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

departm ent stores. But the dummies in different outfits werehuman beings. I was intrigued. This was the dream street ofmale desire and female submission. Here was the simplydressed girl looking like a neighbor or the sleeping beauty inpink veils; here was the girl with high boots and a whip or thelady in violet velvet; here was the girl begging for punishment.It was a window into hidden tru th . 1*T he advantage of the living dummy over the inert kind wasexpressed by the French eroticist Theophile Gautier in his naughtynovel, Mademoiselle de Maupin, first published in 1835. T he poetprotagonistD ’Albert says: “A woman possesses this unquestionableadvantage over a statue, that she turns of herself in the directionyou wish, whereas you are obliged to walk round the statue andplace yourself at the point of sight—which is fatiguing. ” 14 Awoman, D ’Albert claims, is “a toy which is more intelligent than ifit were ivory or gold, ” this superior intelligence demonstrated in thefact that it “gets up of itself if we let it fall. ” 15T he inevitable and intrinsic cruelty involved in turning a personinto an object should be apparent, but since this constricting, thisundermining, this devaluing, is normative, no particular cruelty isrecognized in it. Instead, there is only normal and natural cruelty—the normal and natural sadism of the male, happily complementedby the normal and natural masochism of the female. Each psychologistputs this view forth in his own quiet, unassuming way.Anthony Storr, considered an expert on violence, suggests that “[i]tis probably true that men are generally more ‘sadistic’ and womenmore masochistic. ’. . . there are many women who nag unm ercifullyin the hope that their man will finally treat them with theforce that they find exciting. ” 16T he object is allowed to desire if shedesires to be an object: to be formed; especially to be used. T he logcan desire to be cut down to size, chopped, rolled, burned: formedand used in ways appropriate to its nature. As Anthony M.Ludovici wrote in response to the first wave of feminism:. . . I cannot uphold the view that Woman has any destiny towork out for herself. She has no “true W omanhood” that hasyet to be sought and found while we leave her alone. We cannot