Anger

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From My Life on the Road (2015)

  For the first issue of Ms. magazine, she has written a lethal and funny analysis of the welfare system, comparing it to an all-powerful husband who looks under your bed for other men’s shoes, controls your life with endless paperwork, and doles out an allowance too small to live on. 2 In other words, she has done the first feminist analysis of social policy. On the phone, Johnnie explains that Nevada, the only state in which brothels are legal and licensed, has come up with a double whammy. Since prostitution is now described as “sex work” by a new combination of a few academics and prostituted women tired of being arrested, some Nevada welfare officials are telling welfare mothers they must accept this legal work of prostitution or lose their welfare or unemployment checks. Some welfare mothers are being directed to the Mustang Ranch, the first licensed brothel in Nevada, just east of Reno. Johnnie is mad as hell that the state is trying to save money by cutting welfare payments and turning welfare mothers into a sexual tourist attraction. She is organizing a protest outside the brothel and a massive march in Las Vegas. This is why Flo Kennedy and I find ourselves holding signs outside the Mustang Ranch, a place we never expected to be. Local reporters tell us that, inside each of the double-wide trailers, women line up, for customers to choose from. The sexual services on offer are listed on a printed menu. As if to prove that sexism and racism always go together, a woman is not allowed to refuse any man—unless, of course, he is black. Then she may trade off with another woman who “doesn’t mind.” Flo and I just look at each other. You can’t make this stuff up. When Joe Conforte, the brothel owner, arrives, he tells reporters that it’s insulting for his hardworking girls to be compared to lazy welfare mothers who are living on handouts. The next day in Las Vegas we march on the strip, even barging into and out of fancy casinos and hotels, shouting slogans and disrupting gamblers. I have to say there is something satisfying about bringing reality into windowless rooms full of neon and slot machines. When Flo and I celebrate that night by dancing with our NWRO friends in a rare black-owned motel, we feel as if we’ve been let out of a timeless hell. From Jane Fonda to civil rights lawyer William Kunstler, more people fly in to march with the NWRO women. Either the local welfare officials are embarrassed by the media coverage or they are worried that marches are disrupting tourists.

• From The Sexual Outlaw (1977)

  Another gasp, softer, the sound of spitting blood. A figure staggered onto the concrete alcove and fell back dead. The other still moaned. The murderer—the outlaws had rushed along the path to see his car speeding away—entered the courtroom with his smiling girlfriend. MIXED MEDIA 1 MIXED MEDIA 1 POLICE REFUSE TO ARREST S TABBING S USPECT S EEN A GAIN , E SCAPES A GAIN “… a prime suspect in [the] stabbing of a … 15-year-old boy … at the headquarters of the Radical Gay Christians … was spotted… preaching through a bullhorn at a [rock] concert [and] condemning … homosexuals, and all anti-Establishment people and praising Jesus, the Bible, and the police…. Police refused to arrest him [despite being informed] that there was a felony warrant out for his arrest.” — The Advocate , account of incident occurring November 25, 1975, in Los Angeles “Middle America's visceral distaste for sexual deviation is not… easily put down…. In New York City, the City Council seems about to vote [a civil-rights bill for homosexuals] down. In Missouri, a bill has been introduced that would require all homosexuals to register with the state….

• From The Sexual Outlaw (1977)

  The day after the raid, police broke into the homes of the organizers of the auction, leaving upturned laundry and waste baskets, gutted drawers, as their calling cards. In the following days, the cops cynically claimed they had thought the gay community would thank them for freeing their own slaves. On television a cop held up a pair of confiscated gay handcuffs as if they were objects totally foreign to his own profession—and not one of its main props. Forgetting all the bashed skulls, crushed groins, iron-squeezed wrists, another would claim that the mock slave auction was the most pitiful thing he had ever witnessed. It was all a pose filled with contempt and hypocrisy. In view of their constant harassment of gays and their apathy in responding to calls for help during truly sadistic attacks by gay-haters—the cops’ cousins—obviously no concern for homosexual dignity had motivated the massive attack. The cops themselves had encouraged the auction by buying several tickets in advance and even purchasing a slave. (Apparently they quickly got into the swing of it: The police log indicates that undercover police would “attempt to buy another [slave]—first buy bad.”) The public was cynically being asked to believe that the private auction so outraged the cops, aroused such human pity in them, that they carried out into life-smashing reality the fantasy of pain. But the cops miscalculated. The raid backfired. Feeling even more unsafe within their homes and on the jungle streets because of depleted police power, the straight community vented, in letters and loud public utterances, their outrage that so much of their money had been drained on a matter of no concern to them or to the police. The ACLU announced its support of the gay defendants. A California senator sent $600 for their defense. With the backing of councilmen, assemblymen, supervisors, and other legislators, demands were strong for a grand jury investigation into police conduct, their silly priorities at the expense of curbing real crime, the amount of money used in the raid, the number of personnel diverted, the high crime statistics for that night. Feeling the onslaught, the police, the district attorney, and the city attorney began to point accusing fingers at each other. But no investigation would be conducted into the misuse of funds. Supposedly because of “pending litigation,” the key police witness in the matter was instructed by the district attorney not to testify before the Governmental Efficiency Committee. On the gay front, homosexuals rallied in support of the arrested. No matter, for now, that one objected to the implications of the auction—that was for later important exploration—now was the time for solidarity. Unfortunately, the most visible support took a dizzy turn.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  If to know who I am concerneth thee so much, that thou hast therefore passed the bank, learn that I was clothed with the Great Mantle; and verily I was a son of the She-bear, so eager to advance the Whelps, that I pursed wealth above, and here myself. Beneath my head are dragged the others who preceded me in simony, cowering within the fissures of the stone. I too shall fall down thither, when he comes for whom I took thee when I put the sudden question. But longer is the time already, that I have baked my feet and stood inverted thus, than he7 shall stand planted with glowing feet: for after him, from westward, there shall come a lawless Shepherd, of uglier deeds, fit to cover him and me. A new Jason8 will it be, of whom we read in Maccabees; and as to that high priest his king was pliant, so to this shall be he who governs France.” I know not if here I was too hardy, for I answered him in this strain: “Ah! now tell me how much treasure Our Lord required of St. Peter, before he put the keys into his keeping? Surely he demanded nought but ‘Follow me!’9 Nor did Peter, nor the others, ask of Matthias gold or silver, when he was chosen for the office which the guilty soul had lost.10 Therefore stay thou here, for thou art justly punished; and keep well the ill-got money, which against Charles made thee be bold.11 And were it not that reverence for the Great Keys thou heldest in the glad life yet hinders me, I should use still heavier words: for your avarice grieves the world, trampling on the good, and raising up the wicked. Shepherds such as ye the Evangelist perceived, when she, that sitteth on the waters,12 was seen by him committing fornication with the kings; she that was born with seven heads, and in her ten horns had a witness so long as virtue pleased her spouse. Ye have made you a god of gold and silver; and wherein do ye differ from the idolater, save that he worships one, and ye a hundred? Ah Constantine! to how much ill gave birth, not thy conversion, but that dower which the first rich Father took from thee!”13 And whilst I sung these notes to him, whether it was rage or conscience gnawed him, he violently sprawled with both his feet. And indeed I think it pleased my Guide, with so satisfied a look did he keep listening to the sound of the true words uttered. Therefore with both his arms he took me; and, when he had me quite upon his breast, remounted by the path where he had descended. Nor did he weary in holding me clasped to him, till he bore me away to the summit of the arch which is a cross-way from the fourth to the fifth rampart.

• From My Life on the Road (2015)

  Now I hate the pimps.” She says truckers tend to be family men—executives are probably more likely to be johns—and she’s proud that husband-and-wife teams have a better safety record than men driving alone. At a fourth stop, there is a twenty-four-hour poker game. At a fifth, there is what seems to be a permanent floating argument about cross-country trucking and whether it can flex enough political muscle to make better safety laws.1 In this way, we hit every major truck stop between Boston and New York. I’ve spent most of my life on the road, yet I’d never seen this world that wakes when others sleep. My driver tells me it’s global. He’s met immigrant truckers looking for work who have driven English lorries, and everywhere from Eritrea’s mountainous roads to the crowded streets of India, where trucks are painted with flowers and gods and goddesses, an art form that drivers carried photos of, right along with photos of their families. Back in our shared cocoon in the rain, we’re quiet. The rhythm of our windshield wipers merges in my head with Brook Benton’s sensuous baritone: It’s a rainy night in Georgia and it looks like it’s rainin’ all over the world. I see Manhattan lights reflecting into the night sky, but I’ve lost all sense of time. This could go on forever. I realize I’ve been swimming in the shallows, and am only now discovering the deeps where the great whales meet. III. • I’m having lunch at West Hollywood’s Café Figaro with Florynce Kennedy. She is explaining to me that she quit being a lawyer because “the law is a one-ass-at-a-time proposition, and what you have to do is stop the wringer.” This is inspired by the sight of seven waitresses and no waiters, an index of suspicion. Flo says tips are probably being used as a legal excuse to pay less than the minimum wage.2 We quiz the manager. He assures us the pay is terrific, all seven waitresses adore their jobs, and more women are waiting in line. Back home in New York a week later, I find a letter waiting from those waitresses: “We don’t think any other occupational group can appreciate what you do for women as much as we. It’s not enough that we work hard for ridiculously low wages, we’re expected to softly come on to male customers so that they’ll spend more and return again. Our wonderful male manager advances the theory that it’s really to our benefit—we’ll get bigger tips. God, what an intellectual cripple. Don’t ever let up! The Subversive Seven.” Now it’s decades later, in 2014. I’m reading about beloved comedian and actor Bill Cosby, who has been accused by no fewer than thirty-nine women of drugging and sexually assaulting them at some time in the past. Each one feared she would not be believed, but when one came forward, they all began to.

• From My Life on the Road (2015)

  Someone shouted out, “Yes, you have—it’s called Voting While Black!” Amid the laughter, another man stood to explain that names of people with felonies had been merged with the voter rolls without checking whether more than one person shared the same name. Then an older white woman said the bus from her retirement home had been sent to the wrong polling place. Others testified that polling places were fewer and lines were longer in poor and more Democratic areas. People had given up because they were hourly workers who lost pay if they weren’t at their jobs. Then a white man of fifty or so said he’d seen the illustration of the ballot only on the way out—and realized he had accidentally voted for an extreme right-wing candidate when he thought he was voting for Al Gore. That caused a dozen more people to groan or shout out that this had also happened to them. One by one, people in this random audience told their confusing and disenfranchising experiences. Out of the approximately seven hundred people in the auditorium, at least a hundred had been unable either to vote for their chosen candidate or to vote at all. I wondered: If there are this many in one auditorium, how many in all of Palm Beach County? Or in the state? Finally, a white man of thirty or so rose to face me. In the name of his military service to his country, he said, and also of his young daughter, whom he wanted to grow up in a democracy, he asked: “Will you stay and help us organize a protest tomorrow—and the next day and the next—whatever it takes?” I could feel a deep pull to say yes. Yet I thought my presence might be used to call this a rebellion instigated by an outsider. Instead, I promised to take the name, address, and polling place of everyone who hadn’t been able to vote at all, or to vote for their chosen candidate, and give them to lawyers for Gore as well as nonpartisan watchdogs outside the state. I went home, called election lawyers, and delivered the lists as promised. When Bush’s lead was down to a mere 537 votes out of about six million cast, the reexamination of ballots was stopped. Florida’s secretary of state, Katherine Harris, also the co-chair of Bush’s Florida campaign, declared Bush the winner. Calls for a recount were deafening, and supported by the Florida Supreme Court. However, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5 to 4 that there was no uniform recount standard to meet the equal protection clause, and no time to create one. Therefore, the recount was stopped. It was a decision that would be compared with Dred Scott —the nineteenth-century Supreme Court ruling that no black person, slave or free, could ever become a citizen of the United States—for its impact and clear bias.

• From The Sexual Outlaw (1977)

  The swirling coplight across the street illumines their faces periodically, lighting their exposed flesh sexually as the two kiss, connect, explore. Without coming, Jim and the other part. Beyond the stairs, the area is clear. The cops are gone. The quiet street is deserted. VOICE OVER: Selective Sins and Exhortations VOICE OVER: Selective Sins and Exhortations “T HOU SHALT NOT KILL ,” says the Bible. In Kentucky, I and squads of other youngmen in infantry training were taken in ugly green trucks to dusty fields and taught by experts to attach a pointed bayonet to our rifles. Then we stood before a row of hanging dirt-bloated dummies, substitute enemy, and we learned to lunge at those “bodies” while we shouted, “Kill! Kill!” “Louder!” screamed our expert army teacher. “Louder! Kill! Kill! ” Our bayonets stabbed over and over and then we twisted the butt of our rifles and pretended to smash a face and crush a skull. All in preparation for a time when the dummies would be human beings. The same Book also says that to “lie with mankind, as with womankind” is an “abomination”—and because of that, generations have despised, incarcerated, and killed homosexuals. But what of people who eat fat? The same Book warns that even the soul of one who does so “shall be cut off from his people.” It also admonishes against another minority, those who eat rabbit. But that admonishment has not been converted into law. Pull out the phrase warning against “leaving the natural use of the woman.” Hate homosexuals! Yet the same Book tells us that we “owe no man anything but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law.” “Rebuke not an elder,” says the Bible. I watch television newsclips of an old-age home. The living dead with stringy, spidery, silky—beautiful—hair and carved cheeks; with quivering hands as if all life is finally rushing in indignation to those fingertips; the desperate alive eyes in the tossed-out bodies scream…. “Rebuke not an elder.” And worthy citizens draw up a successful petition to commit an old, old woman—shriveled body still fierce with pride and anger—in order to get her uncomfortable presence out of their tidy neighborhood; her property, pieces of her life, tossed out for careless sale, “Rebuke not an elder,” says the Book. Are women who bear boys filthy for seven days?— longer, if they bear girls? Is a man dirty until evening after fucking his wife? Are we contaminated by touching a menstruating woman? In the morning I look out, and I see the atmosphere like a wired cage, a poisonous presence. Punish adultery by death! Stone disobedient children! Are there laws against women wearing gold or pearls “or costly array”? The same Book forbids it. And it states categorically that “the love of money is the root of all evil.”

• From Querelle (1953)

  bottom of a coffin; of wandering aimlessly about some trite tomb in some trite cemetery, and there imagining the quotidian lives of the living, who appeared to him curiously senseless since he was no longer there to be their pretext, their center, their generous heart. However, his human form, or "fleshly envelope," went on busying itself on the earth's surface, among all those senseless people. And Querelle proceeded to arrange another murder. As no act is perfect to the extent that an alibi could rid us from our responsibility for it, Querelle saw in each crime, be it only a theft, one detail which (in his eyes only) became a mistake that might lead to his undoing. To live in the midst of his mistakes gave him a feeling of lightness, of a cruel instability, as he seemed to be flitting from one bending reed to another. From the time he reached the first lights of the town Querelle had already resumed his habitual smile. When he entered the main parlor of the brothel he was just a husky sailorboy, clear-eyed and looking for some action. He hesitated for a · few seconds in the midst of the music, but one of the women lost no time in getting to him. She was tall and blonde, very skinny, wearing a black tulle dress pulled in over the region of her cunt-and hiding it in order to evoke it better-by a triangle of black, longhaired fur, probably rabbit, threadbare and almost worn bald in places. Querelle stroked the fur with a light finger while looking the girl in the eye, but refused to accompany her upstairs. After delivering the package of opium to· Nono and receiving his five thousand francs Querelle knew that the time had come - for him to "execute himself." This would be capital punishment. If a logical chain of events had not brought Querelle to La Feria, the murderer would no doubt have contrived-secretly, within himself-another sacrificial rite. Once more he smiled, looking at the thick nape of the brothelkeeper's neck as that one bent over, on the divan, to examine the opium. He looked at his slightly protruding ears, .. 69 I QUERELLE the bald and shiny top of his head, the powerful arch of his body. When Norbert looked up again, he confronted Querelle with a face both fleshy and bony, heavy-jowled and brokennosed. Everything about the man, in his forties, gave an impression of brutal vigor. The head belonged to a wrestler's body, hairy, tattooed perhaps, most certainly odorous. "Capital punishment, for sure." "Now then. What's your game? What do you want with the Madam? Tell me." Querelle discarded his grin in order to appear to smile expressly at this question and to wrap up his answer in another smile which this question alone could have provoked-and which this smile alone would succeed in rendering inoffensive.

• From Querelle (1953)

  "Oh, yeah, I'd like to have her here, all right. And you bet your ass I'd screw her, and good, if I had her here, the way I've got you I" Roger said nothing. His smile disappeared. His eyes kept on meeting Gil's stare, and the only gentleness he could see there was in Gil's eyebrows, powdered with chalk and cement dust. "Gill" He thought: "This is Gil. It's Gilbert Turko. He's from Poland. He's been working at the Arsenal, on the gantry, with the other masons. He's in a rage." Close to Gil's ear, under his breath which entered the fog, he murmured: u I JEAN GENET ((Gill" "Oh . . . l Oh . . . ! I sure could use a piece of her, right now. You, you look alike, you know. You've got that same little mouth of hers." He moved his hand closer to Roger's neck. Finding himself so the master, in the heart of the light mass of watery air, increased Gil Turko's desire to be tough, sharp and heavy. To rip the fog, to destroy it with a sudden brutal gesture, would perhaps be enough to affirm his virility, which otherwise, on his return to quarters tonight, would suffer mean and powerful humiliation. ''Got her eyes, too. What a shame you ain't her. Hey, what's this? You passing out?" As if to prevent Roger from "passing out," he pressed his belly closer still to his, pushing him against the wall, while his free hand kept hold of the channing head, holding it above the waves of a powerful and arrogant sea, the sea that was Gil. They remained motionless, one shoring up the other. "What are you going to tell her?" "I'll try to get her to come along tomorrow." Despite his inexperience, Roger understood the extent, if not quite the meaning of his confusion, when he heard the sound of his own voice: it was toneless. "And the other thing I told you about?" "I'll try my best about that too. We going back now?" They pulled apart, quickly. Suddenly they heard the sea. From the very beginning of this scene they had been close to the water's edge. For a moment both of them felt frightened at the thought of having been so close to danger. Gil took out a cigarette and lit it. Roger saw the beauty of his face that looked as if it had been picked, like a flower, by those large hands, thick arid covered with powdery dust, their palms illuminated now by a delicate and trembling flame. 0 0 0 23 I QUERELLE They say that the murderer Menesclou used a spray of lilacs to entice the little girl closer to him so that he could then slit her throat; it is with his hair, with his eyes-with his full smilethat He (Querelle) draws me on. Does this mean that I am going to my death? That those locks, those teeth are lethal?

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  “Maybe I’d be an asshole too if I hadn’t gone on leave. If I were graduating early.” But then Lionel didn’t like how bitter he sounded, in part because it felt like giving the host credit or power over him. “Anyway, it’s fine.” The wind through the screen chilled his neck. Charles rested the back of his head against the drawer. “It’s okay to be mad,” Charles said. “Mad about what?” “Your life.” Charles stretched his knee out gingerly and then rubbed it flat with his palm. “Did you hurt yourself?” “Overworked. It’s nothing.” It was easy to see how Charles might have overextended himself. He had the kind of body you could only get at great personal risk. He was good-looking, in a way that seemed incongruous with ordinary life. Like the kind of attractiveness only people on TV or with large social media followings could have. But he looked pained, too. All that body had cost him something. Lionel could understand that. The cost of the life you wanted. The way it could bound back on you. Extract its due. The kitchen tile crackled, and they both looked toward the door. It was Sophie. She looked down at them. Her eyes moved quickly from Lionel to Charles, to his knee. “Do we need to go?” she asked. “It’s all right,” he said. “We can stay.” “It might be better if we iced it at home.” Charles inhaled and then said, sharply, “I’m not a pussy.” “Oh, brother,” Sophie said. She pulled the freezer door open and stuck her head inside like she’d done it a thousand times before. She took out a blue ice pack, offered it to Charles. “What the fuck am I supposed to do with that?” he asked. Her eyes narrowed again, this time lighting upon Lionel. She dropped the ice pack in the middle of the floor, and it spun around on its back like a helpless turtle. They all watched it come to a stop. “Maybe your new buddy can help you,” she said. “Easy, Sophie.” “You’re so selfish.” “You’re the one who wanted to be here. I’m here.” She said nothing after that, just watched Charles another moment or two. Then she went back into the living room, and Lionel felt he could exhale. All through that exchange, he had been holding his breath. And he’d seen them bare their teeth at each other. Was that what it meant to be with someone? Was that what it meant to care? Charles stood stiffly. Lionel could hear his knee popping. “What did I say about assholes?” Charles said, and then he left the kitchen, too, shaking his head as he went. Lionel drank the rest of his rosé in peace. He brushed the ice pack with his foot, and sent it spinning around again. When it came to a rest, he spun it in the opposite direction. • • •

• From My Life on the Road (2015)

  Because I still believed it was too soon for Hillary or any woman to be accepted as commander in chief, I wrote: If I were Obama, I would not feel personally betrayed by lack of support from someone like me, a new ally. If I were Hillary Clinton, I might feel betrayed by a longtime supporter who left me for a new face. In other words: Obama didn’t need me to win. Hillary Clinton might need me to lose. —ONCE AGAIN THE ROAD educated me—by showing me what voters were subjected to. I began to think that the wait for a female president might be even longer than I imagined. At airport gift shops, a nutcracker made to look like Hillary Clinton was sold as an election novelty. Her legs were handles, and her crotch was the place for cracking nuts. When I asked a sales clerk in the Washington, D.C., airport if there were complaints, she said yes, there had been a few, but it was selling well. When I asked her if there were similar nutcrackers of the male candidates, she said, “Certainly not!” On campuses, I saw young men wearing T-shirts that said TOO BAD O .J . DIDN’T MARRY HILLARY . All the wearers I saw were white. When I asked students what they thought about this slogan, they agreed it was uncool. They assured me most guys just put on their T-shirts and Facebook pages BROS BEFORE HOS . I watched as MSNBC political analyst Tucker Carlson said of Hillary Clinton, “I have often said when she comes on television, I involuntarily cross my legs.” I thought: No wonder that nutcracker is selling well. Also on MSNBC, Chris Matthews announced, “Let’s not forget—and I’ll be brutal—the reason she’s a U.S. senator, the reason she’s a candidate for president, the reason she may be a frontrunner, is her husband messed around. That’s how she got to be senator from New York. We keep forgetting it. She didn’t win there on her merit.”9 A woman reporter for The Washington Post wrote about a Hillary suit jacket that disclosed a bit of cleavage and called it “a provocation.” No such charge had been leveled at male presidential candidates, from John F. Kennedy to Obama, when they were photographed on the beach in bathing suits. About Hillary, Rush Limbaugh asked: “Will this country want to actually watch a woman get older on a daily basis?” According to another Fox News analyst, “If that’s the face of experience, I think it’s going to scare away a lot of those independent voters.” At CNN, women correspondents told me they had been cautioned not to wear pantsuits on camera—they might look too much like Hillary.

• From My Life on the Road (2015)

  Alcoholism, an addiction that is legal and profitable, is treated as a disease. So is addiction to prescription pills, a source of profit for pharmaceutical companies. But addictions to drugs that solely benefit an underground are criminalized. Even two forms of the same drug may be treated differently: for a long time, people of color who used crack cocaine got longer sentences than did white people who used powdered cocaine. Yet these are all addictions, and the human body is the same, so treatment should be the same. And then there is the death penalty. Bryan Stevenson—lawyer, author, and activist who works to free the wrongfully convicted—wrote Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption . Because his book was published around the same time as this one, we shared book tour events. I learned from listening to him how lynching, the racial terrorism of the past, is echoed in a death penalty so unfair by race and class that he calls it “indoor lynching.” Those two words alone should be enough to end capital punishment. Yet nothing quite prepared me for the impact of the profit motive on the prison system. It’s been many years since Angela Davis warned us about “the prison-industrial complex,” an echo of President Eisenhower’s warning about “the military-industrial complex.” In the 1980s, privatization of prisons took off because it was presented as a good thing, a way to construct prisons faster and make them more efficient and modern, with more staff because salaries weren’t locked into government categories. After a huge burst of prison building, problems surfaced. It turned out that lower pay often brought guards who were less well trained, more abusive, or more willing to ignore abuse committed by other prisoners. Good behavior or not, prisoners in privatized prisons served more of their sentences because corporations were paid per capita and wanted to keep the cells filled. In short, our prisons are impoverishing our educational system, deepening divisions of race and class, separating mothers and fathers from children, training the nonviolent to be violent, rarely allowing people to learn and improve while they are there, and producing people who have a harder time getting a job—or even voting once they are out—than when they arrived.6 Removing the profit motive of enriching stockholders and corporations—in the thirty states with for-profit prisons—wouldn’t magically make our prisons better, but it would eliminate some of the motive for making them worse. And it’s possible. For instance, New York State has a law against for-profit prisons, and Minnesota has fought off this trend so far, but they are in the minority. To this day I remember a former prisoner who held forth in a bar in Austin, Texas, and put it all together in a very personal way. The television news was reporting on Abu Ghraib, the prison in Iraq where U.S. military personnel tortured, sexually abused, and murdered prisoners.

• From The Sexual Outlaw (1977)

  The cop beat me up.’ Well, the fact of the matter is, I've nothing to brag about, but I was a vice cop and I probably arrested 300 or 400 gays in my life.” —Ex-cop turned writer, speaking on beatings, vice arrests, and being a “human being.” New West Magazine , July 19, 1976 A N I NSTANT C URE “… when the board [of trustees of the American Psychiatric Association] voted last December to cease classifying homosexuality as a ‘mental disorder,’ … opponents of the ruling circulated petitions, issued angry statements, and forced the APA into an unprecedented action:… for the first time in [its] 129-year history, a board decision is being put to a vote.” — Time , April 1, 1974 “… Probably the most recent information in the matter [of child molestation] is [a] report by the State Department of Mental Hygiene, ‘Another Look at Sex Offenders in California.’ “That study of 887 pedophiles (persons favoring children as partners) at Atascadero State Hospital-65% of them from Los Angeles County—revealed that 75% were heterosexual, while only 20% were [exclusively] homosexual.” —Los Angeles Times , October 28, 1973 “Historical evidence has shown that homosexuals are prone to violence and other forms of criminal conduct, most notably … molestation of adolescents and children.” —Testimony of a Los Angeles policeman during hearings to review the penal code, —Los Angeles Times , March 25, 1974 LAPD SEX SCANDAL M ORALS P ROBE R EVOLVES A ROUND P OLICE , G IRL S COUTS “A number of Los Angeles police are under investigation for alleged sexual misconduct with members of the Hollywood Division's girl explorer scouts … a youth auxiliary group for girls 14 and up….” —Valley News , August 24, 1976 SOUTH PASADENA OFFICER CHARGED IN SEX CASE “A 10-year South Pasadena police department veteran was arraigned … on charges resulting from an alleged sexual encounter with a 15-year-old … girl.” —Los Angeles Times , October 15, 1976 NEW SEX CASE AT TWO POLICE DIVISIONS PROBED “New allegations of sexual misconduct involving some of its officers are being investigated by the Los Angeles Police Department, the agency said in a cryptic statement…. Department rumors have circulated for weeks that some officers … set up an agreement with nurses at a local hospital for sexual favors….

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  But this was worse still. Nevyedovsky and Sviazhsky were the two candidates. “I certainly shall not, under any circumstances,” answered the malignant gentleman. This was Nevyedovsky himself. Sviazhsky introduced him to Levin. “Well, you find it exciting too?” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, winking at Vronsky. “It’s something like a race. One might bet on it.” “Yes, it is keenly exciting,” said Vronsky. “And once taking the thing up, one’s eager to see it through. It’s a fight!” he said, scowling and setting his powerful jaws. “What a capable fellow Sviazhsky is! Sees it all so clearly.” “Oh, yes!” Vronsky assented indifferently. A silence followed, during which Vronsky—since he had to look at something—looked at Levin, at his feet, at his uniform, then at his face, and noticing his gloomy eyes fixed upon him, he said, in order to say something: “How is it that you, living constantly in the country, are not a justice of the peace? You are not in the uniform of one.” “It’s because I consider that the justice of the peace is a silly institution,” Levin answered gloomily. He had been all the time looking for an opportunity to enter into conversation with Vronsky, so as to smooth over his rudeness at their first meeting. “I don’t think so, quite the contrary,” Vronsky said, with quiet surprise. “It’s a plaything,” Levin cut him short. “We don’t want justices of the peace. I’ve never had a single thing to do with them during eight years. And what I have had was decided wrongly by them. The justice of the peace is over thirty miles from me. For some matter of two roubles I should have to send a lawyer, who costs me fifteen.” And he related how a peasant had stolen some flour from the miller, and when the miller told him of it, had lodged a complaint for slander. All this was utterly uncalled for and stupid, and Levin felt it himself as he said it. “Oh, this is such an original fellow!” said Stepan Arkadyevitch with his most soothing, almond-oil smile. “But come along; I think they’re voting....” And they separated. “I can’t understand,” said Sergey Ivanovitch, who had observed his brother’s clumsiness, “I can’t understand how anyone can be so absolutely devoid of political tact. That’s where we Russians are so deficient. The marshal of the province is our opponent, and with him you’re _ami cochon_, and you beg him to stand. Count Vronsky, now ... I’m not making a friend of him; he’s asked me to dinner, and I’m not going; but he’s one of our side—why make an enemy of him? Then you ask Nevyedovsky if he’s going to stand. That’s not a thing to do.” “Oh, I don’t understand it at all! And it’s all such nonsense,” Levin answered gloomily. “You say it’s all such nonsense, but as soon as you have anything to do with it, you make a muddle.”

• From How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain (2017)

  Let’s recap where we are. Do animals regulate their body budgets by interoception? I cannot speak for the entire animal kingdom here but for mammals—rats, monkeys, apes, dogs—I think we are on pretty safe ground answering yes. Do animals experience affect? Again, I think we can give a pretty confident yes, based on some biological and behavioral clues. Can animals learn concepts and can they categorize predictively with those concepts? Definitely. Can they learn action-based concepts? Unquestionably yes. Can they learn the meaning of words? Under some circumstances, some animals can learn words or other symbol systems, in the sense that the symbols become part of the statistical patterns that a brain can capture and store for later use. But can animals use words to go beyond the statistical regularities in the world, to create goal-based similarities that unite actions or objects that look, sound, or feel different? Can they use words as invitations to form mental concepts? Do they realize that part of the information they need about the world resides in the minds of other creatures around them? Can they categorize actions and make them meaningful as mental events? Probably not. At least not in the way that we humans do. Apes can construct categorizations that are more similar to our own than we might have imagined. But right now, there is no clear evidence that any non-human animals on the planet have the sorts of emotion concepts that humans do. We alone have all the ingredients necessary to create and transmit social reality, including emotion concepts. This holds true even for Man’s Best Friend. So, let’s return to Rowdy: was he angry when he growled and jumped up on the boy? Based on our discussion so far, Rowdy lacks emotion concepts, so you might guess that my answer is no. Well, not exactly. (Get ready for that twist I mentioned at the beginning of the chapter.) From the perspective of the theory of constructed emotion, the question “Is a growling dog angry?” is the wrong question to ask in the first place, or at least incomplete. It assumes that a dog is measurably angry or not angry in some objective sense. But as you’ve learned, emotion categories have no consistent, biological fingerprints. Emotions are always constructed from some perceiver’s point of view. So the question “Was Rowdy angry?” is actually two separate scientific questions: “Was Rowdy angry from the boy’s perspective?” “Was Rowdy angry from his own perspective?” These questions have substantially different answers. The first question asks, “Could the boy construct a perception of anger from Rowdy’s actions?” Absolutely. When we observe a dog’s behavior, we use our own emotion concepts to make predictions and construct perceptions. Rowdy was angry, from a human perspective, if the boy constructed a perception of anger.

• From Querelle (1953)

  ((Gil, Gilbert Turko, that's me, and I'm all alone. In order to be the real Gilbert Turko, I have to be all alone, and to be aU alone, I have to be all alone. And that means, out in the cold. Goddamn ! The old folks, well, they make me pukel What the fuck do I care about the old folks? They're dirty bastards! My old man shot his wad into that great fat cunt of my mother, and nine months later I crawled out of it. What the hell's that got to do with me? He just took it out too late, that's all, and there 176 I JEAN GENET it was, I had to be born. They can go to hell for all I care, they're just a couple of old shitheads." He tried to stay as long as possible in this state of sacrilegious fury, as it provided him with an armor of pride and rebellion, made him throw back his shoulders, raise his chin. He hoped it would become his habitual condition : to hate and despise his parents, so as not to be overwhelmed by sorrow in grieving for them. When he first entered into this experience, he allowed himself a few minutes of daydreaming in which he curled up, chin on his chest and hugging himself, to become the obedient and adored child of his parents again. Thus he undid the murder, fantasizing about a loving and simple life that did not include his crime. And then it was time to get back to the demolition job again. "I wiped him out, and that was the right thing to do. If it had to be done again, I'd do it again.'' He made a great effort, killed (or wanted to kill ) all feelings of compassion that were still menacing him. "Poor guy. He's a big bruiser, he's strong, but what has he ever done? Nothing. Goddamn greenhorn," he thought about Querelle. He was able to poke fun at him verbally, but there was a deep and inchoate feeling in him that caused him to respect the young salt whose calm manner, age, and standing in the "milieu" as well as his intact position in society served Gil as a kind of life-saver that held his head a little above the waves of despair. From his second visit on, Querelle had shown himself in a more relaxed mood. He had cracke� jokes about death, and Gil had gained the impression that the death of a man was of little importance to this sailor. "So you don't really think it was such a horrible thing to do, to snuff that sonofabitch?" ('When Roger wasn't there, Gil could let himself go a little. He didn't have to play the role of the man . ) "What, me? Listen, buddy, that's not the kind of thing I lose any sie·ep over. Just think of it. He was bullying you. He was 177 I QUERELLE

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “There’s no keeping you young people in check nowadays.... Your friendship could not have gone beyond what was suitable. I should myself have called upon him to explain himself. But, my darling, it’s not right for you to be agitated. Please remember that, and calm yourself.” “I’m perfectly calm, maman.” “How happy it was for Kitty that Anna came then,” said Dolly, “and how unhappy for her. It turned out quite the opposite,” she said, struck by her own ideas. “Then Anna was so happy, and Kitty thought herself unhappy. Now it is just the opposite. I often think of her.” “A nice person to think about! Horrid, repulsive woman—no heart,” said her mother, who could not forget that Kitty had married not Vronsky, but Levin. “What do you want to talk of it for?” Kitty said with annoyance. “I never think about it, and I don’t want to think of it.... And I don’t want to think of it,” she said, catching the sound of her husband’s well-known step on the steps of the terrace. “What’s that you don’t want to think about?” inquired Levin, coming onto the terrace. But no one answered him, and he did not repeat the question. “I’m sorry I’ve broken in on your feminine parliament,” he said, looking round on everyone discontentedly, and perceiving that they had been talking of something which they would not talk about before him. For a second he felt that he was sharing the feeling of Agafea Mihalovna, vexation at their making jam without water, and altogether at the outside Shtcherbatsky element. He smiled, however, and went up to Kitty. “Well, how are you?” he asked her, looking at her with the expression with which everyone looked at her now. “Oh, very well,” said Kitty, smiling, “and how have things gone with you?” “The wagons held three times as much as the old carts did. Well, are we going for the children? I’ve ordered the horses to be put in.” “What! you want to take Kitty in the wagonette?” her mother said reproachfully. “Yes, at a walking pace, princess.” Levin never called the princess “maman” as men often do call their mothers-in-law, and the princess disliked his not doing so. But though he liked and respected the princess, Levin could not call her so without a sense of profaning his feeling for his dead mother. “Come with us, maman,” said Kitty. “I don’t like to see such imprudence.” “Well, I’ll walk then, I’m so well.” Kitty got up and went to her husband and took his hand. “You may be well, but everything in moderation,” said the princess. “Well, Agafea Mihalovna, is the jam done?” said Levin, smiling to Agafea Mihalovna, and trying to cheer her up. “Is it all right in the new way?” “I suppose it’s all right. For our notions it’s boiled too long.”

• From My Life on the Road (2015)

  Remember: “For want of a nail, the horseshoe was lost, for want of a horseshoe, the horse was lost, for want of a horse, the battle was lost, for want of a battle, the war was lost.” This parable should be the mantra of everyone who thinks her or his vote doesn’t count. • If Harriett Woods hadn’t been defeated by less than 2 percent of the votes in Missouri, Danforth wouldn’t have been a U.S. senator. • If Danforth hadn’t been senator, Clarence Thomas wouldn’t have gone with him to Washington as a staff member. • If Thomas hadn’t been visible in Washington as a rare African American who opposed his community’s majority views, he wouldn’t have been appointed by the first President Bush to head—and to disempower—the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and then to sit on the D.C. Court of Appeals. • If Thomas hadn’t been given such credentials, he couldn’t have been nominated by the same President Bush to succeed the great civil rights advocate Justice Thurgood Marshall on the Supreme Court. • If Thomas hadn’t been on the Supreme Court, he couldn’t have supplied the one-vote margin that halted the Florida court-ordered recount. • If there had been a recount, Al Gore, not George W. Bush, would have been president—as was concluded by a postelection examination of all uncounted ballots commissioned by twelve major news organizations.10 • If George W. Bush had not been president, the United States would have been less likely to lose the world’s sympathy after 9/11 by launching the longest war in U.S. history, with more bombs dropped on Afghanistan during fourteen years than in all of World War II, plus billions in tax dollars given to twenty thousand private contractors, and thousands killed and wounded on both sides. • If Al Gore, not George W. Bush, had been president, global warming would have been taken seriously. Also, the United States would not have falsified evidence to justify invading oil-rich Iraq, thus starting an eight-year war, and, together with Afghanistan, convincing some in Islamic countries that the United States is waging war against Islam. • Without George W. Bush, there would not be the biggest transfer of wealth into private hands in the history of this nation; a pay ratio in which the average CEO earns 475 times more than the average worker (in Canada, it’s 20 times); an executive order giving an estimated $40 billion in tax dollars to Catholic, evangelical, and other religious groups, without congressional approval, often with the appearance of turning churches into a vote delivery system. • Without Clarence Thomas to supply the one-vote majority, the Supreme Court might not have ruled that corporations are people, with a right to unlimited political spending in order to continue all the above…. Well, you get the idea.11 The list goes on. We must not only vote but fight to vote. The voting booth really is the one place on earth where the least powerful equal the most powerful.

• From My Life on the Road (2015)

  Either the local welfare officials are embarrassed by the media coverage or they are worried that marches are disrupting tourists. People go to Las Vegas to escape reality, and welfare mothers are definitely reality. Finally thousands are restored to the welfare rolls, including women who had been pushed toward the Mustang Ranch. Flo and I feel victorious. A federal audit reveals that state officials have falsely accused many women of welfare fraud, and NWRO women remain convinced that this was a way of saving government money while increasing prostitution to attract tourists. I am discovering that words have consequences, a very practical secret. If prostitution is “sex work,” a job like any other, then women can be required to do it. Men, too. Besides, as Flo says, “Sex shouldn’t be work.” Thinking about the weight of words makes us realize that the label prostitute conceals a whole person, too. Flo and I begin to say prostituted woman to keep the person and the process visible. In this country, the average age of entry into prostitution is said to be between twelve and thirteen. That means there is probably yet another secret inside the average prostituted woman: a prostituted child. Though it was invented as cosmetic or rebellion, it turns out that the forces of capitalism and patriarchy love the term sex work . By 2005 I read in a newspaper that a twenty-five-year-old former waitress in Berlin is losing her unemployment benefits. Brothels have been legalized in Germany and this young woman has turned down a job providing sexual services. Though she is an information technology professional by training, she was willing to take a job as a waitress—just not “work” that requires vaginal, oral, and anal body invasion. However, she may have to. “Under Germany’s welfare reforms,” the news article explains, “any woman under 55 who has been out of work for more than a year can be forced to take an available job—including in the sex industry—or lose her unemployment benefits.” Even a woman brothel owner quoted in this article has no sympathy. The owner feels she has a right to expect government job centers to provide her with prostitutes because “I pay my taxes just like anybody else.”3 The debate about whether or not to legalize prostitution usually rests on whether legality better protects the prostituted person—supposing that person has a choice of not being prostituted, a big if —but the secret is this: if body invasion is work like any other, then some can be forced to do it. —IT TURNS OUT THAT legalization is what the pimps, brothel owners, and traffickers want because it sets this multibillion-dollar industry free. Some prostituted people want it, too, because it seems to be the only alternative to being arrested and needing pimps and traffickers to get them out—a choice between two prisons—or because they just want a little dignity. At the other extreme, criminalizing is supported for all kinds of reasons.

• From My Life on the Road (2015)

  This is how I find myself on the Harvard campus with Brenda, interviewing women who make up just 7 percent of its law students. I learn that the segregated tradition of “Ladies Day,” the only time when women are called on in class, has only just ended, and that the faculty are still 100 percent white and male. So sure of themselves are the powers-that-be that the sign over the men’s room in the library stacks just says FACULTY . I write this all down and become even more nervous. These students are depending on me. Ultimately, I find myself standing at a podium in Boston’s Sheraton Plaza Hotel. The Harvard Club of Boston, where the banquet is usually held, makes women enter through a side door. I look down at the long 1930s dress I’ve found in a thrift shop and see its velvet skirt vibrating slightly due to my shaking knees. I’m not sure how much this nervousness is audible in my voice—Brenda is pretending I’m fine; this is a piece of cake—but twenty-seven years later, Ira Lupu, then a third-year Harvard law student in the audience, will write his remembrance: “Her delivery was rhetorically unimpressive; she seemed nervous, and spoke quietly and without sharp effect or physical punctuation.”4 He didn’t know the half of it. My speech is called “Why Harvard Law School Needs Women More Than Women Need It.” I manage to get through the main part, arguing that only equality creates respect for the law, and that only democratic families create democracy. Yet I know that the audience knows that women law students have provided ammunition—interviewing them has already created resentful rumblings among the faculty—and I launch into their testimony at the end: With this humanist vision in mind, you can imagine how a female human being suffers at Harvard Law School. She spends much of her time feeling lonely, since male classmates often regard her as a freak. She spends the rest of it feeling mad as hell. Much more seriously, the catalog betrays no interest in her half of the human race. There is a course on racism and American law but none on sexism. There is a course on international whaling law but none on women’s rights internationally. An eminent professor of administrative law said as late as last night that he didn’t know what the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission was. The same man replied to a request that at least one female full-time professor be hired by answering that women faculty brought problems because of “sexual vibrations”…and an eminent securities law expert used descriptions of “stupid” widows and wives to explain sample cases of stock loss….Professors may joke about the “reasonable man” test, explaining that there is no such thing as a reasonable woman.