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

Ullerstam, in The Erotic Minorities, writes that “[w]hen women’sfashion decrees high-heeled boots, many men walk the streets witha permanent erection. ” 56 “Women’s fashion” is a euphemism forfashion created by men for women; the failure to follow the dicta ofthis fashion has severe economic repercussions for any woman. Theclear, unavoidable male concern with female footwear demonstratesthe scale of male fascination with female feet. Hannah Tillich, withher characteristic good humor, noted the extraordinary effect herbare feet had on Paul Tillich:When I took off my shoes, Paulus became ecstatic about myfeet. In later years, I often said that if I hadn’t walked barefootwith him that day, we would never have married. That wasafter I had learned that his preoccupation with feet had alwaysbeen extraordinary. 57T he Chinese were preoccupied with feet for a thousand years,during which they bound and crippled the feet of young girls andthe deformed foot was the main focus of sexual interest. The boundfoot was the fetish; the binding and the sexual use of the crippledfemale were saturated with the values of bondage and conquest.T he preoccupation in the West with high-heeled shoes is no lessominous.T he sexual fetish often has a function that obscures its significanceas a magical cause of erection. The shoe, for instance, is seenby women in many ways, but almost never as a magical cause oferection in the male. Some women even wear shoes because thestreets are dirty or cold or dangerous to the bare foot. The culturallevel on which the fetish manifests varies greatly. Paul Tillich, forinstance, was a great Christian thinker. Underneath the highminded,humanistic philosophizing was a grimmer reality, asHannah Tillich revealed in her memoir:T he old man [Paul Tillich] had pushed the buttons on hiscustom-made screen. There was the familiar cross shooting upthe wall. “So fitting for a Christian and a theologian, ” she[Hannah Tillich] sneered. A naked girl hung on it, hands tied