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

addiction: each sex act contributes to the development of atolerance; that is, arousal requires more cruelty each time, orgasmrequires more cruelty each time; victims must increase in abjectnessand numbers both. Everyone inferior to the aristocrats on top inwealth, in social status, or in her or his capacity for cruelty becomessexual' fodder. Wives, daughters, and mothers are particularlysingled out for ridicule, humiliation, and contempt. Servants ofboth sexes and female prostitutes are the main population of theabused, dismembered, executed. Lesbian acts decorate the slaughter;they are imagined by a man for men; they are so male-imaginedthat the divine fuck imbued with m urder is their only possibleresolution.In the bulk of Sade’s work, female victims greatly outnum bermale victims, but his cruelty is all-inclusive. H e manifests apansexual dominance—the male who knows no boundaries but stillhates women more.While the aristocrats on top are never maimed, they are, at theirown command, whipped and sodomized. They remain entirely incontrol even when whipped or sodomized. Everything done tothem or by them is for the purpose of bringing them to orgasm ontheir own terms. Sade established impotence as a characteristic ofthe aging libertine: viler and viler crimes are necessary to achieveerection and ejaculation. George Steiner, perhaps to his credit, failsto appreciate the significance of the progression of lust in Sade’swork, especially in The 120 Days of Sodom: “In short: given thephysiological and nervous complexion of the human body, thenumbers of ways in which orgasm can be achieved or arrested, thetotal modes of intercourse are fundamentally finite. T he mathematicsof sex stop somewhere in the region of soixante-neuf; there are notranscendental series. ” 36 Displaying his own brand of misogyny,Steiner goes on to say that “things have remained fairly generallythe same since man first met goat and wom an. ” 37 But Sade is sayingprecisely that men become sated too soon with what they have had,whatever it is, especially woman, also goat.In Sade’s fiction, the men on top exchange and share victims in anattem pt to forge a community based on a common, if carnivorous,