DORIS LESSING
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bow, but motionless, scolding her, "Use it, use it, damn you." Was not that
the extreme of passivity, male as fucking machine, for the pleasure of the
female, to be used by her (but was the word "pleasure," with its frivolous
associations, permissible here?) Here was the absolute embodiment of a
mensch but, at the moment of truth, passivity and instructions how to make
use of
him.
Was this not a case of an extreme turning into an opposite? Well,
yes, that was about it-at leas t for that time, for if you read novels and other
witnesses of American culture, it was not always thus. No, a certain time pro–
duced the fucking machine, which, as everything has to do, disappeared. Or
has it? Has feminism restored the warm heart, the male solar plexus radiat–
ing hot need like a little sun?
Probably the most interesting thing about this long-ago scene is its tone,
so far from vindictiveness of the Cruel Sisters. For years-decades-perhaps
centuries-women have been complaining about men's lack of sensitivity,
their unkindness, but no sooner have women acquired power than they per–
mit, even sanctifY, some of the nastiest manifestations of human nature.
A television program: In front of several million viewers, a liberated
woman says, "My husband is a bit of a wimp really."
Turn it around: "My wife is a very frightened soul, I am afraid, no
courage." Oh, the
callous
swine.
A dinner party: The wife, casually: "My two husbands-" The husband:
"But surely you've had three, darling?" "Oh, I wasn't counting you; I haven't
had a child by you."
"My wife's a disappointment to me. She's barren." The
pig.
Another party: "My husband often can't get it up. He's semi-impotent."
This, loudly laughing.
Monsieur Sorel in
The Red and the Black,
the archetype of the thick
insensitive boorish husband, with a sneer: "Woman's delicate machinery..."
Only last week I got a letter from an American woman: "Do you ever
think
about the female monsters you unleashed with
The Golden Notebook?
They hate men and hate women who love men."
A scene: A famous American feminist is visiting London, and I go to see
her with a man who has consistently taken a feminist position, and long
before it was fashionable. As we walk through the hotel she deliberately slams
one door after another in his face.
A scene: A building in London that houses a feminist publishing house
has in it other offices, one of which is regularly visited by a friend of mine
from the Middle East, as it happens an exemplary husband and father. It took
him a long time, he said, to understand why it was that every time he passed
the door of the publishing house, one of the females came out and deliber–
ately stamped on his feet, as hard as she could. He was a Muslim and by
definition enslaved women.
