Woman Hating: A Radical Look at Sexuality

Suck takes a relevant, respectable stand.

(Important digression. As late as October 1961,

Lenny Bruce was arrested because in one o f his routines

he used the verb “to come' and talked about cock-

sucking. He was arrested for the crime of obscenity.

Bruce described the bust:

I was arrested for obscenity in San Francisco for using

a ten letter word which is sort of chic. I’m not going to

repeat the word tonite. It starts with a “c. ” They said

it was vernacular for a favorite homosexual practice —

which is weird, cause I don't relate that word to homosexuals. It relates to any contemporary woman I know or would know or would love or would marry. 1

Bruce was busted in San Francisco (obscenity), Philadelphia (possession), Los Angeles (possession), Hollywood (obscenity), Chicago (obscenity), and not permitted to enter England or Australia. As late as 1964

Bruce was busted for obscenity in New York City, in

1965 he was declared a legally bankrupt pauper, and

on August 3, 1966, he died in Los Angeles. )

Suck also makes a contribution in printing pictures

of cunt, though here the praise must be severely qualified. Photos o f cunt are rare. All the rest we have seen —

siliconed tits, leering smiles, Playboy's version of pubic

hair. But having seen a remarkable movie by Anne

Severson and Shelby Kennedy2 in which a fixed camera

catalogues the cunts of many different women, all ages,

Woman as Victim: Suck

81

races, with all sorts o f sexual experience, one gets a

comprehension o f the superficiality o f the Suck cunt

photos. Imagine a catalogue o f still photos o f people’s

faces —the colors, textures, indentations, the unique

character o f each. It is the same with cunts, and it would

be fine if Suck would show us that. It does not.

Germaine Greer once wrote for Suck — she was an

editor—and her articles, the token women’s articles,

were sometimes strong; her voice was always authentic.

Her attempt was to bring women into closer touch with

unaltered female sexuality and place that sexuality

clearly, unapologetically, within the realm o f humanity:

women, not as objects, but as human beings, truly a

revolutionary concept.

But Greer has another side which allies itself with

the worst o f male chauvinism and it is that side which, I

believe, made her articles acceptable to Suck's editors

and Suck acceptable to her. In an interview in the Am erikan Screw, reprinted in Suck under the tide “Germaine:

‘I am a W hore, ’ ” she stated:

Ideally, you’ve got to the stage where you really could

ball everyone —the fat, the blind, the foolish, the impotent, the dishonest.

We have to rescue people who are already dead.