Read Online Woman Hating by Andrea Dworkin - Free Book Online

opposed to something. That, after all, is the core of our struggle.
    Rape, of course, does have its apologists. Norman Mailer posits it, along with murder, as the content of heroism. It is, he tells us inThe Presidential Papers, morally superior to masturbation. Eldridge Cleaver tells us that it is an act of political rebellion — he “practiced” on Black women so that he could rape white women better. Greer joins the mystifying chorus when she posits rape as an act of aggression against property (a political anticapitalist action no less) and suggests that it might also be an act of psychological rebellion against the ominous, and omnipresent, mother. * Rape is, in fact, simple straightforward heterosexual behavior in a male-dominated society. It offends us when it does, which is rarely, only because it is male-female relation without sham —without the mystifying romance of the couple, without the civility of a money exchange. It happens in the home as well as on the streets. It is not a function of capitalism — it is a function of sexism.
    *Greer changed her ideas on rape. Cf. Germaine Greer, “Seduction Is a Four-Letter Word, ”   Playboy,   vol. 20, no. 1 (January 1973).
    What Greer contributes toSuck, and to its women readers who might look to her for cogent analysis and deep imagination, is mostly confusion. That confusion stems from an identification with men which too often blunts her perception of the real, empirical problems women face in a sexist society. That confusion manifests itself most destructively in the patently untrue notion that a woman who fucks freely is free.
    The main body ofSuckis pornographic fiction. It is in the fiction that we find a repetition of events, situations, images, and attitudes which most effectively reinforce conventional sexist values. “Congo Crystal Hotel, ” a story by Mel Clay, is typical ofSuckfiction. Two men watch a pornographic movie. They have a sadistic sexual encounter. One of the men, Beno, goes off to meet Carol, a woman he has known previously. He forces her to fuck and suck two Blacks, who violate her in every way. Carol’s husband intrudes. Beno forces Carol to suck her husband’s cock and as her husband comes, Beno shoots him. An example of the purple prose:
In a sudden spasm the man clutches her head and arches his back and as the beginning sensations of orgasm overtake him Beno pulls the trigger, the explosion drowning out the sound of Carol gulping on his come and his brains splashing against the ceiling. 5
    Carol is announced: “he could smell her even before he saw her. ” 6 The rape which Beno forces on her is, of course, the vehicle of her recognition that she loves him, because only he could do that to her. The story contains incredible violence. Beno whips his male lover, Carol is beaten and raped, the husband is killed. The cocks of the Blacks are, of course, gigantic tools of pleasure and pain. There is little to distinguish “Congo Crystal Hotel” from straight pornography, except for the awful quality of the writing. The vision of woman is precisely the same: insatiable cunt, to be violated and abused; the sadomasochistic content is the same; even the exaggerated genitalia of the Blacks participate in the worst of the pornographic tradition.
    “Sex Angels, ” a story by Ron Reid, chronicles the adventures of Helen and Tony, that is, a gangbang arranged by Helen with a bunch of tough bikers. Helen is “high class cunt who was soon to be stuffed with their working class cocks. ” 7 The class analysis is central to the story: “the social gulf accentuated the mounting thrill already high with the knowledge that the young husband was to observe his wife’s gangbanging by the pack. ” 8 The culmination of the event, after Helen has been thoroughly used, is described like this:
now hot wet fuck tube —hot slit, go on let see you fuck your wife now. we’ve all been through her. 9
    Helen, whose resemblance to that other well-known