Our Blood: Prophecies and Discourses on Sexual Politics

blockade, and my plan was to swim around it.

In April 1974 my first book-length work of feminist

theory, Woman Hating, was published. Before its publication I had had trouble. I had been offered magazine assignments that were disgusting. I had been offered a great

deal of money to write articles that an editor had already

outlined to me in detail. They were to be about women or

sex or drugs. They were stupid and full of lies. For instance,

I was offered $1500 to write an article on the use of

barbiturates and amphetamines by suburban women. I was

to say that this use of drugs constituted a hedonistic

rebellion against the dull conventions of sterile housewifery,

that women used these drugs to turn on and swing and have

a wonderful new life-style. I told the editor that I suspected

women used amphetamines to get through miserable days

and barbiturates to get through miserable nights. I suggested, amiably I thought, that I ask the women who use the drugs why they use them. I was told flat-out that the article

would say what fun it was. I turned down the assignment.

This sounds like great rebellious fun—telling establishment

types to go fuck themselves with their fistful of dollars—but

when one is very poor, as I was, it is not fun. It is instead

profoundly distressing. Six years later I finally made half

that amount for a magazine piece, the highest I have ever

been paid for an article. I had had my chance to play ball

and I had refused. I was too naive to know that hack writing

is the only paying game in town. I believed in “literature, ”

“principles, ” “politics, ” and “the power of fine writing to

change lives. ” When I refused to do that article and others,

I did so with considerable indignation. The indignation

marked me as a wild woman, a bitch, a reputation reinforced during editorial fights over the content of Woman Hating, a reputation that has haunted and hurt me: not hurt

my feelings, but hurt my ability to make a living. I am in

fact not a “lady, ” not a “lady writer, ” not a “sweet young

thing. ” What woman is? My ethics, my politics, and my

style merged to make me an untouchable. Girls are supposed to be invitingly touchable, on the surface or just under.

I thought that the publication of Woman Hating would

establish me as a writer of recognized talent and that then I

would be able to publish serious work in ostensibly serious

magazines. I was wrong. The publication of Woman Hating,

about which I was jubilant, was the beginning of a decline

that continued until 1981 when Pornography: Men Possessing Women was published. The publisher of Woman Hating did not like the book: I am considerably understating here.

I was not supposed to say, for example, “Women are

raped. ” I was supposed to say, “Green-eyed women with

one leg longer than the other, hair between the teeth,

French poodles, and a taste for sauteed vegetables are

raped occasionally on Fridays by persons. ” It was rough. I