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

a colonialized body. According to Stoller, Belle chooses sexualmasochism because through it she trium phs over men whomultimately she controls because she is the provocation to which theyrespond. This is an expression “of her own oversexed nature. ” Shewants it, they all do.T he limitless possibilities of female choice are articulated withslightly different emphasis by Georges Bataille:. . . prostitution is the logical consequence of the feminineattitude. In so far as she is attractive, a woman is a prey tomen’s desire. Unless she refuses completely because she isdetermined to remain chaste, the question is at what price andunder what circumstances will she yield. But if the conditionsare fulfilled she always offers herself as an object. Prostitutionproper only brings in a commercial element. 29Bataille introduces the all-or-nothing variant: she can choose to bechaste or she can choose to be whore. T he assertion that she haseven this choice—that she can choose chastity— ignores the wholehistory of the world, in which rape is the perpetual sexual motion ofthe male. Any so-called choice for sex is a choice for prostitution.Since she is prey “in so far as she is attractive, ” she can choosechastity only insofar as she is not attractive. Once raped she is, ipsofacto, attractive because she has attracted a predator. Once raped,retroactively speaking, she has chosen—chosen her prostitutenature. Since she is prey “in so far as she is attractive, ” forced sexreveals the prostitute nature that is her true nature “in so far as sheis attractive. ” If a man wants her and takes her, she is a whore andhas made a choice. N o m atter what is done to or with her, the ideais that she has chosen her “price” and “circumstances. ”T he meaning of force is also obscured by the liberal view, whichgrants that there is a social tendency to degrade women but assumesthat women who want to resist can do so successfully. This meansthat women who are in fact mercilessly degraded bring it onthemselves. In The Homosexual Matrix, a book saturated withmisogyny and condescension toward all women, homosexual ornot, C. A. T rip p insists that “. . . a woman’s status is highly