Woman Hating: A Radical Look at Sexuality

direct proportion to how fucked up their own lives are

— that fuck up is the role they must play, the creative

possibilities they must abort. Greer surely knows that

and must speak to it. Women who walk, as opposed to

those who take taxis or drive (another relevant class

distinction), are constantly harassed, often threatened

with violence, often violated. That is the situation which

is the daily life o f women.

It is true, and very much to the point, that women

are objects, commodities, some deemed more expensive

than others —but it is only by asserting one’s humanness

every time, in all situations, that one becomes someone

as opposed to something. That, after all, is the core o f

our struggle.

Rape, o f course, does have its apologists. Norman

Mailer posits it, along with murder, as the content o f

heroism. It is, he tells us in The Presidential Papers,

morally superior to masturbation. Eldridge Cleaver

tells us that it is an act o f political rebellion — he “practiced” on Black women so that he could rape white women better. Greer joins the mystifying chorus when

she posits rape as an act o f aggression against property

(a political anticapitalist action no less) and suggests

that it might also be an act o f psychological rebellion

against the ominous, and omnipresent, mother. * Rape

*

G reer changed her ideas on rape. Cf. Germ aine G reer, “Seduction Is a

Four-Letter W ord, ” Playboy, vol. 20, no. 1 (January 1973).

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Woman Hating

is, in fact, simple straightforward heterosexual behavior

in a male-dominated society. It offends us when it does,

which is rarely, only because it is male-female relation

without sham —without the mystifying romance of the

couple, without the civility of a money exchange. It

happens in the home as well as on the streets. It is not

a function of capitalism — it is a function of sexism.

What Greer contributes to Suck, and to its women

readers who might look to her for cogent analysis and

deep imagination, is mostly confusion. That confusion

stems from an identification with men which too often

blunts her perception of the real, empirical problems

women face in a sexist society. That confusion manifests

itself most destructively in the patently untrue notion

that a woman who fucks freely is free.

The main body of Suck is pornographic fiction. It is

in the fiction that we find a repetition of events, situations, images, and attitudes which most effectively reinforce conventional sexist values. “Congo Crystal Hotel, ” a story by Mel Clay, is typical of Suck fiction.