Woman Hating: A Radical Look at Sexuality

That crime, of course, is biological womanhood. Jesus

died for us once, the crucifixion he suffered sufficed, we

Woman at Victim: The Image

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are told, for all time. Anne, Claire, O, all will be forced

spread-eagle on the cross until death releases them, and

then again. No cruelty will ever be proper atonement

for their crime, and thus set the rest o f us free.

Christianity has one other image o f woman, Mary,

the Madonna, the Virgin Mother. Jean de Berg dreams

o f Claire as the Madonna shortly before he beats and

fucks her. Surely that demonstrates the psychic significance, in a sexist culture, o f the Madonna figure.

Just as Anne on the cross was a profanation o f the

sacred nature o f women, so is the concept, the Lie,

o f a virgin mother, separate from her cunt, separate

from nature, innocent by virtue o f the abandonment

o f her real, and most honorable, sexuality.

T he worship o f virginity must be posited as a real

sexual perversion, crueler and more insidious than

those sex models condemned by the culture as perverse.

T h e Christian institutionalization o f that worship,

its cultivation and refinement, have aborted women in

the development and expression o f natural sexuality by

giving credence to that other: woman as whore. T h e

dualism o f good and evil, virgin and whore, lily and

rose, spirit and nature is inherent in Christianity and

finds its logical expression in the rituals o f sadomasochism. The Christian emphasis on pain and suffering as the path to transcendence and salvation is the very

meat o f most sadomasochistic pornography, just as the

Christian definition o f woman is its justification. Lenny

Bruce expressed it very simply when he said this:

I understand that intellectually — that a woman

who sleeps with a different guy every week is a better

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Woman Haling

Christian than the virgin. Because she has the capacity

to kiss and hug fifty guys a year. And that's what that

act is —kissing and hugging. You can’t do it to anyone

you’re mad at. If you’re just a bit bugged with them,

you can’t make it.

So that chick who's got that much love for all her

fellowmen that she can make it with fifty guys a year—

that’s intellectually; but emotionally, I don’t want to

be the fifty-first guy. Cause I learned my lesson early,

man. The people told me, “This is the way it is, Virgin

is Good, Virgin is Good. ” Yeah, that’s really weird. 13