The patriarchy is worn-out, stretched, and damaged. A barely pulsing body, decrepit and diminished by its own apologist, its limbs prone to mutilating, marking – with an obsessive need to draw arrows, the signage to slut around the stomach and tally marks on the back, a fixation on destruction, disuse, demanded submission and god-like role-play, the depiction of ‘whore’ seems sufficient with how easily it passes itself around. A bandwagon for fantasies, harbouring hero-like storylines, their designated role in Wall Street or Billionaire Row, continual handshakes / head-nods / shoulder pats in each suit-laden room, a tight women where each portion of her body is symmetrical, poised, ‘natural’, obedient. It is submissive to its own system, bruised knees, mulled minds; they fall short in uniformed lines, spewing guaranteed words of success, originality, their uncanny appearance, until each body is the same, and each single, warm thought is wriggled out of their body, loose tongue hanging out.
The worst name anyone can be called is a cunt. The best thing a cunt can be is small and unobtrusive1. It is best to be tight, unaware, innocent but seemingly knowledgable of his body and afraid of yours. To be forced forward over a couch, pushed back against a wall, head fisted back until the hair snaps from their scalp – the tinge of blood and petrified screams only fuel his movements. He likes the torture, the burned wrist, bruised thighs and reddened knees, rather he likes the submission, the forced obedience – which he only seeks gratification if you acknowledge your inability to escape. A one-sided sexual relationship, where his need to perform rest on the approval of your aftermath, of the applause from the lads in the other room, of the body he leaves behind.
It often starts off light, the mistreatment, that is. They see how far they can grip your shoulders in year 5, how much their hand can slide up your leg before your skirt has rises and your tinted cheeks burn in embarrassment. They leer in shops, whistling, clapping, imitating dogs with characteristically loud barking and a need to get close. They crowd in rooms with defined names of ‘locker room talk’ where their announcements focus on who they managed to fuck over the weekend, who their next prize is, how good it all felt for them. They grow up with their parents covering up each slap, shove, degradation of a young girl with ‘Boys will be Boys’ and ‘If a boy hits you it means he likes you’. High strung, their obsession evolves into images, videos, poorly written dialogue where the women needs help, and the only thing that can make her feel better is if he fucked her. They make for quotes where women feel like such: “[…] Her stomach tightens with terror and revulsion; her face becomes contorted into a grimace of self-control and fake awareness; […] She knows that they will not physically assault her or hurt her they will only do so metaphorically. What they do will impinge on her. They will demand that her thoughts be focussed on them. […] They will evaluate her market price. […] They will make her a participant in their fantasies without asking if she is willing. They will make her feel ridiculous, or grotesquely sexual, or hideously ugly. Above all, they will make her feel like a thing.”4 (The humiliation of catcalling)
Andrea Dworkin, a radical feminist and known activist toward ‘analysis on pornography’ presents her case on the male subject with her outline of the powers men have claimed, a common ritualistic antithesis to the existence of a woman. Her carefully strung words, introduce her work, written as such: “The power of men is first a metaphysical assertion of the self, an I am that exists a priori, bedrock, absolute, no embellishment or apology required, indifferent to denial or challenge. It expresses intrinsic authority. It never ceases to exist no matter how or on what grounds it is attacked; and some assert that it survives physical death”. The comprehension of the self, the male self, is vital, and as Jacques Lacan’s evaluation of the self from birth creates a potentially devastating Ego whether it be in the Mirror Stage or in the later production of life from social institutions, a man’s crucial identification of asserting the self relies in their ability to take, as Dworkin states, “[…] it is entitled to take what it wants to sustain or improve itself.” A self-righteous conviction to sustain themselves leaves them as a ‘unselfconscious parasitism’ where the first women they reap is their own mother, and the next is every women after. Dworkin’s basis of the metaphysical self later drives the man’s interaction with other powers, known as: the power of self, physical power over and against others, the power of terror, the power of naming, the powering of owning, the power of money, and the power of sex which in their entirety contribute to the appalling confluence of desirable pornography.
An internal issues driven by external factors, pornography at is simplest is ingested social conditions of power and pre-determined means of recognition at crucial points of development. As I love to mention Nancy Fraser at any given moment, her two-dimensional approach to gender injustice naturally aligns with men’s developed desire of violence and sexual abuse toward women. In Norman Mailers, The Prisoner of Sex, his objective seems misrepresented, a rather underdeveloped opinion on the scope of women’s struggles that would always unconsciously be overshadowed by the existence of a man. His references, harboured by radical feminist, unwittingly proved his point on the Women’s Liberation movement, rather the need for such a movement, as pulled quotes like, “In order to improve their condition, those individuals who are today defined as women must eradicate their own definition. Women must, in a sense, commit suicide, and the journey from womanhood to a society of individuals is hazardous” (66) connect back to Fraser developed approach mentioned above. Her approach to recognition is in favour of rejecting androcentric values of femininity for a women’s approach on their own self-representation in every global institution, creating ‘a positive relation to oneself’ while ‘obscuring links to sexist maldistribution’ (as recognition and redistribution cannot exist without both working simultaneously). Releasing the connotation of women having to reconfigure and/or redefine their internal identification of themselves, the viewpoint should shift once more to the development of the male self.
I often choose to be vulgar in these terms. There is no ‘love-making’, no ‘sex’, not even any sexuality, rather an action where the man assess what he can take from the girl for his benefit. His relationship with gaining control, often fronting his obsessive needs, he dehumanises her each time his skin makes contact with hers. Dworkin writes once more, “He fetishises her body as a whole and in its parts. He exiles her from every realm of expression outside the strictly ale-defined sexual or male-defined maternal. He forces her to becomes that things that causes erection, then holds himself helpless and powerless when he is aroused by her. His fury when she is not that thing, when she is either more or less than that thing, is intense and punishing”. The women becomes the root cause of the man’s erection, his rightful reaction he clings to, as it is not fair for her to have a body and not offer any hole or pit for him. His anger only continues when control is reaped from him and asserted to her, for a person granted no self should not have the ability to take, reap, or deny.
In collaboration with Dworkin’s power, the fifth tenet, naming, piques such interest when addressing the psychological effects of men desires and further actions. Dworkin goes on to write, “The male does not merely name women evil; he exterminates nine million women as witches because he has named women evil. He does not merely name women weak; he mutilates the female body, binds it up so that it cannot move freely, uses it as toy or ornament, keeps it caged and stunted because he has named women weak. He says that the female wants to be raped; he rapes. She resists rape; he must beat her, threaten her with death, forcibly carry her off, attack her in the night, use knife or fist; and still he says she wants it, they all do.” Such atrocities exist within the misrecognition of the female self, a central line to the deliberate naming of women’s appearance, attributes, personality, etc. to gain better control of their obsessive need with submission and power. They redefine the existence of women to the action of ‘serve,’ turning sexual abuse into supposed pleasure for both, and to what Tuana writes as: Woman have been defined sexually in terms of what pleases men; our own biology has not been properly analysed. Instead, we are fed the myth of the liberated woman and her vaginal orgasm — an orgasm which in fact does not exist. What we must do is redefine sexuality.2
As I have mentioned Norman Mailer frequently, I felt it was necessary to insert pieces around the male perspective on sex, moments where he also happen to be refuting Kate Millet, once again. Mailer declares, “[…] All part of that huge revolutionary statement that all fucking high or low, by any hole or pit, was pleasure, and pleasure was the first sweetmeat of reason. Whatever stood in the way of reason was foul. ” I have left behind talking about the objectivity of women due to its reoccurring and expectant nature in any socio-economic or political institution, yet Mailer’s words easily define such treatment. In terms of this novel, heterosexuality is the basis for relationship to where the ‘hole’ or ‘pit’ describes in his field of pleasure cannot even be granted the rights of being called a women, let alone female. It is to be automatically assumed that the root of reason, its link to pleasure for the male, is any hole that exists on the body of a women, not just those willingly “presented.” His speech on sex is expectant in its vulgar nature, continuing on the ideology that the ‘reason’ for the male derives in his ability to have sex: “Sex is reason, sex is common sense, sex is ego and prudence and scum on the sheets as the towels is missed on the pullout, sex is come by your kink, and freak will I on mine, sex is fifty whips of the clitoris pinging thought will all the authority of a broken nerve in the tooth, poor middle-class bewildered plain housewives’ libido coming in like an oil well under the paved-over barnyard of a bewildered cunt, modest churchgoing women with plastic vibrating dildo.” If I were to continue Mailer’s abhorrent monologue it would follow the lines of ‘Sex is for men. It is the duty of these plain housewives and modest churchgoing women to serve, loose cunts out, sprawled out on the bed next to the whips. They are to be given to men with their ego, their rationality, every ounce of common sense with a warm thanks after each hit to their browning body.’ Reflecting on text written by man on this topic, I often hate how effortless, even straightforward sex is. I frequently feel redundant in my statements, where each rebuttal to their statements are the same universal understanding for women: We are an object, a prize, some golden ticket that is warm enough to make them feel pleasure and easy in their decision to massacre the same body.
Valeria Solonas, author of the SCUM Manifesto, feigns that men have ruined the world and by nature women are the only solution. She proposed her manifesto as a resting guide on how to overthrow and eliminate the male sex. With its many criticism and even further terse history for Solonas herself, there was quote from the manifesto I thought to be relevant in the psychology of men and their explicit behaviour mentioned above. She writes, “In other words, the male is an incomplete female, a walking abortion, aborted at the gene state […] The male spends his life attempting to complete himself, to become female. He attempts to do this. by constantly seeking out, fraternising with and trying to live through and fuse with the female, and by claiming as his own all female characteristics — emotional strength and independence, forcefulness, dynamism, decisiveness, coolness, objectivity, assertiveness, courage, integrity, vitality, intensity, depth of character, grooviness, etc. — and projecting onto women all male traits — vanity, frivolity, triviality, weakness, etc. […] Women, in other words, don’t have penis envy, men have pussy envy” (SCUM manifesto). While Mailer finds it necessary to devote pages on how the average man doesn’t experience pussy envy, rather falling short on the whole argument all together, Solonas decisive categorisation of personality traits and attitudes leaves little interpretation, a feat I quite appreciate. While the SCUM can be perceived as misandry, there is a noticeable truth in her work, a more inquisitive approach to man-hating, if you must.
Digressing once more into pronography, Dworkin serves as a guide by reverting back to Ancient Greece, a time of prostitution and degradation, delivering a needed monologue of porn and the women becoming such: “In the male system, women are sex; sex is whore. The whore is pornē, the lowest whore, the whore who belongs to all male citizens: the slut, the cunt. Buying her is buying pornography. Having her is having pornography. Seeing her is seeing pornography. Seeing her sex, especially her genitals, is seeing pornography. Seeing her in sex is seeing a whore in sex. Using her is using pornography. Wanting her means wanting pornography. Being her meaning being pornography.” Progressing to modern times, the women left to prostitution, sex work, a rotating body on a pole for those to throw money toward, the exchange between money and sex is hardly dissimilar. It leads to a very simple pathway: The women lack a declared self by the male, she is stripped of human authority and objectified for the budding fat on her body, she is homed near fathers, uncles, distant male relatives to comment on the shortness of her skirts and mothers always forcing them to cover up, she acknowledges in every institution where she lacks a penis she is valued only for how she can service his, her suffering becomes their pleasure, a turning point to get off at, and so she is once more categorised by her family issues, her clothes tailored to her profession, even her hair colour and the way it is parted, until every action she does is labeled worthy enough to jack off to, to video, to enjoy. A summary by Dworkin is written as such: “The word whore is incomprehensible unless one is immersed in the lexicon of male domination. Men have created the group, the type, the concept, the epithet, the insult, the industry, the trade, the commodity, the reality of women as whore. Woman as whore exists within the objective and real system of male sexual domination.”
Simon De Beauvoir makes an appearance once more, a reference to her novel, Must We Burn Sade?, where she declares Sade’s sexuality to be akin to that of ‘autistic,’ which can better be defined as, “it is violent and self-obsessed; no perception of another being ever modifies its behaviour or persuades it to abandon violence as a form of self-pleasuring.”3 In connection to Mailer’s claim on the voice of reason being pleasure and to intervene on pleasure is to remove reason, the connection stands in the male’s pleasure of violence toward to women, being an allotted raison d’être as the inability to achieve one leaves the other faulty and displeasurable.
To wrap this up, I digress into the personal. The first day I entered middle school, it was mandatory to take a sex-ed class. Deciding to get it out of the way, I was in a trailer for five days a week, covered in artificial light and decaying carpet with my enthusiastic gym teacher whose monologues rides the line of professionalism and her experiences often exacerbated for our enjoyment. The boys took home on one side of the class, their remarks and intentional laughter, drove us girls on edge. Frustration was a common symptom when diagrams, videos, painful personal stories drove the class lectures, yet reflecting back almost a decade later, it is painful to know how us young girls never laughed, each hand always raised to answers on body parts, a sort of unity, formed by a needed convulsion to stay together when each class began. As mentioned before, external factors play significant roles in the way men develop an obsession for pornography, mostly that of abuse and violence, but their internal factors spurs by such exterior notions, became our external experience. That is to say of the talks mother’s have with their young daughter if someone has every touched them in their ‘no-no square,’ of conflict toward what shows the least so you don’t get followed home by the viewpoint of your collarbone, of the knowledge that you can harbour more scars upon your skin if you deny your first date a hand to your body, following an even more common occurrence of death. It all drives one another until the mere knowledge that you wield a vagina become the only currency of your needed existence.
While I should have some extensive, meaningful conclusion to all that I have managed to write down, I personally don’t think a solution can be granted. More so, I aimed to capture the loss of humanity women are granted at the need for men’s pleasure, and how such a facet concludes the lives of each women in every single institution, industry, and path in life.
To be a woman is to know death so intimately you live it a thousand times over through the existence of the life, handed to you by your mother and ended by the moving hand of every man you encounter.
1: Norman Mailer, The Prisoner of Sex (ibid); Great Sex-pectations, Isabel Owen
2: Nancy Tuana, The Speculum of Ignorance: The Women’s Health Movement and Epistemologies of Ignorance
3: Andrea Dworkin, Pornography: Men Possessing Women
4: The Woman and Her Mind: The Story of Everyday Life
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