Right-wing Women

sun and the earth, the moon and the fixed stars and the planets, in the

rhythm of days, in the rhythm of months, in the rhythm of quarters, of

years, of decades, of centuries. Marriage is no marriage that is not a correspondence of blood.. . . The phallus is a column of blood that fills the valley of blood of a woman” (Sex, Literature, and Censorship, p. 101). “Into

says that cocksucking is a form of human cannibalism; she decries

the loss of the child who is the sperm . * Norman M ailer believes

that lost ejaculations are lost sons and on that basis disparages male

homosexuality, masturbation, and contraception. t But Anita B ryant is stupid and Norman M ailer is smart. Is the difference in the style with which these same ideas are delivered or in the penis?

M ailer says that a great w riter writes with his balls; novelist

Cynthia Ozick asks M ailer in which color ink he dips his balls.

Who is smart and who is stupid?

the womb of the primary darkness enters the ray o f ultimate light, and

time is begotten, conceived, there is the beginning o f the end. We are the

beginning of the end. And there, within the womb, we ripen upon the

beginning, till we become aware of the end” (Reflections on the Death of a

Porcupine [Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1963], p. 7).

*For instance: “W hy do you think the homosexuals are called fruits? It’s

because they eat the forbidden fruit of life.. . . That’s why homosexuality

is an abomination o f God, because life is so precious to God and it is such

a sacred thing when man and woman come together in one flesh and the

seed is fertilized— that’s the sealing of life, that’s the beginning o f life. To

interfere with that in any w ay— especially the eating o f the forbidden

fruit, the eating o f the sperm— that’s why it’s such an abomination.. . . it

makes the sin o f homosexuality all the more hideous because it’s antilife,

degenerative” (Playboy, May 1978).

* For instance: “. . . but if you’re not ready to make a baby with that

marvelous sex, then you may also be putting something down the drain

forever, which is the ability that you had to make a baby; the most marvelous thing that was in you may have been shot into a diaphragm or wasted on a pill. One might be losing one’s future” (The Presidential Papers

[New York: Bantam Books, 1964], p. 142). “O f the million spermatozoa,

there may be only two or three with any real chance o f reaching the ovum

. . . [The others] go out with no sense at all of being real spermatozoa.

They may appear to be real spermatozoa under the microscope, but after

all, a man from Mars who’s looking at us through a telescope might think

that Communist bureaucrats and FBI men look exactly the same.. . .

Even the electron microscope can’t measure the striation o f passion in a

spermatozoon. O r the force o f its w ill” (The Presidential Papers, p. 143). “I

hate contraception.. . . There’s nothing I abhor more than planned parenthood. Planned parenthood is an abomination. I’d rather have those fucking Communists over here” (The Presidential Papers, p. 131). “I think

(Footnote continues overleaf)

If an idea is stupid, presumably it is stupid whether the one who

articulates it is male or female. But that is not the case. Women,

undereducated as a class, do not have to read Aeschylus to know