Andrea Dworkin - Woman Hating - A Radical Look at Sexuality

forces of rearing and social conditioning along with

the individual's response to these factors directs the

development o f a personality which is by nature

sexual. 12

* An object in the cell itself which would seem to determine gender.

Androgyny: Androgyny, Fucking, and Community

183

Since there can be total contradiction between/

among any o f the above, since we have discussed some

(by no means all) o f the cross-sexed characteristics o f

human biological functioning, since we recognize hermaphroditism and parthenogenesis as human realities, we are justified in making a radical new formulation o f

the nature o f human sexuality. We are , clearly , a multi -

sexed species which has its sexuality spread along a vast fluid

continuum where the elements called male and female are

not discrete *

T he concrete implications o f multisexuality as we

find it articulated in both androgynous mythology and

biology necessitate the total redefinition o f scenarios o f

proper human sexual behavior and pragmatic forms

o f human community. I f human beings are multisexed,

then all forms o f sexual interaction which are directly

rooted in the multisexual nature o f people must be part

o f the fabric o f human life, accepted into the lexicon o f

human possibility, integrated into the forms o f human

community. By redefining human sexuality, or by

defining it correctly, we can transform human relationship and the institutions which seek to control that relationship. Sex as the power dynamic between men and women, its primary form sadomasochism, is what we

know now. Sex as community between humans, our

shared humanity, is the world we must build. What

*

T h e notion o f bisexuality is organically rooted to structural polarity

and is inappropriate here for these reasons: the word itself has duality built

into it; one can be bisexual and still relate to the fictions “ male” and “ fem ale"

— to both instead o f to one; one can be bisexual and still relate exclusively to

one role, the masculine or the fem inine, w hether found in men or women.

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Woman Haling

kind of sexual identity and relation will be the substance of that community?

Heterosexuality and Homosexuality/

There are men I could spend eternity with,

But not this life.

Kathleen Norris

a little zen in our politics a little acid in

our tea, could be all we need, the poof

is in the putting.

Jill Johnston

I have defined heterosexuality as the ritualized

behavior built on polar role definition. Intercourse

with men as we know them is increasingly impossible.

It requires an aborting of creativity and strength, a

refusal of responsibility and freedom: a bitter personal

death. It means remaining the victim, forever annihilating all self-respect. It means acting out the female role, incorporating the masochism, self-hatred, and passivity

which are central to it. Unambiguous conventional

heterosexual behavior is the worst betrayal of our common humanity.

That is not to say that “men” and “women” should

not fuck. Any sexual coming together which is genuinely pansexual and role-free, even if between men and women as we generally think of them (i. e., the biological

images we have of them), is authentic and androgynous.

Specifically, androgynous fucking requires the destruction

* For bisexuality, cf. p. 183.

Androgyny: Androgyny, Fucking, and Community

185

of all conventional role-playing, of genital sexuality as the

primary focus and value, of couple formations, and of the

personality structures dominant-active (“ male ”) and sub-

missive-passive (“female”).

Homosexuality, because it is by definition antagonistic to two-sex polarity, is closer at its inception to androgynous sexuality. However, since all individual

consciousness and social relationship are polluted by

internalized notions o f polarity, coupling, and role-

playing, the criteria cited above must also be applied to

homosexual relation. T oo often homosexual relation

transgresses gender imperatives without transforming

them.

An exclusive commitment to one sexual formation,

whether homosexual or heterosexual, generally means

an exclusive commitment to one role. An exclusive

commitment to one sexual formation generally involves the denial o f many profound and compelling kinds o f sensuality. An exclusive commitment to one

sexual formation generally means that one is, regardless o f the uniform one wears, a good soldier o f the culture programmed effectively to do its dirty work.

It is by developing one’s pansexuality to its limits

(and no one knows where or what those are) that one

does the work o f destroying culture to build community.

Transsexuality

How can I really care if we win “the Revolution” ? Either way, any way, there will be

no place for me.

A transsexual friend, in a conversation

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Woman Haling

Transsexuality is currently considered a gender

disorder, that is, a person learns a gender role which

contradicts his/her visible sex. It is a “disease” with

a cure: a sex-change operation will change the person’s

visible sex and make it consonant with the person’s felt

identity.

Since we know very little about sex identity, and

since psychiatrists are committed to the propagation

of the cultural structure as it is, it would be premature

and not very intelligent to accept the psychiatric judgment that transsexuality is caused by faulty socialization.

More probably transsexuality is caused by a faulty society. Transsexuality can be defined as one particular formation of our general multisexuality which is unable to achieve its natural development because of extremely adverse social conditions.

There is no doubt that in the culture of male-female

discreteness, transsexuality is a disaster for the individual transsexual. Every transsexual, white, black, man, woman, rich, poor, is in a state of primary emergency

(see p. 185) as a transsexual. There are 3 crucial

points here. One, every transsexual has the right to