transformative dimensions o f prostitution. To their reductive
minds prostitution is exploitation without more while those
o f us who thrive on adventure and com plexity understand that
prostitution is only an apparent oppression that permits some
women to be sexually active without bourgeois restraints.
Freedom is implicit in prostitution because sex is. Stalinists on
this issue, they see the women as degraded, because they believe
that sex degrades. They will not consider that prostitution is
freedom for women in exactly the same way existentialists
postulated that rape was a phenomenon o f freedom for men—
striking out against the authoritarian state by breaking laws and,
in opposition to all the imperatives o f a repressive society, doing
what one wants. They w on’t admit that a prostitute lives in
every woman. They w on’t admit to the arousal. Instead, they
strategically destroy desire by calling up scenarios o f childhood
sexual abuse, dispossession, poverty, and homelessness. Even
the phallic woman o f pornography has lost her erection by the
end o f the list. Rape as idea and prostitution as idea are o f
inestimable value in sexual communication. We don’t need the
Jacobins censoring our sexual souls. Meanwhile, in the academy
our influence grows while the Jacobins are on the streets,
presumably where they belong if they are sincere. I will keep
writing, applying the values o f agency, nuance, and ambiguity
to the experiences o f women, with a special emphasis on rape
and prostitution. I have no plans to write about the Holocaust
soon, although, I admit, I am increasingly irritated by the
simple-minded formulations o f Elie Wiesel and his ilk. Kvetch,
kvetch. After I get tenure, I will perhaps write an article on the
refusal o f Holocaust survivors to affirm the value o f the
Holocaust itself in their own creative lives. Currently I want
those who are dogmatic about rape and other bad things to keep
their moralisms posing as politics o ff my back and out o f my
bed. I don’t want them in my environment, my little pond. I
w on’t have m y students reading them, respectfully no less, or
m y colleagues inviting them here to speak, to read, to reproduce
simplicities, though not many want to. I like tying up my lover
and she likes it too. I will not be made to feel guilty as if I am
doing something violative. I was that good girl, that obedient
child. Feminism said let go. Y ou can do what a man does. I like
tying her wrists to the bed, I like gagging her, I like dripping hot
w ax on her breasts. It is not the same as when a man does it. She
and I are equals, the same. There is no moral atrocity or political
big deal. I like fantasizing. I like being a top and I like bringing
her to orgasm although I rarely have one myself. I like the sex
magazines, the very ones, o f course, that the Jacobins want to
censor, except for the fact that these magazines keep printing
pictures o f the Jacobins as if they are, in fact, Hieronymous
Bosch pin-ups. One does get angrier with them. One does want
to hurt them , if only to obliterate them from consciousness,
submerge them finally in the deeper recesses o f a more muted
discourse in which they are neither subjects nor objects. One
would exile them to the margins, beyond seeing or sound, but
strangely they are sexualized in the common culture as if they are
the potent women. Everyone pays attention to them and I and
others like me are ignored, except o f course when the publishers
o f the sex magazines ask one or the other o f us to write essays
denouncing them. But then, o f course, one must think about
them. When I’m having sex I find that more and more I have one
o f them under me in my fantasy, I hear her voice, accusing, I
muffle the sound o f her voice with my fist, I push it into my
lover’s mouth, slowly, purposefully, easy now. M y lover thinks
m y intensity is for her. I can’t stand the voice saying I’m wrong. I
really would wipe it out if I could. It makes for angry, passionate
sex, a kind o f playful fury. The Jacobin despises me. I have more
in common with the so-called rapist, the man who makes love
by orchestrating pain, the subtle so-called rapist, the knowing
so-called rapist, the educated so-called rapist, the one who
seduces, at least a little, and uses force because it’s sexy; it is sexy;
I like doing it and the men I know know I like doing it, to a
woman; they are pro-gay. I’m an ally and I will get tenure. I’m
their frontline defense. If I can do it, they can do it. The so-called
rapists in my university are educated men. We like sex and to
each his own. In my mind I have the Jacobin under me, and in
m y nuanced world she likes it. I am not simple-minded. Rape
so-called is her problem, not mine. I have been hurt but it was
a long time ago. I’m not the same girl.
Author’s Note
In a study o f 930 randomly selected adult women in San
Francisco in 1978 funded by the National Institute for Mental
Health, Diana Russell found that forty-four percent o f the
wom en had experienced rape or attempted rape as defined by
California state law at least once. The legal definition o f rape in
California and most other states was: forced intercourse (i. e.
penile-vaginal penetration), intercourse obtained by threat o f
force, or intercourse completed when the woman was
drugged, unconscious, asleep, or otherwise totally helpless
and hence unable to consent. N o other form o f sexual assault
was included in the definition; therefore, no other form o f
sexual assault was included in the statistic. O f the forty-four
percent, fully half had experienced more than one such attack,
the number o f attacks ranging from two to nine. Pair and
group rapes, regardless o f the number o f assailants, were
counted as one attack. Multiple attacks by the same person
were counted as one attack. See Diana E. H. Russell, Sexual
Exploitation: Rape, Child Sexual Abuse, and Workplace
Harassment, Sage Publications, 1984; see also Russell, Rape In
Marriage, Macmillan Publishing C o ., Inc., 1982 and The Secret
Trauma: Incest in the Lives of Girls and Women, Basic Books,
Inc., Publishers, 1986.
Linda Marchiano, slave name Linda Lovelace, “ star” o f the
pornographic film Deep Throat, was first hypnotized, then
taught self-hypnosis by the man who pimped her, to suppress
the gag response in her throat. She taught herself to relax all