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Woman Hating
defined, is the perversion of the mystic experience; it is
by its very nature demonic because its goal is power,
its means are violence and oppression. It spills the blood
of its victim and in doing so estranges itself from life-
giving union. O’s lover thinks that she gives herself
freely but if she did not, he would take her anyway.
Their relationship is the incarnation of demonic possession:
Thus he would possess her as a god possesses his
creatures, whom he lays hold of in the guise of a monster or bird, of an invisible spirit or a state of ecstasy.
He did not wish to leave her. The more he surrendered
her, the more he would hold her dear. The fact that
he gave her was to him a proof, and ought to be for
her as well, that she belonged to him: one can only
give what belongs to you. He gave her only to reclaim
her immediately, to reclaim her enriched in his eyes,
like some common object which had been used for some
divine purpose and has thus been consecrated. For a
long time he had wanted to prostitute her, and he was
delighted to feel that the pleasure he was deriving
was even greater than he had hoped, and that it bound
him to her all the more so because, through it, she
would be more humiliated and ravished. Since she
loved him, she could not help loving whatever derived
from him. 6
A precise corollary of possession is prostitution. The
prostitute, the woman as object, is defined by the usage
to which the possessor puts her. Her subjugation is the
signet o f his power. Prostitution means for the woman
the carnal annihilation o f will and choice, but for the
man it once again signifies an increase in power, pure
and simple. To call the power o f the possessor, which he
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demonstrates by playing superpimp, divine, or to confuse it with ecstasy or communion, is to grossly misunderstand. “All the mouths that had probed her mouth, all the hands that had seized her breasts and
belly, all the members that had been thrust into her had
so perfectly provided the living proof that she was
worthy o f being prostituted and had, so to speak, sanctified her. ” 7 O f course, it is not O who is sanctified, but Rene, or Sir Stephen, or the others, through her.
O ’s prostitution is a vicious caricature o f old-world
religious prostitution. T h e ancient sacral prostitution
o f the Hebrews, Greeks, Indians, et al., was the ritual
expression o f respect and veneration for the powers o f
fertility and generation. T h e priestesses/prostitutes o f
the temple were literal personifications o f the life energy
