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

easily perceived. For instance, T ripp consistently maintains thatwife beating is an expression of an erotic, exciting sexual antagonism.So did Havelock Ellis, and this assertion is common in theruminations of the male sexual philosophers. In describing thesystematic devaluing of the female, T ripp can point to the sexualbenefits of this devaluing. It increases sexual antagonism, whichincreases sexual pleasure:From this vantage point it is evident that the many derogationsof women are more than merely the incidental offshoots ofmale supremacy and female “inferiority. ” They also qualify ascontrivances that sharpen the breach between the sexes,increase the tension (resistance) between them, and add spice totheir relations. 36Has a liberal, serious thinker ever postulated that racial insults orthe violence of white supremacy adds “spice” to race relations?Instead, the thinker (in this case Tripp) is more circumspect: “T heclash between social levels, between races, between partners whoare dispositionally mismatched can all lead to arousing situations aseasily, or more easily, than contacts between conventionallycompatible partners. ” 37Stoller carries the notion of antagonism, which he calls hostilityor resistance, into the realm of danger:T o me, “excitement” implies anticipation in which one alternateswith extreme rapidity between expectation of danger andjust about equal expectation of avoidance of danger, and insome cases, such as in eroticism, of replacing danger withpleasure. 38T he heightening of sexual pleasure in the male system demands aheightening of antagonism, an intensification of danger— and in aracist society, racial conflict represents the most keenly felt, themost dangerous, form of antagonism: this alone is enough to give itits sexual value in the male system. In rigid class societies, class hasthe same value. Possession of the woman is presented as the reasonfor the antagonism, whereas in fact it is the antagonism that gives