“manifesto of the futurist woman”
note: this is a public-domain article that i’ve resurrected from a now-dead site via the wayback machine. you can view the cached version of the original site here. to make this article “come back,” though, i’ve reposted the text on my blog. enjoy.
Manifesto of the Futurist Woman
Valentine de Saint-Point
Paris, 25 March 1912
A reply to F.T. Marinetti
“We intend to glorify war, the hygeine of the world, militarism, patriotism, the anarchists’ destructive actions, great ideas worth dying for, and contempt for women”
(First Manifesto of Futurism)
Humanity is mediocre. The majority of women are neither superior nor inferior to the majority of men. They are equal. Both deserve the same contempt. Humanity as a whole has never been other than the fertile groundfrom which geniuses and heroes of both sexes arose. But in humanity as in nature there are particularly favourable moments for flowering. In the summer of humanity, when the ground is baked by sun, geniuses and heroes abound. We are at the beginning of a spring; we still need a great measure of sun, that is to say a great deal of blood must be shed.
Women, like men, are not responsible for the fact that those who are truly young, filled with lymph and blood, are stuck fast. It is absurd to divide humanity into women and men: it is composed entirely of femininity and masculinity. Every superman, every hero, however epic he may be, every genius however powerful, is the amazing expression of his time only because he is composed simultaneously of feminine and masculine elements of femininity and masculinity – he is a complete being.
An exclusively male individual is nothing but a brute; an exlusive female individual is nothing but weakness.
The history of collectivities and historical moments is the same as the history of individuals. The fertile periods, in which a great number of geniuses and heroes spring from the ground of a fermenting culture, are periods which are rich in masculinity and femininity.
The periods which saw wars with only a few representative heroes, because the epic wind flattened them, were exclusively male periods; those which denied the heroic instinct, turned towards the past and lost themselves in dreams of peace, were periods in which femininity predominated. We are living at the end of such a period. What is most lacking in women and men alike is masculinity.
That is why Futurism, with all its exaggerations, is right.
To give back a certain masculinity to our peoples benumbed by femininity, they must be dragged to masculinity, even to brutality.
But to all, men and women alike in their weakness, a new doctrine of energy must be taught, so that we may reach an epoch of superior humanity.
Every woman must possess, besides the female virtues, male qualities: otherwise she is weak, womanish. And the man who has only male strength without intuition is nothing but a brute.
But in the period of femininity we are living in, only exaggeration in the opposite direction can help. It is the brute who must become the model.
No more women who cause soldiers to fear “the lovely arms entwined around their knees on the morning of departure”; nurse-women who encourage weakness and old age, taming men to suit their personal pleasure of for their material needs! No more women who have children only for their own sakes, sheltering them from danger, from every adventure, which means from every joy; who keep their daughters away from love and their sons away from war! No more women who are octopuses of the hearth, whose tentacles bleed men dry and make their children anaemic; women who love like animals, and destroy the force of renewal that lives in Desire!
Women are Erinyes, Amazons, Semiramis, Joan of Arc, Jeanne Hachette, Judith and Charlotte Corday, Cleopatra and Messalina, warriors who fight more ferociously than men, lovers who incite, destroyers who contribute towards natural selection by breaking those who are fragile, arousing pride and despair, “the despair that gives the heart all its richness”.
May the next wars create heroines like the wonderful Caterina Sforza who when her city was besieged, seeing from the top of the walls the enemy threatening her son to force him to surrender, heroically displaying her sex shouted “Kill him then! I still have the mould to make others!”
Yes, the world is “soaked in reasonableness”, but by instinct woman is not reasonable, nor pacifist, nor good. Since she is totally lacking in a sense of measure, in a sleepy period of humanity she becomes too reasonable, too pacifist, too good. Her intuition, her imagination are both her strength and her weakness. She is the individuality of the crowd: she applauds the heroes, or if these are lacking, she supports the fools. According to her apostolate, woman incites to spirituality or to carnality, immolates or heals, makes blood flow or wipes it away, is a warrior or a nurse. The same woman, in the same historic period, according to the ideas produced around her by the latest event, will lie down on the tracks to stop the soldiers leaving for war or will throw her arms around the neck of the winning sports champion. This is why every revolution must include her; this is why rather than professing contempt for woman, you must address her. It is the most fruitful conquest you can make; and the most exciting, which in its turn will make more recruits.
But Feminism should be left aside, Feminism is a political mistake. Feminism is a mistake made by women’s intellect, a mistake which her instinct will recognize. Women should not be given any of the rights claimed by Feminism. To give women these rights would not produce any of the disorder the Futurists hope for, but on the contrary would create an excess of order.
To give duties to woman would mean depriving her of of all her fruitful power. The logic and deductions of Feminism will not destroy her primordial destiny; they can only falsify it and force it to express itself through deviations that will lead to the worst possible errors.
For centuries now humanity has clashed with woman’s instinct. All that is values in her is grace and tenderness. Anaemic man, miserly with his own blood, wants her to be only a nurse. She has allowed herself to be tamed. But call out a new word to her, give a war cry and with joy she will ride again on her instinct and lead you towards undreamed-of conquests. When your weapons are needed, woman will sharpen them. She will once more contribute towards selection. In fact, although she cannot easily distinguish genius, because she judges according to passing fame, woman has always rewarded the strongest, the victor, the one who triumphs through his muscles and his courage. She makes no mistakes about this superiority which imposes itself brutally.
Let woman rediscover her own cruelty and violence that make her turn on the beaten, just because they are vanquished, and mutilate them. Stop preaching to her the spiritual justice that she has tried to acquire in vain. Women, become once more as sublimely unjust as every force of nature!
Freed from control, once more in possession of your instinct, you will take your place among the Elements which oppose fate to the deliberate will of man. Be the egoistical and ferocious mother who jealously guards her young having every right and duty over them as long as they physically need her protection. Let man, freed from the family, live his own life of courage and conquest as soon as he has the physical strength to do so, although he is a son, and although he is a father. The man who is sowing does not stop at the first furrow he makes fruitful.
In my Poems of Pride and in Thirst and Mirages, I rejected sentimentalism as a contemptible weakness because it ties down energies and immobilizes them.
Lust is a force because it destroys the weak, stimulates the strong to spend their strength and hence renew it. Every heroic people is sensual: women for them is the most glorious trophy.
Woman must either be a mother or a lover. True mothers will always be mediocre lovers and lovers will be inadequate mothers through excess. These two types of women are equal before life, and complementary. The mother who receives the child makes future out of the past. The lover dispenses the desire that is a bridge to the future.
We conclude:
The woman who keeps a man at her feet with tears and sentimentality is inferior to the prostitute who out of vainglory pushes her man to maintain his dominion, revolver in hand, over the city slums. Such a creature at least is cultivating an energy which could serve a better cause.
Women, for too long you have been lost amid morals and prejudices; come back to your sublime instinct: to violence and cruelty.
Because of the fatal tithe of blood, while men are warring and fighting create sons and act the role of Destiny among them in the name of Heroism. Bring them up not for yourselves, which diminishes them; let them find a wide freedom, a complete development. Instead of reducing man to the servitude of detestable sentimental needs, encourage your sons and your men to excel themselves.
It is you who make them. You have complete power over them. You owe heroes to humanity. Give them to us!
Valentine de Saint-Point
No comments yet.