Untitled - Sexey's School Moodle

which he/she participates as well. Perhaps some would argue that there are other ways to
make this point than by appealing to humanity’s basest instincts. However, as my
second chapter argued, sexual urges—and the language of sexuality in particular—hold a
privileged space in discourses of transgression specifically for their visceral nature and
their link to violence and aggression.
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As noted above, by objectifying the human body and turning it into a consumer
good, pornography is widely considered to appeal primarily to the male gaze, which,
according to feminist critics such as Laura Mulvey, is a product of the patriarchal thought
that Bateman personifies. In addition, many feminists, such as Susan Brownmiller and
Andrea Dworkin consider pornography to be degrading to women and to represent an act
of violence against the female body. The root of this analogy lies in the fact that the male
gaze not only considers women as sexual objects but also sees the female body as
fragmented, as separate and detachable pieces of anatomy—a breast, a leg, a foot, a
mouth, a vagina—as if each could easily be severed from the unified entity of the body in
its entirety, as a “whole,” a three-dimensional subject. It could be argued, however, that
the type of pornography depicted in the novel is predominantly targeted at a male
audience and that a part from a minority of cases, female readers will respond differently.
Yet female readers are also capable of becoming implicated in the spectacle by
completing the scopophilic/exhibitionist dyad as explained in Chapter 3. By consenting
to have sex with Bateman—and in some cases accepting money in exchange—the female
characters of the novel enter the process of objectification imposed by pornography in
accepting the terms of the “transaction.” Moreover, one of the direct effects of such
processes of objectification —as it is imposed by the prevailing condition of consumer