from the Blacks that it is absolutely necessary for oppressed groups to theorise their own position, and to conduct their own struggle. Our revolutionary struggle in England will therefore be by women and with women specifically comitted through our own definition to the destruction of all oppression.
Women's Liberation poses problems at every level; to be able to fight for all women it has to be a flexible movement capable of struggle on many fronts. Marxist theory so far offers no fully theorised analysis of oppression, and therefore no precise concepts for comprehending So everything in the garden's lovely? have to type out is often absorbing our relationship purely mechanical; and something that we *on our own', like banking the cheques every week, becomes far more creative.
We both resent feeling that we should look nice every day, be cheer ful, sympathetic etc. It is this limbo area of semi-personalization which we hate most: being sympathetic and so on is characteristic of person, and yet at other times we are treated as non-existent-arguments and confidences proceed as if we weren't there; situation is straight master/servant. This sort of semi-personalization produces very nasty trends of exploitation Secretaries can easily be flattered into doing more of the chores: even though we know the man can type as fast as we can that answering the telephone is not a specifie skill they don't have, it is difficult to refuse when you are told you set the letters out so nicely'. Like a servant's, our protest can only be petty and frustrating-Anne and I play games, form ing a (perhaps subversive) bloc, with secret jokes, and at one time even a secret language. It's what used to happen 'below stairs' in the nice nineteenth century middle-class home.