In Favor of the Sensitive Man and Other Essays (Original Harvest Book; Hb333) Read Online Free PDF Page B

us, untrained, unprepared and unskilled, can be conscripted for mass action is what has prevented woman from developing, because it is the same old-fashioned assertion that the only good we can do is outside of ourselves, salvaging others. When we do this we ignore the fact that the evil comes from individual flaws, undeveloped human beings. We need models. We need heroes and leaders. Out of the many lawyers who came from Harvard, we were given only one Nader. But one Nader has incalculable influence. If we continue in the name of politics to denigrate those who have developed their skills to the maximum pitch as elite, privileged, or exceptional people, we will never be able to help others achieve their potential. We need blueprints for the creation of human beings as well as for architecture.
    The attack against individual development belongs to the dark ages of socialism. If I am able to inspire or help women today, it is because I persisted in my development. I was often derailed by other duties, but I never gave up this relentless disciplined creation of my awareness because I realized that at the bottom of every failed system to improve the lot of man lies an imperfect, corruptible human being.
    It is inspiring to read of the women who defied the codes and taboos of their period: Ninon de Lenclos in the seventeenth century, Lou Andreas-Salomé in the time of Freud, Nietzsche, and Rilke, and in our time Han Suyin. Or the four heroines of Lesley Blanch’s
Wilder Shores of Love.
    I see a great deal of negativity in the Women’s Liberation Movement. It is less important to attack male writers than to discover and read women writers, to attack maledominated films than to make films by women. If the passivity of woman is going to erupt like a volcano or an earthquake, it will not accomplish anything but disaster. This passivity can be converted to creative will. If it expresses itself in war, then it is an imitation of man’s methods. It would be good to study the writings of women who were more concerned with personal relationships than with the power struggles of history. I have a dream of a more human lawyer, a more human educator, a more human politician. To become man, or like man, is no solution. There is far too much imitation of man in the women’s movement. That is merely a displacement of power. Woman’s definition of power should be different. It should be based on relationships to others. The women who truly identify with their oppressors, as the cliché phrase goes, are the women who are acting like men, masculinizing themselves, not those who seek to convert or transform man. There is no liberation of one group at the expense of another. Liberation can only come totally and in unison.
    Group thinking does not give strength. It weakens the will. Majority thinking is oppressive because it inhibits individual growth and seeks a formula for all. Individual growth makes communal living of higher quality. A developed woman will know how to take care of all her social duties and how to act effectively.

My Sister, My Spouse
     
Preface to the Norton Library Edition of
My Sister, My Spouse: A Biography of Lou Andreas-Salomé,
by H. F. Peters.
     
    It is thanks to H. F. Peters that I was introduced to Lou Andreas-Salomé, and this preface to the republication of his book is an act of gratitude. He presented a full portrait of her even though not all information about her was available. He was handicapped by her own destruction of many of her letters. But through his sensitivity, understanding, and empathy we acquire an intimate knowledge of a woman whose importance to the history of the development of woman is immeasurable. Peters has done a loving portrait which communicates her talent and her courage.
    The lack of complete knowledge of Lou’s life forces our imagination to interpret her in the light of woman’s struggle for independence. We can accept the mysteries, ambivalences, and contradictions because they