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

6P o r n o g r a p h yConsider also our spirits that break a little each timewe see ourselves in chains or full labial display for theconquering male viewer, bruised or on our knees,screaming a real or pretended pain to delight thesadist, pretending to enjoy what we don’t enjoy, tobe blind to the images of our sisters that really hauntus—humiliated often enough ourselves by the trulyobscene idea that sex and the domination of womenmust be combined.Gloria Steinem, “Exotica and Pornography”Somehow every indignity the female suffers ultimatelycomes to be symbolized in a sexuality that isheld to be her responsibility, her shame. Even theself-denigration required of the prostitute is an emotionurged upon all women, but rarely with as muchsuccess: not as frankly, not as openly, not as efficiently.It can be summarized in one four-letterword. And the word is not fuck, it’s cunt. Our selfcontemptoriginates in this: in knowing we are cunt.This is what we are supposed to be about—ouressence, our offense.Kate Millett, The Prostitution PapersI can never have my fill of killing whores.Euripides’ Orestes, in OrestesT he word pornography, derived from the ancient Greek porne andgraphos, means “writing about whores. ” Porne means “w hore, ”specifically and exclusively the lowest class of whore, which inancient Greece was the brothel slut available to all male citizens.