Woman Hating: A Radical Look at Sexuality

woman-hating and the fact of the 9 million deaths,

demonstrates the power of the myth of feminine evil,

reveals how it dominated the dynamics of a culture,

shows the absolute primal terror that women, as carnal

beings, hold for men.

We see in the text of the Malleus not only the fear of

loss of potency or virility, but of the genitals themselves — a dread of the loss of cock and balls. The reason for this fear can perhaps be located in the nature of

the sex act per se: men enter the vagina hard, erect;

men emerge drained of vitality, the cock flaccid. The

loss of semen, and the feeling of weakness which is its

biological conjunct, has extraordinary significance to

men. Hindu tradition, for instance, postulates that men

must either expel the semen and then vacuum it back

up into the cock, or not ejaculate at all. For those Western men for whom orgasm is simultaneous with ejaculation, sex must be a most literal death, with

the mysterious, muscled, pulling vagina the death-

dealer.

To locate the origins of the myth of feminine evil

in male castration and potency fears is not so much to

participate in the Freudian world view as it is to accept

and apply the anthropologist's method and link up

Western Judeo-Christian man with Australian, African,

or Trobriand primitives. To do so is to challenge the

egotism which informs our historical attitude toward

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ourselves and which would separate us from the rest o f

the species. T here is nothing to indicate that “civilization, ” “culture, ” and/or Christianity have in any way moderated the primal male dread o f castration. Quite

the contrary, history might even be defined as the study

o f the concrete expression o f that dread.

T h e Christians in their manifold variety were continuing the highly developed Jewish tradition o f misogyny, patriarchy, and sexist suppression, alternatively

known as the Garden-of-Eden-Hype. T h e Adam and

Eve creation myth is the basic myth o f man and woman,

creation, death, and sex. T here is another Jewish legend, namely that o f Adam-Lilith, which never assumed that place because it implies other, nonsexist, nonpatri-archal values. T h e Genesis account o f Adam and Eve in

Eden involves, according to Hays, three themes: “the

transition from primitive life to civilization, the coming

o f death, and the acquisition o f knowledge. ” 24 As Hays

points out, Adam has been told by God the Father that

if he eats from the T ree o f Knowledge he will die. T h e

serpent tells Eve that she and Adam will not die. T h e

serpent, it turns out, told the immediate truth: Adam

and Eve do not keel over dead; rather, they know each

other carnally.

Sex is, biblically speaking, the sole source o f civilization, death, and knowledge. As punishment, Adam must go to work and Eve must bear children. We have

here the beginning o f the human family and the work