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

sterile word for the phenomenon that Thomas Hardy explored inThe Well-Beloved:To his Well-Beloved he had always been faithful, but she hadhad many embodiments. Each individuality known as Lucy,Jane, Flora, Evangeline, or whatnot, had been merely atransient condition of her. He did not recognize this as anexcuse or as a defence, but as a fact simply. Essentially she wasperhaps of no tangible substance; a spirit, a dream, a frenzy, aconception, an aroma, an epitomized sex, a light of the eye, aparting of the lips. 26Sometimes objectification operates on what appears to be a sillyand commonplace level, as when Ernest Hemingway had his fourthwife, Mary Welsh, dye her reddish hair blond. As she recorded:“Deeply rooted in his field of esthetics was some mystical devotionto blondness, the blonder the lovelier, I never learned why. Hewould have been ecstatic in a world of women dandelions. ” 27Sometimes objectification is clearly sinister, for instance when itsignifies, as it often does, racial hatred. As Robert Stoller pointsout, not necessarily with aversion, “. . . some people need theexcremental:. . . to choose people they consider fecal (e. g., black,Jewish, poor, uneducated, prostituted). ” 28 Stoller’s formulationrefers to those instances where objectification of the despisedcategory facilitates intercourse. Jean-Paul Sartre describes the samesort of objectification with reverse consequences: “Some men aresuddenly struck with impotence if they learn from the woman withwhom they are making love that she is a Jewess. There is a disgustfor the Jew, just as there is a disgust for the Chinese or the Negroamong certain people. ” 29 The relationship between the supposedlysilly and commonplace objectification of blonds as beautiful and thesinister objectification of those considered in some way filth is, ofcourse, a direct one: the same value system is embodied in thisrange of sexual obsession, sexual response. With this value systemin mind, it becomes clear that the love of blonds is in fact as sociallysignificant as, and inseparable from, the hatred of those who are