Monday 29 June 2009

I Wish I Had Written This!

'The sophisticated argument is that promiscuity devalues sex, makes it commonplace, impersonal and so forth, but the kind of depression felt by the men forced by circumstances to be more or less promiscuous, like traveling musicians, is really still the same old disgust. Very few men who have slept around casually are able to converse humanely with the women who have extended their favours. Many a woman sorrowfully reflects that her more recherche sexual techniques, her more delicate apprehensions of her polymorphous partner's needs, her very sexual generosity has directly entailed her lover's eventual revulsion and estrangement. We may find a key to sexual outrage and murder in the inability of men to shed their inhibitions with the fine woman who is good enough to marry, and their terror and disgust at what the repressed desire eventually forces them to do. The worst aspect of prostitution is that many a prostitute must undergo the bestial rituals which civilised men find necessary for sexual release. Many prostitutes claim this as their social function. The unfortunate girls found strangled with their own stockings and raped with bottles are the victims of male fetishism and loathing, and yet no woman has ever cried out after such an outrage on her sex, 'Why do you hate us so?', although hate it clearly is.'

Germain Greer - The Female Eunuch 1970

3 comments:

Mr Grim said...

I'm not quite sure why, but this makes me feel somewhat sad :(

The Princess said...

It IS sad. :(

Mr Grim said...

I think it's 'cause I can see a lot of my virtual behaviour in the first half (up to the prostitution bit).
*nods glumly*