Woman Hating: A Radical Look at Sexuality

by Andrea Dworkin

  man in the process of impregnation, women were invested with a supreme magical power, one which engendered awe and fear in men. As they developed skill in planting, they embodied even more explicitly fertility, generation, and of course death. The overwhelming mana of women, coupled with the high mortality which went along with childbirth, could well have led

  to practices of protection, segregation, and slowly

  increasing social restriction. With pregnancy as the

  one inevitable in a woman’s life, men began to organize

  social life in a way which excluded woman, which limited her to the living out of her reproductive function.

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  As men began to know power, that power directly related to the exclusion o f women from community life, the myth o f feminine evil developed and provided justification for laws, rites, and other practices which relegated women to pieces o f property. As a corollary, men developed the taste for subjugating others and

  hoarding power and wealth which characterizes them

  to this very day.

  Returning to yin and yang, what is crucial is the

  realization that these concepts did not originally attach

  to sex. In more concrete terms, the Great Original (first

  being) o f the Chinese chronicles is the holy woman T ’ai

  Yuan, who was an androgyne, a combined manifestation o f yin and yang. Primacy is given to the feminine principle here (the gender o f the noun is feminine) because o f woman’s generative function.

  Am ong the Tibetan Buddhists, the so-called male-

  female polarities are called yabyum; among the Indian

  Hindus, they are called Shiva and Shakti. In the Tantric

  sects o f both traditions, one finds a living religious cult

  attached to the myth o f a primal androgyne, to the

  union o f male and female. One also finds, not surprisingly, that Tantric cults are condemned by the parent culture with which they identify. T h e culminating religious rite o f the Tantrics is sacramental fucking, the ritual union o f man and woman which achieves, even if

  only symbolically, the original androgynous energy.

  This is the outstanding fact when one looks at yabyum

  and Shiva-Shakti:

  The Hindu assigned the male symbol apparatus to the

  passive, the female to the active pole; the Buddhist did

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  the opposite; the Hindu assigned the knowledge principle to the passive male pole, and the dynamic principle to the active female pole; the Vajrayana Buddhist did it the other way around. 5

  The explanation for this major difference, this attachment in one case of the feminine to the passive and in the other of the feminine to the active, is that these

  attachments were made arbitrarily. 6 Two convictions

  vital to sexist ontology are undermined: that everywhere the feminine is synonymous with the passive, receptive, etc., and so it must be true; that the definition of the feminine as passive, receptive, etc., comes from the visible, incontrovertible fact of feminine passivity, receptivity, etc.

  In Hindu mythology, as opposed to Judaic mythology, the phenomenological world is not created by god as something distinct from him. It is the godhead

  in manifestation. As Campbell describes it: “. . . the

  image of the androgynous ancestor is developed in

  terms of an essentially psychological reading of the

  problem of creation. ” 7 In a description of that androgynous being, we find: “He was just as large as a man and woman embracing. This Self then divided himself into

  two parts; and with that there was a master and a

  mistress. Therefore this body, by itself, as the sage

  Yajnavalkya declares, is like half of a split pea. ” 8

  In Egypt one of the earliest forms of moon deity was

  Isis-Net, an androgyne. The Greek Artemis was androgynous. So is Awonawilona, chief god of the Pueblo Zuni. The Greek god Eros was also androgynous.

  Plato, repeating a corrupted version of a much

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  older myth, describes in Symposium 3 types o f original human beings: male/male, male/female, female/

  female. These original humans were so powerful that

  the gods feared them and so Zeus, whose own androgynous ancestry did not stop him from becoming the Macho Kid, halved them.

  T h e Aranda o f Australia know a supernatural being

  called Numbakulla, “Eternal, ” who made androgynes

  as the first beings, then split them apart, then tied them

  back together with hemp to make couples. It is essentially this story that is repeated throughout the primitive world.

  Certain African and Melanesian tribes have ancestral images o f one being with breasts, penis, and beard.

  Hindu statues which show Shiva and Shakti united participate in the same devotional tradition —we perceive that they are united in sexual intercourse, but it is

  also possible that they represent one literal androgynous body.

  T here are still devotional religious practices which

  harken back to the mythology o f the primal androgyne

  — Tantra, for instance, in both its Tibetan and Indian

  manifestations, clearly participates in that tradition.

  Possibly the rite o f subincision, practiced in Australia,

  is similarly rooted in androgyne myth. Subincision is the

  ritual slitting open o f the underside o f the penis to form

  a permanent cleft into the urethra. T h e opening is

  called the “ penis womb. ” Campbell notes that “T h e

  subincision produces artificially a hypospadias resembling that o f a certain class o f hermaphrodites. ” 9

  T he drive back to androgyny, where it is manifest, is

  sacral, strong, compelling. It is interesting here to

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  speculate on the incest taboo. The Freudian articulation

  o f what the Oedipal complex is and means serves the

  imperatives of a patriarchal culture, of Judeo-Chris-

  tian morality, and remains largely unchallenged. But

  the earliest devotional mother-son configurations are

  those of a Mother/Goddess and her Son/Lover. The

  son is lover to the mother and is ritually sacrificed at a

  predetermined time (mothers don’t have to be possessive). This sacrifice is not related to guilt or punishment—it is holy sacrifice which sanctifies the tribe, does honor to the offering, and is premised on cyclic fertility patterns of life, death, and regeneration. These rites, associated with the worship of the Great Mother

  (the first corruption of the Great Original, or primal

  androgyne) involved ritual intercourse between mother

  and son, with the subsequent sacrifice of the son. At

  one time both a son and a daughter were sacrificed, but

  as the daughter became a mother-surrogate, the son

  was sacrificed alone. This sacralized set, Mother/God-

  dess-Son/Lover, and the rituals associated with it, are

  postandrogyne developments: that is, men and women

  experienced separateness (not duality) and attempted

  to recreate symbolically the androgynous state of mind

  and body through what we now call incest. If it is true

  that the implications of the androgyny myths in terms

  of behavior run counter to every Judeo-Christian, or

  more generally sexist, notion of morality, it would follow that incest is the primary taboo of this and similar cultures because it has its roots in the sexually dynamic

  androgynous mentality. Indeed, it is not surprising

  to discover that early versions of t
he Oedipus story do

  not end with Oedipus putting his eyes out. Sophocles

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  leaves Oedipus overcome with fear, guilt, and remorse,

  blinded and ruined. In the earlier Homeric version,

  Oedipus becomes king and reigns happily ever after.

  Freud chose the wrong version o f the right story.

  Even Jewish mythology provides a primal androgyne. Here is the substance o f a cultural underground most directly related to us. According to the Zohar,

  the first created woman was not Eve but Lilith. She was

  created coterminous with Adam, that is, they were

  created in one body, androgynous. T hey were o f one

  substance, one corporality. God, so the legend goes,

  split them apart so that Lilith could be dressed as a bride

  and married to Adam properly, but Lilith rebelled at

  the whole concept o f marriage,, that is, o f being defined as Adam ’s inferior, and fled. Lilith was in fact the first woman and the first feminist both. T h e Jewish

  patriarchs, with shrewd vengeance, called her a witch.

  They said that the witch Lilith haunted the night (her

  name is etymologically associated with the Hebrew

  word for night) and killed infants. She became symbolic

  o f the dark, evil side o f all women. O f course, Lilith,

  we know now, made the correct analysis and went to the

  core o f the problem: she rejected the nuclear family.

  God, however, saw it differently — he had created Lilith

  from dust, just as he had created Adam. He had created her free and equal. Not making the same mistake twice, Eve was created from Adam's rib, clearly giving

  her no claim to either freedom or equality. It took the

  Christians to assert that since the rib is bent, woman’s

  nature is contrary to man’s.

  How then can we understand the biblical statement

  that God created man in his own image —male and fe­

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  male created he them? The Midrash gives the definitive answer: When the Holy One, Blessed Be He, created the first man, he created him androgynous. 10 There is also

  a corresponding Jewish androgynous godhead. The

  very word for the godhead, Elohim, is composed of a

  feminine noun and a masculine plural ending. God

  is multiple and androgynous. The tradition of the

  androgynous godhead is most clearly articulated in the

  Kabbalah, a text which in written form goes back to the

  Middle Ages. The oral Kabbalah, which is more extensive than the written Kabbalah, originates in the most obscure reaches of Jewish history, before the

  Bible, and has been preserved with, according to occultists, more care than the written Bible —that is, the Bible has been rewritten, edited, modified, translated;

  oral Kabbalah has retained its purity.

  The Kabbalistic scheme of the godhead is complex.

  Suffice it here to say that god is male and female interwoven. Certain parts are associated with the female, other parts with the male. For instance, primal understanding is female; wisdom is male; severity is female; mercy is male. Special prominence is given to the final

  emanation of the godhead, Malkuth the Queen, the

  physical manifestation of the godhead in the universe.

  Malkuth the Queen is roughly equivalent to Shakti. For

  the Kabbalists, as for the Tantrics, the ultimate sacrament is sexual intercourse which recreates androgyny.

  Just as the Tantrics are/were ostracized by the rest of

  the Hindu and Buddhist communities, so do the main

  body of Jews ostracize the Kabbalists. Now they are

  considered to be freaks —they have been viewed as

  heretics. And heretics they are, for in recognizing the

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  androgynous nature o f the godhead they undermine

  the authority o f God the Father and threaten the power

  o f patriarchy.

  It remains only to point out that Christ also had

  some notion o f androgyny. In Gospel to the Egyptians,

  Christ and a disciple named Salome have this conversation:

  When Salome asked how long Death should prevail,

  the Lord said: So long as ye women bear children; for

  I have come to destroy the work o f the Female. And

  Salome said to Him: Did I therefore well in having

  no children? T h e Lord answered and said: Eat every

  Herb, but eat not that which hath bitterness. When

  Salome asked when these things about which she questioned would be made known, the Lord said: When ye trample upon the garment o f shame; when the Tw o

  become One, and Male with Female neither male nor

  fem ale. 11

  In the next chapter I am going to pursue the implications o f androgyny myths in the areas o f sexual identity and sexual behavior, and it would be in keeping

  with the spirit o f this book to take Christ as my guide

  and say with him: “When ye trample upon the garment

  o f shame; when the Tw o become One, and Male with

  Female neither male nor female. ”

  C H A P T E R 9

  Androgyny: Androgyny, Fucking,

  and Community

  Nothing short o f everything will really do.

  Aldous Huxley, Island

  The discovery is, of course, that “man” and “woman”

  are fictions, caricatures, cultural constructs. As models

  they are reductive, totalitarian, inappropriate to human

  becoming. As roles they are static, demeaning to the

  female, dead-ended for male and female both. Culture

  as we know it legislates those fictive roles as normalcy.

  Deviations from sanctioned, sacred behavior are “gender disorders, ” “criminality, ” as well as “sick, ” “disgusting, ” and “immoral. ” Heterosexuality, which is properly defined as the ritualized behavior built on

  polar role definition, and the social institutions related

  to it (marriage, the family, the Church, ad infinitum)

  are “human nature. ” Homosexuality, transsexuality,

  incest, and bestiality persist as the “perversions” of this

  “human nature” we presume to know so much about.

  They persist despite the overwhelming forces marshaled against them —discriminatory laws and social practices, ostracism, active persecution by the state

  and other organs of the culture —as inexplicable embarrassments, as odious examples of “filth” and/or

  “maladjustment. ” The attempt here, however modest

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  and incomplete, is to discern another ontology, one

  which discards the fiction that there are two polar

  distinct sexes.

  We have seen that androgyny myths present an

  image o f one corporality which is both male and female.

  Sometimes the image is literally a man-form and a

  woman-form in one body. Sometimes it is a figure

  which incorporates both male and female functions.

  In every case, that mythological image is a paradigm

  for a wholeness, a harmony, and a freedom which is

  virtually unimaginable, the antithesis o f every assumption we hold about the nature o f identity in general and sex in particular. T h e first question then is: What

  o f biology? There are, after all, men and women. They

  are different, demonstrably so. We are each o f one sex

  or the other. If there are two discrete b
iological sexes,

  then it is not hard to argue that there are two discrete

  modes o f human behavior, sex-related, sex-determined.

  One might argue for a liberalization o f sex-based roles,

  but one cannot justifiably argue for their total redefinition.

  Hormone and chromosome research, attempts to

  develop new means o f human reproduction (life created in, or considerably supported by, the scientist’s laboratory), work with transsexuals, and studies o f

  formation o f gender identity in children provide basic

  information which challenges the notion that there are

  two discrete biological sexes. That information threatens

  to transform the traditional biology o f sex difference

  into the radical biology o f sex similarity. That is not to

  say that there is one sex, but that there are many. The

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  evidence which is germane here is simple. The words

  “male” and “female, ” “man” and “woman, ” are used

  only because as yet there are no others.

  1. Men and women have the same basic body structure. Both have both male and female genitals —the clitoris is a vestigial penis, the prostate gland is most

  probably a vestigial womb. Since, as I pointed out earlier, there is information on only 2 percent of human history, and since religious chronicles, which were for

  centuries the only record of human history, consistently

  speak of another time in the cycle o f time when humans

  were androgynous, and since each sex has the vestigial

  organs of the other, there is no reason not to postulate

  that humans once were androgynous — hermaphroditic

  and androgynous, created precisely in the image of

  that constantly recurring androgynous godhead.

  2. Until the 7th week of fetal development both

  sexes have precisely the same external genitalia. Basically, the development of sex organs and ducts is the same for males and females and the same two sets of

  ducts develop in both.

  3. The gonads cannot be said to be entirely male or