Andrea Dworkin - Woman Hating - A Radical Look at Sexuality

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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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