Woman Hating: A Radical Look at Sexuality

its churches, its laws: all o f the images, institutions, and

structural mental sets which define women as hot wet

fuck tubes, hot slits.

Androgynous mythology provides us with a model

which does not use polar role definitions, where the

definitions are not, implicitly or explicitly, male = good,

female = bad, man = human, woman = other. A ndrogyny myths are multisexual mythological models. T hey go well beyond bisexuality as we know it in the scenarios

they suggest for building community, for realizing the

fullest expression o f human sexual possibility and

creativity.

Androgyny as a concept has no notion o f sexual

repression built into it. W here woman is carnality, and

carnality is evil, it stands to reason (hail reason! ) that

woman must be chained, whipped, punished, purged;

that fucking is shameful, forbidden, fearful, guilt-

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ridden. Androgyny as the basis of sexual identity and

community life provides no such imperatives. Sexual

freedom and freedom for biological women, or all persons “female, ” are not separable. That they are different, and that sexual freedom has priority, is the worst of sexist hypes. Androgyny can show the way to both.

It may be the one road to freedom open to women,

men, and that emerging majority, the rest of us.

C H A P T E R 8

Androgyny:

The Mythological Model

It is a question o f finding the right model. We are bo rn

into a world in which sexual possibilities are narrowly circumscribed: Cinderella, Snow-white, Sleeping Beauty; O, Claire, Anne; romantic love and marriage;

Adam and Eve, the Virgin Mary. These models are the

substantive message o f this culture —they define psychological sets and patterns o f social interaction which, in our adult personae, we live out. We function inside

the socioreligious scenario o f right and wrong, good

and bad, licit and illicit, legal and illegal, all saturated

with shame and guilt. We are programmed by the culture

as surely as rats are programmed to make the arduous

way through the scientist’s maze, and that programming

operates on every level o f choice and action. For example, we have seen how the romantic ethos is related to the way women dress and cosmeticize their bodies and

how that behavior regulates the literal physical mobility

o f women. Take any aspect o f behavior and one can

find the source o f the programmed response in the cultural structure. Western man’s obsessive concern with metaphysical and political freedom is almost laughable

in this context.

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