A Dirty Story

[Chris Stolz]

Herny M.'s post reminds me of soemthign tha happened in the first feminism
seminar I took in university (at McGill).  The professor (a woman) assigned
us to read excerpts from Norman Mailer's _An American Dream_ and Henry
Miller's _Sexus_.  In the first, the hero kills his wife and then sodomises
his maid before hitting the road for an all-american killing spree.  In the
second, the passage had the narrator in the bathtub, sexually ordering his
maid around to gratify him.

When we got to class the next week (the class was 17 women and two men), the
professor asked us what we thought of the passages.  One after another, the
young women stood up and said "It was disGUSting!  Awful!  Gross!  Totally
sexist and patriarchal," etc etc.  I didn't say anything.

When everybody was done, the professor stood up and looked at us and said,
"You know, I find some of this kind of arousing, and really well written
too," at which point there were at least twelve audible gasps in the room.
The professor then went on and said "and I'm amazed that none of you have
either had, or have felt comfortable enough to admit you've had, a response
similar to mine."

Anyway, she taught us a useful lesson in that course, which is that what we
want to call evil, or sexist, or whatever modern term we have for it, has
something appealing to it (even for those who can be its victims, or victims
by association), and that we cannot go and outright condemn anything.
Nothing's as simple as being totally evil or wrong or degrading. A text
always has somethign going on in it that doesn't play along with its main
impression or idea...and when discussion of the salacious passgaes of _GR_,
or _Lolita_ come up, this always pops back into my head

Chris Stolz      Internet:  chstolz at canuck.com
		Hard mail:  405-7A St. N.E.  
                            Calgary, AB, Canada
                            T2E-4E9  (403) 234-8653

Modern man likes to pretend that his thinking is wide-awake. 
But this wide-awake thinking has led us into the mazes of a 
nightmare in which the torture chambers are endlessly 
repeated in the mirrors of reason.  When we emerge, perhaps 
we will realise we have been dreaming with our eyes open, 
and that the dreams of reason are intolerable.  And then, 
perhaps, we will begin to dream once more with our eyes closed.

			-- Octavio Paz, _The Labyrinth of Solitude_