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

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significantly determine the quality and limits of any woman’s life.But these ideas—which change from society to society or from timeto time, or which exist in contrasting or opposing formulations atthe same time within the same society—have a common premise:the object must be that which it is supposed to be; its behavior mustbe appropriate to its function. Inappropriate behavior ruins femalebeauty. Since women are capable of everything but permittedalmost nothing (without the consequences of male revenge orgrudge), acts that enhance the sensual or aesthetic dimension of aman become virtual physical stains on a woman. The one staticstandard of female beauty is that the woman must conform to themale’s definition of her as an object with respect to function as wellas form. George Sand, for instance, attributed her own lack ofbeauty in male eyes (and therefore her own) to her intellectual andphysical activity. In so doing, she gives a still-accurate picture ofwhat the female beauty in Western culture may be and of what shemust not do:I had a sound constitution, and as a child seemed likely tobecome beautiful, a promise I did not keep. This was perhapsmy fault, since at the age when beauty blossoms I was alreadyspending my nights reading and writing.. . .Not to work so that my eyes would sparkle; not to run andplay in the sun when God’s sun attracts me so; not to walk insturdy wooden shoes for fear of deforming my ankles; to weargloves, that is, to renounce the quickness and strength of myhands; to doom myself to be clumsy and feeble; never to tiremyself, when everything urges me to use up my energy; to live,in short, under a bell jar; to be neither burned, nor chapped,nor faded before my time—such things were always impossiblefor me. 31Reading and writing, especially writing, have been seen as theantithesis of beauty in the female, as deadly as cyanide. Physicalactivity, even when prohibited, has been better tolerated.Women are reared, and often forced, to conform to the specificrequirements of ideal beauty, whatever they are at any given time.From foot-binding to waist binding to breast binding, ideal Beauty
often requires deforming of the natural body. From clitoridectomyto breast enlargement or reduction to surgically altered noses, idealbeauty often requires mutilation of the natural body. From hairdyeing to face painting to necessary ornamentation (for instance,high-heeled shoes), ideal beauty often requires distortion or denialof the natural body. Ranging from idiocy to atrocity, any and allstrategies are employed so that the natural female body will fit themale idea of ideal female beauty.T he mystification of female beauty in male culture knows nolimit but one: somehow the beauty herself ends up dead ormutilated. Even an unregenerate materialist like H erbert Marcusecannot stay earthbound when expostulating on beauty personifiedin the female— in this case Medusa, cut into pieces by Perseus:As desired object, the beautiful pertains to the domain of theprimary instincts, Eros and Thanatos. T he mythos links theadversaries: pleasure and terror. Beauty has the power to checkaggression: it forbids and immobilizes the aggressor. T hebeautiful Medusa petrifies him who confronts her. “Poseidon,the god with azure locks, slept with her in a soft meadow on abed with springtime flowers” [Hesiod, Theogony, trans. N ormanO. Brown]. She is slain by Perseus, and from hertruncated body springs the winged horse Pegasus, symbol ofpoetic imagination. 12Poetry, the genre of purest beauty, was born of a truncated woman:her head severed from her body with a sword, a symbolic penis, sothat poetry is born not only of a dead woman but of one sadisticallymutilated. Poe, whose debt to Perseus cannot be overestimated,wrote that “[t]he death of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, themost poetical topic in the world. ” ” T he function of beauty in therealm of the so-called erotic was further elucidated by Bataille whenhe wrote: “Beauty is desired in order that it may be befouled; notfor its own sake, but for the joy brought by the certainty ofprofaning it. ”*4 Beauty, then, consistently has meaning in thesphere of female death or violation. An object is always destroyedin the end by its use when it is used to the fullest and enough; and
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P L U M EP u b l i s h e d b y t h
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F or Jo h n S toltenbergIn M em ory
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C o n t e n t sIntroductionxiiiPref
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sires; and I appealed to them, whet
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who has been bought and sold. She m
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esist; they disappear when the dang
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When he arrived, he informed me tha
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mom’s. [He came after her with a
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word to make it denote a story, pro
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T he burden of proof will be on tho
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new social truth emerged, one that
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“we”? What is the “freedom
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is mine, ” Therese Stanton wrote
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who were the same, never of those w
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the pictures. Instead, some of us u
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us—let us be dumb and die. ”181
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eciprocity, whereas pornography inv
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or scrutiny, that there is an equat
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culture, though it is smothered in
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women evil; he exterminates nine mi
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was to extend in time, to be not on
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adult, impervious to the ambivalenc
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culture, he is a giant, enlarged by
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the dead center of the car hood and
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hunter, think of seals clubbed to d
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in the larger culture, also indicat
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eventually come from the shower. Th
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limited framework of male sexual va
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the greatest and best test of mascu
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another female’s cunt. ” The hu
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studio. Narrator wonders whether he
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sleep. Rod wakes to find Larry assf
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Lesbians are in each vignette. In t
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distinctly pinkish. One of her hand
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Men and BoysJust so docs Miller ret
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The boy will be a witness as the fa
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Body, philosopher Norman O. Brown,
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penis signifies humanity. Though th
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Throughout male culture, the penis
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aggression of the aggressor and use
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does not exist; rape of the sacred
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male who cannot change his devalued
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Male perceptions of women are askew
Page 94 and 95: The solution, as Dinnerstein sees i
Page 96 and 97: other century. There are only the o
Page 98 and 99: 3The Marquis de Sade ( 1 7 4 0 —1
Page 100 and 101: most of the women and girls he abus
Page 102 and 103: Sade took Keller to his private hou
Page 104 and 105: another order was issued for his ar
Page 106 and 107: sporadically). O n Sade’s release
Page 108 and 109: perhaps fourteen years old, essenti
Page 110 and 111: With his usual perception about him
Page 112 and 113: power of the biographers to define
Page 114 and 115: esistance from “puritanical” or
Page 116 and 117: had the authority to spend her mone
Page 118 and 119: degree, is authentic because a man
Page 120 and 121: collection of Sade’s work, point
Page 122 and 123: sexuality. The shared victim result
Page 124 and 125: Sade himself, in a footnote to Juli
Page 126 and 127: A daughter’s turning on her mothe
Page 128 and 129: Sade’s work in exciting the imagi
Page 130 and 131: is movable property— cattle, wive
Page 132 and 133: The whole world outside man himself
Page 134 and 135: image of her while being an externa
Page 136 and 137: falling off a log for her. It is ea
Page 138 and 139: leave her alone. The moment we leav
Page 140 and 141: Brain is absolutely clear that “[
Page 142 and 143: sterile word for the phenomenon tha
Page 146 and 147: in the realm of female beauty, the
Page 148 and 149: The prostitute is seen as the antit
Page 150 and 151: ment. It can also be seen as the cu
Page 152 and 153: in other words, ” writes Becker,
Page 154 and 155: Ullerstam, in The Erotic Minorities
Page 156 and 157: Mother, whore, beauty, abomination,
Page 158 and 159: own. H er race is ambiguous. From h
Page 160 and 161: weapon in her hand. Still, the olde
Page 162 and 163: W ith both the male and the female,
Page 164 and 165: is propaganda, whether used for soc
Page 166 and 167: it that way. ” ’7 The weak are
Page 168 and 169: means that it also generates incred
Page 170 and 171: the poisonous materials which are u
Page 172 and 173: Willy linked the experience of blac
Page 174 and 175: This cautious statement avoids the
Page 176 and 177: are not really distinct because the
Page 178 and 179: maintained; otherwise— especially
Page 180 and 181: variable. It is determined more by
Page 182 and 183: aised slightly off the floor. The p
Page 184 and 185: ut she belongs to the Anglo boyfrie
Page 186 and 187: something important for his complic
Page 188 and 189: value to possession of the woman. T
Page 190 and 191: confusing. She is without purpose.
Page 192 and 193: sex. Force is sex. The woman who wa
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United States, expressed the weary
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head. They parked near the corpse a
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made her lock herself in the wardro
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her robe or back or head while he w
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sat him in a wooden armchair. Simon
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among intellectuals: he writes of h
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ing, or even alerting, conscience.
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followers conclude that women have
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y the human female never matched hi
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programs for combating what is call
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obvious sort of commercialized pros
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When the mates discover them in coi
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scientists, that lip was just looki
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means that force was not used in co
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encouragement was nothing of the so
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vs. adults, ” the sexual act was
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In a study specifically of force us
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T he porne was the cheapest (in the
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the porneia as the technology widen
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why rape is absurd and incomprehens
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ecommendation that legal persecutio
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confined to the cultural level of a
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In the introduction to Black Fashio
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her between her black loins. She sc
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Robert Grey does not want to hurt h
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use of her sex is the use of her sk
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hymen [laughs] so he can’t take i
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enlarged uterus displaces the rest
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ers as whores— completes the pict
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And inside this system, women are p
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Women Against Sexist Violence in Po
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3. John Stoltenberg, “Eroticism a
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26. Gorer, Life and Ideas, p. 37.27
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18. Otto Weininger, Sex and Charact
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58. Ibid., p. 14.59. Herbert Marcus
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43. Ibid., p. 120.44. Ibid., p. 63.
Page 266 and 267:
9. John Wolfenden, Report of the Co
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Addams, Jane. A New Conscience and
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Symons. New York: Albert & Charles
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York: W. VV. Norton & Co., 1978.Bur
Page 274 and 275:
Cooke, Joanne; Charlotte Bunch-Week
Page 276 and 277:
Didion, Joan. The White Album. New
Page 278 and 279:
Fedder, Ruth. A Girl Grows Up. New
Page 280 and 281:
Fuchs, Estelle. The Second Season:
Page 282 and 283:
Goffman, Erving. Relations in Publi
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York: Random House, Vintage Books,
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Ivinskaya, Olga. A Captive of Time.
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Youth. New York: W. W. Norton & Co.
Page 290 and 291:
Lewis, Oscar. Tbe Children of Sanch
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--------- . A Woman's Life. Transla
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Nehrich, Richard B., Jr.; Glenn I.
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of the Commission on Obscenity and
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New York: New York University Press
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Shiloh, Ailon, ed. Studies in Human
Page 302 and 303:
Strindberg, August. Inferno and Fro
Page 304 and 305:
Wald, Karen. Children of Che. Palo
Page 306 and 307:
A r t ic l e s , I n t e r v ie w s
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--------- . “The Lie. ” New Wom
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Kristol, Irving. “T he Shadow of
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“Playboy Gives First Amendment Aw
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IndexAbortionconstraints on rights
Page 316 and 317:
Christ, 53Civilization, as tamer of
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FreedomBrown’s definition of, 52a
Page 320 and 321:
Lerner, Max, 208-9Lesbiansin / Love
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and women as instruments,109-13“O
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Women, ” 160-64Brain on, 112celeb
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Snuff artist, Sade as, 92Snuff film
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