The Female Man

II

Then I turned into a man.

This was slower and less dramatic.

I think it had something to do with the knowledge you suffer when you’re an outsider—I mean suffer; I do not mean undergo or employ or tolerate or use or enjoy or catalogue or file away or entertain or possess or have .

That knowledge is, of course, the perception of all experience through two sets of eyes, two systems of value, two habits of expectation, almost two minds. This is supposed to be an infallible recipe for driving you gaga. Chasing the hare Reconciliation with the hounds of Persistence—but there, you see? I’m not Sir Thomas Nasshe (or Lady Nasshe, either, tho’ she never wrote a line, poor thing). Rightaway you start something, down comes the portcullis. Blap. To return to knowledge, I think it was seeing the lords of the earth at lunch in the company cafeteria that finally did me in; as another friend of mine once said, men’s suits are designed to inspire confidence even if the men can’t. But their shoes—! Dear God. And their ears! Jesus. The innocence, the fresh-faced naivete of power. The childlike simplicity with which they trust their lives to the Black men who cook for them and their self-esteem and their vanity and their little dangles to me, who everything for them. Their ignorance, their utter, happy ignorance. There was the virgin We sacrificed on the company quad when the moon was full. (You thought a virgin meant a girl, didn’t you?) There was Our thinking about housework—dear God, scholarly papers about housework, what could be more absurd! And Our parties where we pinched and chased Each Other. Our comparing the prices of women’s dresses and men’s suits. Our push-ups. Our crying in Each Other’s company. Our gossip. Our trivia. All trivia, not worth an instant’s notice by any rational being. If you see Us skulking through the bushes at the rising of the moon, don’t look. And don’t wait around. Watch the wall, my darling, you’d better. Like all motion, I couldn’t feel it while it went on, but this is what you have to do:

To resolve contrarieties, unite them in your own person.

This means: in all hopelessness, in terror of your life, without a future, in the sink of the worst despair that you can endure and will yet leave you the sanity to make a choice—take in your bare right hand one naked, severed end of a high-tension wire. Take the other in your left hand. Stand in a puddle. (Don’t worry about letting go; you can’t.) Electricity favors the prepared mind, and if you interfere in this avalanche by accident you will be knocked down dead, you will be charred like a cutlet, and your eyes will be turned to burst red jellies, but if those wires are your own wires—hang on. God will keep your eyes in your head and your joints knit one to the other. When She sends the high voltage alone, well, we’ve all experienced those little shocks—you just shed it over your outside like a duck and it does nothing to you—but when She roars down high voltage and high amperage both, She is after your marrow-bones; you are making yourself a conduit for holy terror and the ecstasy of Hell. But only in that way can the wires heal themselves. Only in that way can they heal you. Women are not used to power; that avalanche of ghastly strain will lock your muscles and your teeth in the attitude of an electrocuted rabbit, but you are a strong woman, you are God’s favorite, and you can endure; if you can say “yes, okay, go on'—after all, where else can you go? What else can you do?—if you let yourself through yourself and into yourself and out of yourself, turn yourself inside out, give yourself the kiss of reconciliation, marry yourself, love yourself —

Well, I turned into a man.

We love, says Plato, that in which we are defective; when we see our magical Self in the mirror of another, we pursue it with desperate cries—Stop! I must possess you!—but if it obligingly stops and turns, how on earth can one then possess it? Fucking, if you will forgive the pun, is an anti-climax. And you are as poor as before. For years I wandered in the desert, crying: Why do you torment me so? and Why do you hate me so ? and Why do you put me down so? and / will abase myself and I will please you and Why, oh why have you forsaken me ? This is very feminine. What I learned late in life, under my rain of lava, under my kill-or-cure, unhappily, slowly, stubbornly, barely, and in really dreadful pain, was that there is one and only one way to possess that in which we are defective, therefore that which we need, therefore that which we want.

Become it.

(Man, one assumes, is the proper study of Mankind. Years ago we were all cave Men. Then there is Java Man and the future of Man and the values of Western Man and existential Man and economic Man and Freudian Man and the Man in the moon and modern Man and eighteenth-century Man and too many Mans to count or look at or believe. There is Mankind. An eerie twinge of laughter garlands these paradoxes. For years I have been saying Let me in, Love me, Approve me, Define me, Regulate me, Validate me, Support me . Now I say Move over . If we are all Mankind, it follows to my interested and righteous and right now very bright and beady little eyes, that I too am a Man and not at all a Woman, for honestly now, whoever heard of Java Woman and existential Woman and the values of Western Woman and scientific Woman and alienated nineteenth-century Woman and all the rest of that dingy and antiquated rag-bag? All the rags in it are White, anyway. I think I am a Man; I think you had better call me a Man; I think you will write about me as a Man from now on and speak of me as a Man and employ me as a Man and recognize child-rearing as a Man’s business; you will think of me as a Man and treat me as a Man until it enters your muddled, terrified, preposterous, nine-tenths- fake, loveless, papier-mache-bull-moose head that I am a man . (And you are a woman.) That’s the whole secret. Stop hugging Moses’ tablets to your chest, nitwit; you’ll cave in. Give me your Linus blanket, child. Listen to the female man.

If you don’t, by God and all the Saints, I’ll break your neck.)

III

We would gladly have listened to her (they said) if only she had spoken like a lady. But they are liars and the truth is not in them.

Shrill? vituperative? no concern for the future of society? maunderings of antiquated feminism? selfish femlib? needs a good lay? this shapeless book? of course a calm and objective discussion is beyond? twisted, neurotic? some truth buried in a largely hysterical? of very limited interest, I should? another tract for the trash-can? burned her bra and thought that? no characterization, no plot? really important issues are neglected while? hermetically sealed? women’s limited experience? another of the screaming sisterhood? a not very appealing aggressiveness? could have been done with wit if the author had? deflowering the pretentious male? a man would have given his right arm to? hardly girlish? a woman’s book? another shrill polemic which the? a mere male like myself can hardly? a brilliant but basically confused study of feminine hysteria which? feminine lack of objectivity? this pretense at a novel? trying to shock? the tired tricks of the anti-novelists? how often must a poor critic have to? the usual boring obligatory references to Lesbianism? denial of the profound sexual polarity which? an all too womanly refusal to face facts? pseudo-masculine brusqueness? the ladies’-magazine level? trivial topics like housework and the predictable screams of? those who cuddled up to ball-breaker Kate will? unfortunately sexless in its outlook? drivel? a warped clinical protest against? violently waspish attack? formidable self-pity which erodes any chance of? formless? the inability to accept the female role which? the predictable fury at anatomy displaced to? without the grace and compassion which we have the right to expect? anatomy is destiny? destiny is anatomy? sharp and funny but without real weight or anything beyond a topical? just plain bad? we “dear ladies,” whom Russ would do away with, unfortunately just don’t feel? ephemeral trash, missiles of the sex war? a female lack of experience which

Q.E.D. Quod erat demonstrandum. It has been proved.