Woman Hating: A Radical Look at Sexuality

Men have always known, in that existential-accord-

ing-to-Mailer way, that women not only need IT but

want IT, rape-brand-whip orchestrated. It was always

obvious to them —a woman's “virtue” is merely facade,

her reluctance is merely tactic. What matters is that she

wants to be fucked —she is defined by her need to be

fucked. We find in Suck these sacrosanct male fantasies

applied with true counter-culture egalitarianism: to

all beings “feminine, ” whether women or gay men.

Projection has come home to roost and cock is crowing

like never before —but, like the cult of cunt before it,

the cult of cock is colored with the washes o f unresolved

guilt and pure sadism. The onus and hatred of male

homosexuality is heavy in Suck — ugly, heavy, and ever

present.

Suck has in some ways aligned itself with the cause

of gay liberation. Suck 4 printed the “Gay Guide to

Europe, ” a list of gay clubs, bars, pissoirs, etc., to alleviate the chronic need for information felt by the traveling gay man. Suck 6 has a story entitled “A Week

in the Fondle Park, ” in which a man extols the quantity

of cock sucked in one idyllic week in Amsterdam’s

central park, which had been turned over to longhaired dopers and freaks in the summer of 1971. But in Suck, as in the parent culture which maligns any

Woman as Victim: Suck

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deviation from the ole hetero norm, the hatred attached

to the queer is very apparent.

“T h e Suction Game” is the story o f two men, one

dark-skinned, one light-skinned, one overt, one latent —

a typical colonial situation, ripe for exploitation. T h e

acknowledged (overt) queer has the typical misogynist

point o f view:

Carlos explained that the male body was nature’s

perfection and how clean men were compared to

women. 10

T o the n orm ally) self-enhancing John Wayne male, the

above is self-evident and always has been. In the context o f the homosexual encounter it has added significance. It reinforces the maleness o f both partners. It makes the homosexual act an affirmation o f manhood.

The insecurities which a homosexual identity conjures

up in our culture, however, are hardly resolved through

the putting down o f women. “Cocksucker” is a term o f

insult and abuse —it means queer. Yet it is obviously

absurd for a man to believe that what is pleasurable to

him when done by a woman is disgusting when done by

a man. T h e distinction here is not so very subtle: the

political meaning o f the two acts, heterosexual fellatio

and homosexual fellatio, is different. T he form er makes

the man clearly the master —the woman kneels at the

foot o f the sheikh. T he latter makes the man queer—