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knowing they did not embody it (training in self-hatred) and a
whole generation of men who felt they were entitled to it, and any
actual woman not resembling the few idols was very second-best:
or Everyman has the right to the exclusive possession of Marilyn
Monroe. Just as the sex roles have widened, slightly, and loosened,
a minute amount, so the range of people who grow up thinking
themselves physically acceptable has increased perceptibly. Kinky
hair is fine, afros are fine, straight hair is fine, you don't have to
wear falsies any more. The common physical conditions still per–
secuted include being fat and ordinary signs of aging, i.e., flesh
being less than brand-new as if from a machine shop.
What we were trained to respond to sexually in men can be
roughly divided into two types. One was the Sensitive Hood,
mean, destructive, self-destructive, sadistic but suffering. The
other was Iceman: now Iceman might be the Cold War cowboy,
the suntanned tycoon; or might be the more ectomorphic intellec–
tual with cheekbones and an ascetic air. But he was cold through
and through, he was ungiving Daddy, the block of stone, destruc–
tive but not usually self-destructive. The perfect tool of empire,
whether in his study or his factory or his trenchcoat. The essence
of each was the inability to love, to feel in a useful way, while
retaining the ability (usually) to act. The Sensitive Hood, the
existential darling, feels but only pain or the pleasure of giving
pain. A generation of women was raised to impale themselves on
knives or pound themselves mushy on rocks, while fantasizing to
order about womanly fulfillment, surrender, and the big bang or–
gasm. It would make me weep if I hadn't had to live through it,
wondering what was hitting me. One is the Sinful Son and the
other the Terrible Father, basically Puritan ghouls, competitive,
alienated, death-dealing and empty, empty in the soul, useless to
the preservation of life . Egoistic in quite different styles: insen–
sitivity trained by the grueling rituals of American manhood, or
narcissism ogling itself in the shine of a switchblade (usually
imaginary).
The only road back from pouring affection down a rat hole
lay in your children: creative motherhood. Of course we are ap–
proaching the great double bind by which a mother must give all
of her attention all of the time to her children while they are
