Going Too Far (39 page)

I tried playing the submissive role in the all-woman fantasy. Sometimes it “took,” more often not. Hmmm. I tried absenting myself entirely, reforging the scenario into one with myself as voyeur. In this approach the following were most effective, in declining order: Male-dominant/female-submissive; All-male cast, both roles; All-female cast, both roles; Female-dominant/male-submissive. Omigod, I thought. A certain pattern is beginning to emerge.

At this point I remember I was so disheartened at what I thought was the inevitable core motivation (a deep-lodged feeling of justified inferiority to men) that I retreated into the Will-Power Approach and refused to let myself fantasize any more. This precipitously reduced my capacity for orgasm, which was, I decided, even more depressing, and as I feared myself approaching a near-frigid state, I “capitulated,” feeling like an alcoholic gone back on the bottle.

It wasn't until a few years ago, in my early thirties, that I attempted yet another analysis in this (pathetic? amusing? brave?) life experiment. Exorcism be damned. If the fantasy-theme seemed enjoyable to me, I was not about to punish myself with guilt for that pleasure. But I did still want to feel comfortable with it, and most of all to
understand
it.

The gradually rediscovered areas of women's history, the increasingly reexamined (and newly validated) theories on matriarchal origin, and the reconsideration of the power (and reality) of myth began to come together for me, to pattern themselves into a possible explanation of what these fantasies meant, in their political metaphor, for myself and other women. This explanation is offered here because for me it works, makes sense, feels right as no other theory has, and because it consequently has helped me to
understand
something (which may be the only real freedom available to sentient life after all). I hope it may be of some use to other women who, like me, have agonized over their own desire—never even knowing what that desire meant, or how it was deserving of their pride.

II: THE TERMS

T
O CONSTRUCT
a political analysis of the occurrence, let alone the frequency, of sado-masochistic fantasies among women we must venture to use the tools offered us by mytho-history. By mytho-history I mean that area of serious scholarship explored, for example, by Robert Graves in
The Greek Myths
and
The White Goddess
, and by Joseph Campbell in
The Masks of God
, as well as by Murray, Frazer, Jung, Lévi-Strauss, Bachofen, Briffault, Harrison, and other key anthropologists, mythographers, and historians. This necessitates leaving behind us a rigid adherence to what is claimed as historical fact; it requires an admission that what is fact one day may be discovered the next to have been bias, and what had been considered myth may actually have been fact (depending on who writes the books and runs the academies; male-dominated scholarship, we now realize, just as white-dominated scholarship, has not been as value-free as one would have wished). A mytho-historical approach requires of us at one and the same time a suspension of disbelief
and
a dedication to truth—or else it would descend into sloppy thinking and sentimentality. It frees us to discover what we may discover, without preconceived assumptions or denials or even ideals—but then we must
admit
what we discover. (This is one definition of a
real
“scientific method.”) Last, a mytho-historical approach necessitates a sensitivity to metaphor. By that I mean a willingness to decipher the code of myth—which may, for example, have cast the thawing of the Ice Age into the biblical story of the Flood, which may have translated the building of the pyramids into the Tower of Babel, and which certainly anthropomorphized (and does, to this day) mystical ideas, emotions, and concepts into “gods.”

It has been said, and I think correctly, that myth is the very “stuff” of poetry. It may also be the very stuff of pre-history, of that time for which we have no written record except a few cave paintings of abiding splendor, certain circular configurations of stones, some burial ornaments resonant with possibilities of interpretation, and that other record—shared, verbally bequeathed and embroidered and elaborated on, created and preserved by what Jung called the “collective unconscious”—that encoded record of events and their effects on humankind and the planet itself: myth. What was yesterday's magic is today's science. It seems as likely that what was seen through a glass darkly yesterday as myth forms the basis for what tomorrow will be understood as history.

Some caveats are necessary before we approach the parable of sado-masochism in women. The first is that I am examining
fantasies
on the theme. This is where my own experience has lain, and it is
this subject which I have discussed at length with other women. I know next to nothing about “real-life” acts of sado-masochistic sexuality. I have never sought such situations or participated in them, and what knowledge I have of them is vague and second-hand. It may be that an extension of the theory advanced here (about the fantasies themselves) would be applicable to the real acts. I honestly don't know, nor have I given that possibility much attention. Actually, it seems irrelevant to me, since I know that I myself (and most of the women with whom I share the penchant for such fantasies) would never seek their reality. In fact, if forced to encounter that reality, we would be turned
off
sexually by it. Our disgust would be genuine, and we would all probably fight like hell to free ourselves from real pain and real degradation. Ah, but the fantasy which one controls oneself, in the safety and privacy of one's own brain and body!
That
is another matter, and that is my concern here. Should others wish to attempt relating my theory to sado-masochistic practice itself, they are welcome. The results might be interesting. For me however, and for this essay, the world of such actual practice and that of the fantasy are totally separate.

It should further be stated that I am not exploring what I might call
emotional
sado-masochistic tendencies. I mean by this the disposition of some women to become involved in relationships which are masochistic in a broad sense of the word—where the partner may never seem to dominate her and may never touch her except lovingly, but is nevertheless emotionally sadistic. As one woman put it, “Masochistic fantasies don't turn me on erotically, but I certainly have got myself into masochistic relationships!” Such relationships, while peripherally related to the theory offered here, are still as tangential to our present concerns as are physical sado-masochistic sexual practices. The emotional quotient is definitely present in our construct—but as an erotic ingredient, not as a separated psychic expression.

It is also necessary to explain why the parable is couched solely in heterosexual terms. I believe that, moving from the obvious to the less obvious, (1
) sexism is at heart an issue between women and men, (2) heterosexuality is numerically the largest and culturally the most influential form of sexual expression in patriarchal culture, (3) this last requires of “sexual minorities” (by enforced laws or by equally enforced social pressure) an imitation of the modes of the reigning sexuality (i.e., “husband-wife” sex roles among some homosexual couples). In other words, through no fault of its own, the homosexual subculture often finds itself mirroring the dominant culture (patriarchally heterosexual), with the very standards which oppressed that homosexual subculture in the first place now being adopted by it. (See “On Women as a Colonized People,” p. 160.)

Thus, the occurrence of sado-masochistic fantasies and/or behavior among lesbians, and the far more prevalent occurrence of both fantasies and practice among faggots,
⁶
are, to me, a function of the enforced identification of the homosexual with heterosexual roles in a patriarchal culture.
⁷
It is therefore those roles which we must examine. It is to the nexus we must return, to the battle
between
the sexes. For no woman today can escape living in a patriarchal world, whatever her sexuality, just as no man can escape the responsibility of his power and privilege, whatever
his
sexuality. Sexism is, after all, the
attitude
which describes the
fact
of male supremacy, and until we engage the subject at that level and therefore between the female and the male, we are avoiding the real issue.
⁸

Last, I should explain why I am here examining the politics of sado-masochistic fantasies only when the woman experiences them. Surely men have such fantasies, too—what of them? Do they fit in with the analysis offered here, or would a pat reversal of this analysis suffice for them? Hardly. My replies to these questions would have to
include the following: I am concerned primarily with women (if we are not for ourselves, who is for us?) and consequently have focused my study
on
women.
⁹
This was made at once more organic and more imperative by my own experiential—and female—reality. But there is another, and more objective, reason for the female emphasis.

Sado-masochistic fantasies are themselves symbols for realities of dominance and submission, which are in
them
selves metaphors for power and powerlessness. In patriarchy men have power. In patriarchy women are powerless. These are facts. It is also a fact, though perhaps a less evident one, that he who has power can do what he likes,
including playing at powerlessness
in a manner never available to the powerless. For him it can be an experiment, a game, a fad, a fake (or even genuine) attempt to divest himself of his power, or a mere kicky new experience. It can be whatever he likes or imagines it to be, because it is his
choice
, by nature temporary and dismissible the instant it no longer amuses him. That men should sometimes fantasize themselves as masochists therefore strikes me as ironic but not surprising (perhaps it is merely a novel break from the real-life sadism patriarchy both requires and permits of them).

Some politically co-optive men even have claimed their masochistic identification is “woman-identification” and that it is meant as evidence of sympathy with feminism—which shows how abysmal is their understanding of women
and
feminism. But that any men should
wish
to experience what they
think
women experience—this is old news, as old as Pentheus' curiosity (and as rooted, I think, in envy). Men who see themselves as relatedly masochistic, “femme,” feminine, etc., obviously are insulting the female (in person and in principle). If they grovel to a male master they are mimicking (for
fun
) an experience all women in patriarchy are in some way or other forced to endure in
reality
. If they cower before a female “dominatrix,” they are superficially reversing, and therefore trivializing, real women's real oppression. The one act literally makes fun of the pain of our reality by ignoring our powerlessness; the other act mocks the reality of our pain by denying our powerlessness. Both are vicious, expectable, and for the purposes of our investigation, irrelevant.

But the context does bear repeating: In patriarchy men have power. In patriarchy women are powerless. It is from this viewpoint, this
fact
, that we can start to imagine how we got here, to understand why, and thereafter to invent the way out for all of us. For we are our species; its story is our story, your individual life-story, and mine.

III: THE PARABLE

Ontogeny Recapitulates Philogeny Progeny Recapitulates History

O
NCE THE FREEDOM
and power of Woman knew no shame. All acts of sexuality were inseparable from those of sensuality, and all these were within her definition and command.

This I remember. My cells remember this
.

Man, driven by a sexuality seemingly more exterior to himself,
¹⁰
thought he could not understand Woman's integrity of sex, emotion, control, power, freedom, sensuality, shamelessness; he thought that perhaps he could not understand Woman's sexuality at all. He became afraid and impatient to learn.

What if she is wrong about me? What if I am not as she is?

For millennia (
one entire lifetime
), Woman has been saying, “Understand me. Learn me. Know me.” This last she means in all senses, including that profound pun in the biblical use of “know.” She has sought her consort, her challenge. This is the original quest of Atalanta, of Hippolyta, of Clorinda—for the Man who is capable of acute sensitivity to her desire and vast tenderness for her need, but also capable of strength equal to her own.

The possibility of their naked minds and bodies engaging one another—a joyous competition which must include any assumption of defeat as (1) temporary and (2) utterly lacking in humiliation; of any triumph as, obversely, impermanent and meaningless. The taking and giving of turns
.

Man has tried to impersonate such a consort, challenge, equal. He has feared his inability to succeed. He has feared as well the possibility of his succeeding, because this contains a potential power equal to that of Woman. He fears having such power. He fears not having such power.

Yet this is the balance she has been searching for. It is the
balance he seems unable, deeply, to conceive. It is too terrifying. But the appearance of it, this he can manage. Will this suffice her? He attempts to fabricate it.

Thus is born: the rakish smile, the arched eyebrow and narrow-eyed intense stare, the attitude which bluffs, “I know what you really think/feel/desire, my dear” (or, depending on the class and delivery, “I know what you are/want, baby”). This is soon followed by—and notice the shift—“I know you
better than
you know yourself.”

Woman, after centuries (
years of one human life
) of trying to reveal to Man or obtain from him the authentic response, begins to settle for even the pretense, finding it, in lack of what she truly wishes, somewhat stimulating—though merely as a synthetic approximation. She resigns herself almost humorously, to indulge him, to grant him a respite from effort.
But she never mistakes it for the real thing and is therefore not
(
yet
)
degraded by it
. Furthermore, she assumes it to be a temporary solution. Consequently, even at this stage, the tragedy could be averted, innocence retained, and the game gracefully played out.