when a man can loan a woman out as a carnal object, or give
her as a gift to another man or to other men. These transactions make his ownership a matter of public record and in
crease his esteem in the eyes of other men. These transactions
prove that he has not only claimed absolute authority over her
body, but that he has also entirely mastered her will. What
might have begun for the woman as submission to a particular
man out of “love” for him— and what was in that sense congruent with her own integrity as she could recognize it— must end in the annihilation of even that claim to individuality. The
individuality of ownership— “I am the one who owns”— is
claimed by the man; but nothing must be left to the woman or
in the woman on which she could base any claim to personal
dignity, even the shabby dignity of believing, “I am the exclusive property of the man who degrades me. ” In the same way, and for the same reasons, she is forced to watch the man who
possesses her exercising his sexual sadism against other women.
This robs her of that internal grain of dignity that comes
from believing, “I am the only one, ” or “I am perceived and
my singular identity is verified when he degrades
am distinguished from other women because this man has
chosen me. ”
The pornography of male sadism almost always contains an
idealized, or unreal, view of male fellowship. The utopian
male concept which is the premise of male pornography is
this—since manhood is established and confirmed over and
against the brutalized bodies of women, men need not aggress
against each other; in other words, women absorb male aggression so that men are safe from it. Each man, knowing his own deep-rooted impulse to savagery, presupposes this same impulse in other men and seeks to protect himself from it. The rituals of male sadism over and against the bodies of women
are the means by which male aggression is
man can associate with other men without the imminent danger of male aggression against his own person. The common erotic project of destroying women makes it possible for men
to unite into a brotherhood; this project is the only firm and
trustworthy groundwork for cooperation among males and all
male bonding is based on it.
This idealized view of male fellowship exposes the essentially homosexual character of male society. Men use women’s bodies to form alliances or bonds with each other. Men use
women’s bodies to achieve recognizable power which will certify male identity in the eyes of other men. Men use women’s bodies to enable them to engage in civil and peaceable social
transactions with each other. We think that we live in a heterosexual society because most men are fixated on women as sexual objects; but, in fact, we live in a homosexual society
because all credible transactions of power, authority, and authenticity take place among men; all transactions based on equity and individuality take place among men. Men are real;
therefore, all real relationship is between men; all real communication is between men; all real reciprocity is between men; all real mutuality is between men. Heterosexuality,
which can be defined as the sexual dominance of men over
women, is like an acorn—from it grows the mighty oak of the
male homosexual society, a society of men, by men, and for
men, a society in which the positivity of male community is
realized through the negation of the female, through the annihilation of women’s flesh and will.
In literary pornography, which is a distillation of life as we
know it, women are gaping holes, hot slits, fuck tubes, and the
