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is supposed to liberate women and men too. But the pill
served to reinforce our essential bondage —it made us
more accessible, more open to exploitation. It did not
change our basic condition because it did nothing to
challenge the sexist structure of society, not to mention
conventional sexual relationships and couplings. Neither
does promiscuity per se. Greer’s alliance with the sexual
revolution is, sadly but implicitly, an alliance with male
chauvinism because it does not speak to the basic condition of women which remains the same if we fuck one man a week, or twenty.
There is similar misunderstanding in this statement:
Well, listen, this is one o f the things a woman has
to understand, and I get a bit impatient sometimes with
women who can’t see it. A woman, after all, in this
country is a commodity. She’s a status symbol, and the
prettier she is the more expensive, the more difficult
to attain. Anyone can have a fat old lady. But young
girls with clear eyes are not for the 40-year-old man
who’s been working as a packer or a storeman all his
life. So that when he sees her he snarls, mostly I think,
because she’s not available to him. She’s another taunt,
and yet another index o f how the American dream is
not his to have. He never had a girl like that and he
never will.
Now, I think that the most sensible way for us to
see the crime of rape is an act o f aggression against
this property symbol. . . (but I’m not sure about
this at all —I mean, I think it’s also aggression against
the mother who fucks up so many people’s lives). And
I must think that as a woman, who has not done a
revolution, have not put myself on the barricade on
this question, I owe it to my poor brothers not to get
uptight. Because I am that, I am a woman they could
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83
never hope to ball, and in the back o f my mind I reject
them too. 4
Here again, the alliance is with male chauvinism, and it
is incomprehensible. Mothers fuck up people’s lives in
direct proportion to how fucked up their own lives are
— that fuck up is the role they must play, the creative
possibilities they must abort. Greer surely knows that
and must speak to it. Women who walk, as opposed to
those who take taxis or drive (another relevant class
distinction), are constantly harassed, often threatened
with violence, often violated. That is the situation which
is the daily life o f women.
It is true, and very much to the point, that women
are objects, commodities, some deemed more expensive
than others —but it is only by asserting one’s humanness
every time, in all situations, that one becomes someone
as opposed to something. That, after all, is the core o f
our struggle.
Rape, o f course, does have its apologists. Norman
Mailer posits it, along with murder, as the content o f
heroism. It is, he tells us in The Presidential Papers,
morally superior to masturbation. Eldridge Cleaver
tells us that it is an act o f political rebellion — he “practiced” on Black women so that he could rape white women better. Greer joins the mystifying chorus when
she posits rape as an act o f aggression against property
(a political anticapitalist action no less) and suggests
that it might also be an act o f psychological rebellion
against the ominous, and omnipresent, mother. * Rape
*
G reer changed her ideas on rape. Cf. Germ aine G reer, “Seduction Is a
Four-Letter W ord, ” Playboy, vol. 20, no. 1 (January 1973).
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in a male-dominated society. It offends us when it does,
which is rarely, only because it is male-female relation
without sham —without the mystifying romance of the
couple, without the civility of a money exchange. It
happens in the home as well as on the streets. It is not
a function of capitalism — it is a function of sexism.
What Greer contributes to Suck, and to its women
readers who might look to her for cogent analysis and
deep imagination, is mostly confusion. That confusion
stems from an identification with men which too often
blunts her perception of the real, empirical problems
women face in a sexist society. That confusion manifests
itself most destructively in the patently untrue notion
that a woman who fucks freely is free.
The main body of Suck is pornographic fiction. It is
in the fiction that we find a repetition of events, situations, images, and attitudes which most effectively reinforce conventional sexist values. “Congo Crystal Hotel, ” a story by Mel Clay, is typical of Suck fiction.
Two men watch a pornographic movie. They have a
sadistic sexual encounter. One of the men, Beno, goes
off to meet Carol, a woman he has known previously.
He forces her to fuck and suck two Blacks, who violate
her in every way. Carol’s husband intrudes. Beno forces
Carol to suck her husband’s cock and as her husband
comes, Beno shoots him. An example of the purple
prose:
In a sudden spasm the man clutches her head and
arches his back and as the beginning sensations of
orgasm overtake him Beno pulls the trigger, the explosion drowning out the sound of Carol gulping on his come and his brains splashing against the ceiling. 5
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85
Carol is announced: “he could smell her even before he
saw her. ” 6 T h e rape which Beno forces on her is, o f
course, the vehicle o f her recognition that she loves
him, because only he could do that to her. T h e story
contains incredible violence. Beno whips his male lover,
Carol is beaten and raped, the husband is killed. T he
cocks o f the Blacks are, o f course, gigantic tools o f pleasure and pain. T here is little to distinguish “Congo Crystal Hotel” from straight pornography, except for
the awful quality o f the writing. T h e vision o f woman is
precisely the same: insatiable cunt, to be violated and
abused; the sadomasochistic content is the same; even
the exaggerated genitalia o f the Blacks participate in
the worst o f the pornographic tradition.
“Sex Angels, ” a story by Ron Reid, chronicles the adventures o f Helen and Tony, that is, a gangbang arranged by Helen with a bunch o f tough bikers. Helen is “high class cunt who was soon to be stuffed with their
working class cocks. ” 7 T he class analysis is central to the
story: “the social gu lf accentuated the mounting thrill
already high with the knowledge that the young husband was to observe his wife’s gangbanging by the pack. ” 8 The culmination o f the event, after Helen has
been thoroughly used, is described like this:
now hot wet fuck tube — hot slit, go on let see you fuck
your wife now. we’ve all been through her. 9
Helen, whose resemblance to that other well-known sex
object, H
elen o f Troy, will not be overlooked by the
acute observer, is a “hot wet fuck tube —hot slit. ” Indeed, one must ask, in the world o f Suck fiction, who o f us is not?
Woman Hating
The overwhelming fact which emerges about Suck
fiction is that it contains and expresses the traditional
male fantasies about women. Helen and Carol differ
little from O and Claire. Their needs can be articulated
in precisely the same way: cock, lots of it, all o f the time,
rape, violation, cruelty. If only our needs were so simple. If only our needs had anything to do with it at all.
Men have always known, in that existential-accord-
ing-to-Mailer way, that women not only need IT but
want IT, rape-brand-whip orchestrated. It was always
obvious to them —a woman's “virtue” is merely facade,
her reluctance is merely tactic. What matters is that she
wants to be fucked —she is defined by her need to be
fucked. We find in Suck these sacrosanct male fantasies
applied with true counter-culture egalitarianism: to
all beings “feminine, ” whether women or gay men.
Projection has come home to roost and cock is crowing
like never before —but, like the cult of cunt before it,
the cult of cock is colored with the washes o f unresolved
guilt and pure sadism. The onus and hatred of male
homosexuality is heavy in Suck — ugly, heavy, and ever
present.
Suck has in some ways aligned itself with the cause
of gay liberation. Suck 4 printed the “Gay Guide to
Europe, ” a list of gay clubs, bars, pissoirs, etc., to alleviate the chronic need for information felt by the traveling gay man. Suck 6 has a story entitled “A Week
in the Fondle Park, ” in which a man extols the quantity
of cock sucked in one idyllic week in Amsterdam’s
central park, which had been turned over to longhaired dopers and freaks in the summer of 1971. But in Suck, as in the parent culture which maligns any
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87
deviation from the ole hetero norm, the hatred attached
to the queer is very apparent.
“T h e Suction Game” is the story o f two men, one
dark-skinned, one light-skinned, one overt, one latent —
a typical colonial situation, ripe for exploitation. T h e
acknowledged (overt) queer has the typical misogynist
point o f view:
Carlos explained that the male body was nature’s
perfection and how clean men were compared to
women. 10
T o the n orm ally) self-enhancing John Wayne male, the
above is self-evident and always has been. In the context o f the homosexual encounter it has added significance. It reinforces the maleness o f both partners. It makes the homosexual act an affirmation o f manhood.
The insecurities which a homosexual identity conjures
up in our culture, however, are hardly resolved through
the putting down o f women. “Cocksucker” is a term o f
insult and abuse —it means queer. Yet it is obviously
absurd for a man to believe that what is pleasurable to
him when done by a woman is disgusting when done by
a man. T h e distinction here is not so very subtle: the
political meaning o f the two acts, heterosexual fellatio
and homosexual fellatio, is different. T he form er makes
the man clearly the master —the woman kneels at the
foot o f the sheikh. T he latter makes the man queer—
ours is not to reason why, or is it?
Carlos (overt, dark-skinned), having unzipped the
hero’s pants, has started kissing his glorious equipment:
Woman Hating
Here I was standing in this tiny YM CA room, naked as
the day I was born, with a pretty boy queer, kneeling
in front o f me playing with my cock. The whole thing
was sickening, but the worst part was that I was enjoying it.. . . Suddenly I didn’t give a fuck if he was queer. I just relaxed and surrendered to his sucking
mouth. 11
The resultant orgasm is fantastic, mind-blowing, as
aren’t they all in Suck. Yet the imminent slander is too
much to bear. Being sucked by a queer is one thing.
Reciprocity is something else. Could it be reciprocity
that makes one queer?
He was a fucking queer but I wasn’t. If he had hot
rock that was his problem not mine. He’ll just have to
find some other queer to suck his cock. 12
Hot Rock Carlos is undaunted. After much patient
persistance, our supermale hero succumbs, with reservations: “The idea was repulsive to me, but I wanted to make him happy. ” 13 The moral of the tale is simple.
Says our hero:
Funny I do not consider myself queer, just damn lucky
to be able to attract so many good looking young boys
so they could have their rock inside me. 14
Only now does the definitive definition of queer seem
to emerge. Cocksucking isn’t the definitive experience
after all. One must conclude that anal intercourse,
the closest corollary to female penetration, really defines the queer. One must conclude that being fucked in the ass separates the queers from the men and places
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89
them squarely among the women. O ne must conclude
that being penetrated is queer, not to mention debasing,
disgusting, and humiliating, which one had already
guessed.
Homosexual men are not only penetrated like
women —they also lust after pain and degradation. T h e
author o f “T h e Suction Game” has given us another
example o f homosexual pornography, this one engagingly entided “T ough Young Dicks for Hot Kicks. ”
Five young toughs are cruising; they pick up a longhaired boy, shove him in the back seat o f the car and order him to blow them all; the boy considers refusing, since he’d love to be beaten then and there, but instead submits since greater abuse can always be had through submission than through resistance; the young
toughs brutally rape the long-haired boy, then piss and
shit all over him. He is, o f course, ecstatic:
Gee did I smell o f come and teenage sweat and urine
and I had two more toss-offs myself thinking about
their tough young faces and dicks enjoying me for
hot kicks. 15
T h e stereotype o f the homosexual which emerges
from the general run o f Suck fiction is not very different
from the stereotype o f woman. T h e homosexual is
queer, asshole, cocksucker, faggot; the woman is hole,
hot wet fuck tube, hot slit, or just plain ass. He thrives
on pain and so does she. Gangbanging is their mutual
joy. Huge, throbbing, monster, atom-smashing cock is
god and master to them both. T h e parts they play in the
sadomasochistic script are the same: so are costumes,
attitudes, and other conventional cultural baggage. It
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is not hard to see that the struggle for gay male liberation and women’s liberation is a common struggle: both mean freedom from the stigma of being female.
The fantasies (indicative of structural mental sets) which
oppress male homosexuals and women are very much
alike. Women and male homosexuals are united in
their queerness, a union which is real and ve
rifiable —
affirmed by Suck, which contributes to the cultural
oppression of both.
The pages of Suck have, sadly, nothing to do with
sexual liberation — there is no “counter” to the culture to be found anywhere in them. They are, instead, a catalogue of exactly those sexist fantasies which
express our most morbid psychic sets. They chart the
landscape of repression, a landscape that is surprisingly
familiar. As women, we find that we are where we have
always been: the necessary victim, there we are, the
victim again; the eternal object, there we are, the object again. Through the projection of archetypal sadomasochistic images, which are the staple of the sexist mentality, we become more a prisoner, robbed and
cheated of any real experience or authentic communication, thrown back into the intricate confusion of being women in search of a usable identity.
Part Three
THE HERSTORY
We are a feelingless people. If we could
really feel, the pain would be so great that
we would stop all the suffering. If we could
feel that one person every six seconds dies
of starvation (and as this is happening, this
writing, this reading, someone is dying of
starvation) we would stop it. If we could
really feel it in the bowels, the groin, in
the throat, in the breast, we would go into
the streets and stop the war, stop slavery,
stop the prisons, stop the killings, stop
destruction. Ah, I might learn what love is.
When we feel, we will feel the emergency: when we feel the emergency, we
will act: when we act, we will change the
world.
Julian Beck, The Life of the Theatre
T he rapes, tortures, and violations o f O, Claire, Anne,
Suck's Helen, et al., are fiction, documenting the twisted
landscape o f male wish-fulfillment. Here we have her-
story, the underbelly o f history, two acts o f gynocide
committed against women by men, their scope and substance largely ignored. One is not surprised to find that they document that same twisted landscape.
I isolate in particular Chinese footbinding and the
persecution o f the witches because they are crimes