Pornography: Men Possessing Women, by: Andrea ... - Feminish

With his usual perception about himself, Sade once noted ina letter to his wife that, had the authorities any insight, theywould not have locked him up to plot and daydream and makephilosophical disquisitions as wild and vengeful and absolute asany ever formulated; they would have set him free andsurrounded him with a harem on whom to feast. But societiesdo not cater to strange tastes; they condemn them. Thus Sadebecame a writer. 9Again, brutalities against women are somehow transposed, thistime into something less dangerous and less significant than writing.T he victims of Sade’s sexual terrorism are less important than“philosophical disquisitions. ” This valuation is not the final resultof any moral anguish; it is entirely unselfconscious.In tome after tome, Sade’s biographers write the women Sadeassaulted in either invisible ink or spleen. Norman Gear, in TheDivine Demon, is both fanciful and cute:Had he not been more than punished for his sins? And what,after all, had they amounted to? He had given a few girls andwomen a little pain, but not so much really, and none of themhad been seriously harmed. He had seduced some girls, but hehad never raped one. Most of the women he had used in hisorgies had come to him willingly enough, for payment, or,oddly enough, because they liked him.. . . Even poor RoseKeller had soon recovered from her thrashing, and had beenvery well rewarded for a week with a sore behind. As for thewhores in Marseilles—they had been paid for their services andhad not endured worse than it was their common lot toendure. 10Jean Paulhan, a Sadean missionary, is outraged that Sade, asignificant being, should have been imprisoned for violating shadows:It seems established that Sade gave a spanking to a whore inParis: does that fit with a year in jail? Some aphrodisiac sweetsto some girls [sic] in Marseilles: does that justify ten years in theBastille? He seduces his sister-in-law: does that justify a monthin the Conciergerie? He causes no end of bother*to his