Pornography: Men Possessing Women
Andrea DworkinPornography: Men Possessing Women Quotes
You can find Pornography: Men Possessing Women quotes, Pornography: Men Possessing Women book quotes, the most impressive sentences and paragraphs on 1000Kitap.
And what is the value of this sexual object to men, since it is they who form her, use her, and give her what value she has? The pioneering male masochist Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, who spent most of his life bullying bewildered women into wearing furs and halfheartedly whipping him, candidly wrote in his diary that “my cruel ideal woman is for me simply the instrument by which I terrorise myself.” The nature of the act does not change the nature of the act: the female is the instrument; the male is the center of sensibility and power.
And so there is a woman, tied with black rope, hands chained together at the wrists above her head, her body constrained by laser beams that crisscross in front of and behind her body. She is “an exquisite volunteer.” And so there is a woman, her ankles man acled, laser beams appearing to penetrate her vagina. The laser cuts as well as burns. The laser is used in surgery. The laser functions as a knife. Vagina means sheath. She is “an exquisite volunteer.” She volunteers to be what she is, what all women are: harlot and submissive in one, her presence and representation an affirmation and an echo of her essence as a woman—she wants it, they all do. In describing the laser, one pioneer in the field said that “[l]ight has become something not only to look with, but also a palpable force to be reckoned with.’” Used as a sadistic weapon against a woman in pornography, a laser cannot be regarded as a palpable force or any force at all because force has no reality when used against a metaphysical victim: she is always “an exquisite volunteer”— expressing her own free will and/or actualizing her own true nature. She wants it, they all do.
Rose Keller was a whore because all women, especially working-class women, are whores; Rose Keller was a whore because any woman who is hungry or unemployed will whore; Rose Keller was a whore because there is no absolute proof for every day of her life that she was not a whore; Rose Keller was a whore because Sade said she was a whore; Rose Keller was a whore because, after being tortured and escaping, she accepted money from Sade’s mother-in-law. Rose Keller was a liar because all women are liars, especially when they accuse men of forcing them to any sexual activity; Rose Keller was a liar because Sade said she was a liar; Rose Keller was a liar because she accepted money, which proved that she had made up the story to obtain money; Rose Keller was a liar because who was she anyway compared to the heroic Sade?
We have not been able to get the courts to confront a real woman plaintiff suing a real pornographer for depriving her of real rights through sexual exploitation or sexual abuse. This is because the challenges to the civil rights law have been abstract arguments about speech, as if women’s lives are abstract, as if the harms are abstract, conceded but not real. The women trapped in the pictures continue to be perceived as the free speech of the pimps who exploit them. No judge seems willing to look such a woman, three-dimensional and breathing, in the face and tell her that the pimp’s use of her is his constitutionally protected right of speech; that he has a right to express himself by violating her. The women on whom the pornography is used in assault remain invisible and speechless in these court cases. No judge has had to try to sleep at night having heard a real woman’s voice describing what happened to her, the incest, the rape, the gang rape, the battery, the forced prostitution. Keeping these women silent in courts of law is the main strategy of the free speech lawyers who defend the pornography industry. Hey, they love literature; they deplore sexism. If some women get hurt, that’s the price we pay for freedom. Who are the “we”?What is the “freedom”?These speech-loving lawyers keep the women from speaking in court so that no judge will actually be able to listen to them.
The fact is that men can and do fetishize everything; and no woman can possibly know how to match up any given man with any given fetish, nor how to anticipate, nor how to avoid, “provoking” sexual arousal due to a fetishized response. What women can know, but do not sufficiently appreciate, is that common male fetishes determine female fashion: attracting a male through acceptable style or dress means that one has conformed to the requirements of one or more common male fetishes.
Violence against prostitutes, regardless of its ferocity, is nothing less than an acceptable fact of life. Who, the biographers ask with mock wonderment, can deny that these “girls” are there to be used? The man’s right to sexual pleasure on his own terms is the given, the natural right. Sexual pleasure includes by definition or intrinsically justifies the use of force, trickery, or violence. The cost to the prostitute’s health or well-being means nothing. Her own will has no value and no claim to value. The use of force against prostitutes means less than nothing. Freedom, that hallowed word, is valued only when used in reference to male desire. For women, freedom means only that men are free to use them.