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 Macho Sluts (1988)

  On my lonesome, I braved the antagonism of bar owners and the Women’s Center to put up flyers announcing an initial meeting. But I got very little thanks for sticking my neck out. In the 1970s, the only politically correct form for an organization to take was the collective, and all decisions were supposed to be made by consensus. Individuality was seen as patriarchal, and anybody who took initiative got hammered down. I hated this. I wanted officers for the group—officers who actually did their jobs—and I wanted to be able to have business meetings that ended before two a.m. That couldn’t happen unless we took a vote and settled things by a simple majority vote. Otherwise, one person who objected to what we wanted to do could filibuster and prevent us from creating a handout for orientation, selecting a logo, or making T-shirts. You did not want to be in the room if I dared suggest that we let bisexual or transsexual women join Samois. Ugly things were said that would have made any right-wing bigot proud. I never ceased to be amazed by the ways that feminism could be twisted to justify a morality that duplicated every prejudice held by fundamentalist Christians—except for the part about lesbians. Samois eventually exploded in a vicious bout of infighting that left all of us feeling deeply injured and shaken. But before the various rifts and factions tore the group apart, it managed to do some very good things to make it possible for S/M dykes to find one another and get information about how to act out their fantasies in a safe way that still allowed for intensity. First, we published What Color Is Your Handkerchief , a pamphlet I typed, laid out with rubber cement, and photocopied, then collated and stapled in my living room. It contained just about every article we could find on the topic of S/M, plus some graphics. Every small printing of the pamphlet sold out very quickly, despite the fact that local women’s bookstores either wouldn’t carry it at all or sold it from under the counter. That meant you had to ask for it, which was a daunting prospect if you knew the clerk was a hostile, anti-S/M, and anti-pornography devotee. That was the equivalent of coming out as a woman-hating pervert and could cost you your slot on the women’s clinic collective or your application for admission to a women’s studies department. Women got discriminated against for having leather jackets then. It was a heartbreaking struggle to see our world divided because some of us needed a different kind of sex in order to be satisfied.

• From Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions (1939)

  If acts of substitution are impossible, or do not produce an adequate solution, the tension persists, manifested by a tendency to abandon the problem, to wander away, or to withdraw into one's own thoughts in an attitude of passivity. As we have said, indeed, the subject finds himself subjected to the positive attraction of the end in view and to the negative, repellent influence of the barrier: furthermore, the fact that he has consented to undergo the trial has conferred a negative value upon all the other objects in the field, in the sense that all diversions irrelevant to the task are ipso facto impossible. The subject is thus imprisoned, as it were, in a space fenced in on every side: there is only one positive way out, and that is closed by the specific barrier. This situation corresponds to the diagram below: 1 Lewin, Vorsata, Wille und Bedurtnis , Psy. Forschurtg, VII, 1926. 2 Dembo, Das Aerger als dynamisches Problem . Psy. Forschung, 1931, pp. 1-144. 3 (Bib. de Philosophic Scientifique), pp. 138-42. Escape is a merely barbarous solution, for it means breaking through the barrier and accepting a diminution of the self. Falling back upon one's self (encystment) which erects a protective barrier between the hostile field of action and oneself, is another, equally mediocre solution. Prolongation of the ordeal may end in emotional disorders, or in other and still more primitive ways of liberating tensions. The fits of anger, sometimes very violent, which supervene in certain persons have been capably studied in the work of T. Dembo. The situation undergoes a structural simplification. In anger, and doubtless in all the emotions, there is a weakening of the barriers that separate the deeper from the more superficial levels of the self which normally ensure the regulation of action by the deep personality and maintain the self-control: a weakening of the barriers between the real and the unreal. On the other hand, because the path to action is blocked, tensions between the external and the internal continue to augment: a negative character extends uniformly to all the objects in the field, they lose their proper value. . . . The privileged way towards the goal having vanished, the differentiated structure that the problem had imposed upon the field is destroyed. The particular facts, notably the various physiological reactions which we are pleased to describe by attaching particular meanings to them, are not intelligible unless we start from this integral conception of the topology of emotion ...' Here, then, at the end of this long quotation, we arrive at a functional conception of anger. Clearly anger is not an instinct nor a habit, nor is it a calculated action; it is an abrupt solution of conflict, a way of cutting the gordian knot. And we are back again at Janet's distinction between the superior kind of behaviour and the inferior or derived.

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  "No! But he doesn't really want it. He only loves me to be near him, but not to touch him." "My God, what a generation!" "He would like me most of all to be a model for him to paint from. Only I never wanted to." "God help him! But he looks down-trodden enough for anything." "Still, you wouldn't mind so much the talk about him?" "My God, Connie, all the bloody contriving!" "I know! It's sickening! But what can I do?" "Contriving, conniving; conniving, contriving! Makes a man think he's lived too long." "Come, Father, if you haven't done a good deal of contriving and conniving in your time, you may talk." "But it was different, I assure you." "It's _always_ different." Hilda arrived, also furious, when she heard of the new developments. And she also simply could not stand the thought of a public scandal about her sister and a gamekeeper. Too, too humiliating! "Why should we not just disappear, separately, to British Columbia, and have no scandal?" said Connie. But that was no good. The scandal would come out just the same. And if Connie was going with the man, she'd better be able to marry him. This was Hilda's opinion. Sir Malcolm wasn't sure. The affair might still blow over. "But will you see him, Father?" Poor Sir Malcolm! he was by no means keen on it. And poor Mellors, he was still less keen. Yet the meeting took place: a lunch in a private room at the club, the two men alone, looking one another up and down. Sir Malcolm drank a fair amount of whiskey, Mellors also drank. And they talked all the while about India, on which the young man was well informed. This lasted during the meal. Only when coffee was served, and the waiter had gone, Sir Malcolm lit a cigar and said, heartily: "Well, young man, and what about my daughter?" The grin flickered on Mellors's face. "Well, Sir, and what about her?" "You've got a baby in her all right." "I have that honour!" grinned Mellors. "Honour, by God!" Sir Malcolm gave a little squirting laugh, and became Scotch and lewd. "Honour! How was the going, eh? Good, my boy, what!?" "Good!"

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  And more people will remain convinced there is something terribly wrong with them because they have these awful fantasies about being restrained, dominated, or punished, and if they ever dare to look for someone who will do any of those wicked things, they will “get what they deserve”—i.e., snuffed. Two distributors of S/M videos—a small business in Florida that sold wooden bondage devices and a handful of movie titles, and Centurions in Los Angeles—have been busted. The LAPD has reportedly visited gay video companies and warned them to stop distributing S/M movies. Vice cops in Grand Rapids, Michigan, went on a campaign against kiddy porn early in 1987. When they couldn’t find any, they went outside their own city limits into another town to arrest an S/M couple who frequently entertain folks in the scene and market movies they’ve made of themselves and some of their friends. In the process, Faye Marie (“Marquise Marie”) Bond and Gerald Bond reported that their home was trashed, all their business records and personal address books were confiscated, and their bank accounts were frozen. This has made it difficult for them to organize support and impossible for them to continue to make a living. Until the police killed all of her fish by emptying ashtrays into the tanks, Mrs Bond had raised and sold tropical fish. Her husband ran a straight video production company. They are charged with obscenity and running a house of ill-fame. They may succeed in getting acquitted, but the arrest alone has punished them in a way that having their charges dismissed will not repair. In 1986, local police raided an S/M party held in the home of a heterosexual couple in a small town in Pennsylvania, and arrested nearly thirty people. Marie Morrell and her husband had to endure sensationalistic publicity and high legal costs to fight the resulting prostitution charges. They were acquitted, but many of their belongings have not been returned, and their privacy, happiness, and livelihood (they ran an Italian restaurant) are irreparably damaged. Drummer , a gay male S/M magazine, has run into so many distribution problems, they have decided to remove most bondage photos so they can keep the magazine on newsstands. The venerable S/M contact publication, SMAds , has ceased publication, reportedly because the producer feared prosecution for obscenity.

• From Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions (1939)

  The situation undergoes a structural simplification. In anger, and doubtless in all the emotions, there is a weakening of the barriers that separate the deeper from the more superficial levels of the self which normally ensure the regulation of action by the deep personality and maintain the self-control: a weakening of the barriers between the real and the unreal. On the other hand, because the path to action is blocked, tensions between the external and the internal continue to augment: a negative character extends uniformly to all the objects in the field, they lose their proper value. . . . The privileged way towards the goal having vanished, the differentiated structure that the problem had imposed upon the field is destroyed. The particular facts, notably the various physiological reactions which we are pleased to describe by attaching particular meanings to them, are not intelligible unless we start from this integral conception of the topology of emotion ...' Here, then, at the end of this long quotation, we arrive at a functional conception of anger. Clearly anger is not an instinct nor a habit, nor is it a calculated action; it is an abrupt solution of conflict, a way of cutting the gordian knot. And we are back again at Janet's distinction between the superior kind of behaviour and the inferior or derived. But here that distinction assumes its full meaning: it is we who put ourselves into a state of total inferiority, because at that very low level our demands are smaller; we satisfy ourselves at less cost. Being unable, in a state of high tension, to find the delicate and precise answer to a problem, we act upon ourselves, we abase and transform ourselves into a being for whom the grossest and least adapted solutions are good enough (for example, tearing up the paper on which a problem is stated). Thus anger now appears as an escape; the angry subject is like a man who is unable to untie the knots of the cords that bind him, and who writhes about in his bonds. And the 'angry' conduct, though less well adapted to the problem than the superior — and impossible — behaviour that would solve it, is still precisely and perfectly adapted to his need to break the tension, to shake the leaden weight off his shoulders. We shall be better able to understand the examples we were citing above: the psychasthenic who comes to see Janet wants to make her confession to him. But the task is too difficult. Here she is, in a confined, threatening world which is waiting for her to perform a definite action and at the same time repelling her. Janet himself signifies by his attitude that he is listening and is attentive; but at the same time his prestige, his personality, etc. repulse that confession.

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  "I hated it. And she hated me. My God, how she hated me before that child was born! I often think she conceived it out of hate. Anyhow, after the child was born I left her alone. And then came the war, and I joined up. And I didn't come back till I knew she was with that fellow at Stacks Gate." He broke off, pale in the face. "And what is the man at Stacks Gate like?" asked Connie. "A big baby sort of fellow, very low-mouthed. She bullies him, and they both drink." "My word, if she came back!" "My God, yes! I should just go, disappear again." There was a silence. The pasteboard in the fire had turned to grey ash. "So when you did get a woman who wanted you," said Connie, "you got a bit too much of a good thing." "Ay! Seems so! Yet even then I'd rather have her than the never-never ones: the white love of my youth, and that other poison-smelling lily, and the rest." "What about the rest?" said Connie. "The rest? There is no rest. Only to my experience the mass of women are like this: most of them want a man, but don't want the sex, but they put up with it, as part of the bargain. The more old-fashioned sort just lie there like nothing and let you go ahead. They don't mind afterwards: then they like you. But the actual thing itself is nothing to them, a bit distasteful. And most men like it that way. I hate it. But the sly sort of women who are like that pretend they're not. They pretend they're passionate and have thrills. But it's all cockaloopy. They make it up.--Then there's the ones that love everything, every kind of feeling and cuddling and going off, every kind except the natural one. They always make you go off when you're _not_ in the only place you should be, when you go off.--Then there's the hard sort, that are the devil to bring off at all, and bring themselves off, like my wife. They want to be the active party.--Then there's the sort that's just dead inside: but dead: and they know it. Then there's the sort that puts you out before you really 'come,' and go on writhing their loins till they bring themselves off against your thighs. But they're mostly the Lesbian sort. It's astonishing how Lesbian women are, consciously or unconsciously. Seems to me they're nearly all Lesbian." "And do you mind?" asked Connie. "I could kill them. When I'm with a woman who's really Lesbian, I fairly howl in my soul, wanting to kill her." "And what do you do?" "Just get away as fast as I can." "But do you think Lesbian women any worse than homosexual men?"

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Meanwhile, the king, who had at first sight been greatly taken with the damsel, calling her to mind and feeling himself well of body, determined, albeit it was nigh upon day, to go and abide with her awhile. Accordingly, he betook himself privily to La Cuba with certain of his servants and entering the pavilion, caused softly open the chamber wherein he knew the girl slept. Then, with a great lighted flambeau before him, he entered therein and looking upon the bed, saw her and Gianni lying asleep and naked in each other's arms; whereas he was of a sudden furiously incensed and flamed up into such a passion of wrath that it lacked of little but he had, without saying a word, slain them both then and there with a dagger he had by his side. However, esteeming it a very base thing of any man, much more a king, to slay two naked folk in their sleep, he contained himself and determined to put them to death in public and by fire; wherefore, turning to one only companion he had with him, he said to him, 'How deemest thou of this vile woman, on whom I had set my hope?' And after he asked him if he knew the young man who had dared enter his house to do him such an affront and such an outrage; but he answered that he remembered not ever to have seen him. The king then departed the chamber, full of rage, and commanded that the two lovers should be taken and bound, naked as they were, and that, as soon as it was broad day, they should be carried to Palermo and there bound to a stake, back to back, in the public place, where they should be kept till the hour of tierce, so they might be seen of all, and after burnt, even as they had deserved; and this said, he returned to his palace at Palermo, exceeding wroth.

• From Under the Banner of Heaven (2003)

  fundamentals of the Constitution.” On October 4, 1982, Dan was driving home after meeting with another candidate for sheriff (the American Fork police chief, with whom Dan had hoped to engage in a public debate), when he was stopped on Interstate 15 by a Utah state trooper for speeding and not having a vehicle inspection sticker. “I had already had some confrontations with the officer who pulled me over,” Dan allows. “He knew I would be driving home from this debate meeting, and he had set a trap for me. They wanted to get a felony against me so I couldn’t run for office, and they swarmed me on the freeway. I had just published an important article in the paper—a very important article—which had really unnerved a lot of people, about how the powers of government were being improperly used through improper warrants of arrest—how it was unconstitutional to stop a person on the freeway and arrest them. “When the officer pulled me over, he told me he had read my article—‘I’ve got it right here in my car,’ he said. So I told him, ‘Well, if you’ve read the article, you understand why you can’t arrest me right now. If you want to arrest me, go get a warrant from a judge, bring it to my home, and I’ll conform to the proper procedures.’ ” Dan had by now locked the car doors and rolled up all the windows, leaving only a one-inch gap at the top of the driver’s window, which, he says, “I figured was narrow enough to keep a hand from reaching in and grabbing me, but would allow me to talk to the officer.” The trooper wasn’t amused. He ordered Dan out of the car. “When I refused to get out,” says Dan, “the cop did something I hadn’t anticipated: he grabbed the top of the window with both hands and pulled hard, pulling the window out of its tracks, and then he tried to reach in and grab me. So I said, ‘Well, I gotta go now! See you later!’ and took off.” The state troopers gave chase and apprehended Dan a short while later. He was charged with five crimes (including second-degree felony escape, third- degree felony assault by a prisoner, and evading an officer) and locked up in the county jail. At his justice court trial, Dan served as his own attorney and attempted to mount a defense based on several arcane points of constitutional law. The judge repeatedly pointed out, however, that justice courts in Utah are not empowered to hear constitutional matters, which infuriated Dan. He was further angered when the judge overruled his objection to the makeup of the

• From Under the Banner of Heaven (2003)

  Mormons were eager to embrace any Gentiles who cared to convert, but the Saints had little interest in associating with Missourians who remained too ignorant or obstinate to grasp God’s plan for mankind. Joseph preached something he called “free agency”; everyone was free to choose whether to be on the side of the Lord or the side of wickedness; it was an entirely personal decision—but woe to those who decided wrong. If you knowingly chose to shun the God of Joseph and the Saints, you were utterly undeserving of sympathy or mercy. This polarizing mind-set—“If you’re not with us, you’re against us”—was underscored by a revelation Joseph received in 1831, in which God commanded the Saints to “assemble yourselves together to rejoice upon the land of Missouri, which is the land of your inheritance, which is now the land of your enemies.” When Missourians became aware of this commandment, they regarded it as an open declaration of war—an impression that seemed to be confirmed by an article published in a Mormon newspaper promising that the Saints would “literally tread upon the ashes of the wicked after they are destroyed from off the face of the earth.” In the 1830s northwestern Missouri was still untamed country inhabited by rough, strong-willed characters. Jackson County residents initially responded to the perceived Mormon threat by holding town meetings, passing anti-Mormon resolutions, and demanding that civil authorities take some kind of action. When such gestures failed to stem the tide of Saints, however, the citizens of Independence took matters into their own hands. In July 1833 an armed mob of five hundred Missourians tarred and feathered two Latter-day Saints and destroyed a printing office because an LDS newspaper had published an article deemed overly sympathetic to the antislavery viewpoint. Three days later the same mob rounded up nine Mormon leaders and, under the threat of death, forced them to sign an oath promising to leave Jackson County within a year. That autumn, thugs razed ten homes, killed one Saint, and stoned numerous others. Then, one cold November night, vigilantes systematically terrorized every Mormon settlement in the region. After savagely beating the men, they drove twelve hundred Saints from their homes, forcing them to run for their lives into the frigid darkness. Most of them fled north across the Missouri River, never to

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  Was this the way it was going to end? Tyre and Michael filtered over, their bouncer-instincts warning them that trouble was brewing. There were far too many toys that could become deadly weapons in this room to allow tempers to flare. But it was Anne-Marie who defused the situation, calling from the cross, “Oh, Joyous Day, where shall I stow all this lovely line?” Joy took the hint and slid out from under Roxanne’s feet, patted her goodbye, and went to put away her ropes. Her departure seemed to wake Chris up, and she turned Roxanne’s face to the light. “We have company,” she told Roxanne tenderly. Alex made her fists unknot and approached them once again, but this time she did not go to her haunches. She wound her fist in Roxanne’s hair and yanked her off the mat and onto all fours. “Get that fucking strap off your neck,” she told her, quietly furious. Roxanne was forced to let most of her upper-body weight hang from her hair while she used both hands to rip Kay’s collar off her throat. Kay saved her from the dilemma of what to do with it by plucking it from her fingers. Everyone was trying to be handy and inconspicuous at the same time. The storm finally broke when Alex’s palm connected with Roxanne’s rump. It was a thunderclap that heralded a downpour of blows. Chris went white as a sheet and lunged at Alex. But Tyre and Michael had her by the upper arms and jabbered in her face until she sank back down and let them distract her. “Daddy, you’re hurting me!” Roxanne screamed. Chris was furious. Anne-Marie walked in front of her, blocking her view of the spanking. “That’s right. Glad you’re finally back from vacation. Seems like you give your heart away to anybody who blisters your hide. So I thought I’d better remind you that you are not a free agent.” “I think we ought to play some music that appeals to you for a change, dear,” Anne-Marie said loudly to Joyous Day. She also came to stand between Alex and Chris, and Alex moved away to give them some room. “I don’t think Brian Eno would contribute t’ the light and frivolous atmosphere of this party outta bounds,” Joy frowned. “EZ, you are slackin’ off on your professional obligations. Go an’ get us some help from the gods of rock ‘n’ roll.” New music freshened the atmosphere. “She don’t belong to you, man,” Michael told Chris. “It was a loan. Don’t be uncool.” “Alex is not unreasonable,” Tyre chimed in. “I am sure you will get another chance to whale away on Roxanne if you don’t blow it now.” “Okay, okay,” Chris told them. Her teeth were chattering. “I think I need a jacket or something.” Kay heard her, and brought a blanket from behind the bar.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Titus, having thus spoken, rose to his feet, with a countenance all disordered for anger, and taking Gisippus by the hand, went forth of the temple, shaking his head threateningly and showing that he recked little of as many as were there. The latter, in part reconciled by his reasonings to the alliance and desirous of his friendship and in part terrified by his last words, of one accord determined that it was better to have him for a kinsman, since Gisippus had not willed it, than to have lost the latter to kinsman and gotten the former for an enemy. Accordingly, going in quest of Titus, they told him that they were willing that Sophronia should be his and to have him for a dear kinsman and Gisippus for a dear friend; then, having mutually done each other such honours and courtesies as beseem between kinsmen and friends, they took their leaves and sent Sophronia back to him. She, like a wise woman, making a virtue of necessity, readily transferred to Titus the affection she bore Gisippus and repaired with him to Rome, where she was received with great honour.

• From Under the Banner of Heaven (2003)

  and crippling cold, anticipating their forced departure from Missouri, Joseph remained locked up along with nine other Mormon leaders indicted for treason and murder. The prophet, unrepentant, penned an angry screed from jail, warning, “The murders at Haun’s Mill, the exterminating order of Governor Boggs, and the one-sided rascally proceedings of the Legislature, have damned the State of Missouri to all eternity.” As the winter wore on, the tide of public opinion began to turn in the Saints’ favor. Details of the Haun’s Mill Massacre were reported in various Missouri newspapers, prompting calls for an investigation. Articles sympathetic to the Mormons were published throughout the region. The ongoing incarceration of Joseph and his brethren became a growing embarrassment to Governor Boggs, the legislature, and local officials, who were increasingly reluctant to bring the accused to trial lest the Saints win an acquittal. To save face, the sheriff responsible for guarding the jailed Mormons was encouraged by those in power to accept an $800 bribe, get drunk, and conveniently fall asleep, thereby allowing the prisoners to escape. On April 16, 1839, Joseph and his nine cell mates slipped away into the night and fled cross- country to rejoin their fellow Saints, most of whom had by then completed their exodus from Missouri and were safely across the Illinois state line.

• From Under the Banner of Heaven (2003)

  and appeared as though he might burst into tears. According to Lee, Dame vehemently protested, “I did not think there were so many of them, or I would not have had anything to do with it.” Losing his patience with Dame’s lack of spine, Haight turned to Lee and said, “Colonel Dame counseled and ordered me to do this thing, and now he wants to back out, and go back on me, and by God he shall not do it. . . . I will blow him to hell before he shall lay it all on me. He has got to stand up to what he did, like a man. He knows he ordered it done, and I dare him to deny it.” Having no adequate answer for this charge, Dame fell silent and turned his attention to supervising the disposal of the corpses. The Mormon militiamen, Lee reported, “piled the dead bodies up in heaps, in little gullies, and threw dirt over them. The bodies were only lightly covered, for the ground was hard, and the brethren did not have sufficient tools to dig with.” Within days, wolves and other scavengers had unearthed the dead emigrants from the shallow graves and scattered their remains across the meadow. Upon completion of this halfhearted, hastily undertaken burial, according to Lee, the Saints gathered in a circle at the site of the mass murder to offer “thanks to God for delivering our enemies into our hands.” Then the overseers of the massacre reiterated “the necessity of always saying the Indians did it alone, and that the Mormons had nothing to do with it. . . . It was voted unanimously that any man who should divulge the secret, or tell who was present, or do anything that would lead to a discovery of the truth, should suffer death.”

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  It takes a lot of guts for lesbian writers to push beyond our anger about what women aren’t allowed to do. We are prey to the suspicion that it’s our fault and women don’t deserve anything better. We are afraid of more opportunity, because we might fail. This affects our ability to engender new (or at least accurate) sexual images that are genuinely exciting. The power of the censor within is awesome. The only way I could write some of these stories was to pretend I wasn’t going to publish them. Nobody’s an expert on women’s sexuality; most women aren’t even experts on their own libidos. I doubt anyone ever will be qualified to generalize about what all women want or proscribe certain sexualities as being anti-woman. But if enough of us speak out about our dreams and obsessions, a body of genuine knowledge can accumulate, and make all of us feel less crazy and less alone with what we cannot live without. When you are dealing with an area as permeated with ignorance and superstition as sexuality, it is more important to be honest than it is to be correct; to say “I want this now” before rushing to assert, “I will want this when I know and accept what is best for me.” Lesbians are constantly being told by the rest of the world that we are ugly, boring, and unimportant. This kind of shit takes a toll on our self-esteem. The same cues that alert other lesbians to our availability and sexual prowess seem odd, annoying, and unattractive to straight people. And they don’t have any tact about letting us know it, on the bus, at work, in the grocery store, on the street, in the gym, at the tie rack in the men’s wear department. Lesbian pornography, especially if it has some humor, is a powerful antidote to this dehumanizing grind. It reassures us that it’s worth putting on that white silk shirt and bomber jacket and polishing our boots before we go out, that somebody is going to get the message. It says, there’s a woman out there looking for a girl in a magenta satin dress with spaghetti straps, so fluff up your hair, strap on those dancin’ shoes, and go someplace where she can find you.

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  “Daddy, I know I’ve been bad,” she cried. “I’m sorry, don’t hit me any more. Daddy, it’s gonna be so sore when you fuck me, there won’t be any place left for you to hang on to.” But Alex did not stop. “Oh, I hate you, I hate you!” She was in for it now. Alex was going to continue the whipping until she broke down and cried and confessed that she loved her Daddy best of all. There was no way to feign this catharsis. And at the moment there was nothing in her heart but murder. She screamed and kicked like one of the Furies, and wasn’t even grateful that the horse was bolted to the floor. The hot coffee had put color back into Chris’s cheeks, and she had recovered her perspective enough to laugh at Roxanne’s dilemma. “God, what a seductive little witch she is,” she said, admiring the stripes that were rapidly adorning Roxanne’s pert, plump bottom. “Yeah, it’s a nice piece,” EZ said, strolling up and leaning back, putting one foot up on the wall. “Too bad it isn’t yours, Chris. But you had your shot at it, and the big dog made you give it up. Anyway, I think we all can see you just don’t have what it would take to keep that cunt happy.” Everyone was so shocked that EZ actually had the time to sneer at Chris before Kay hooked one foot around her buddy’s ankle, and her keister hit the floor. “This time,” Kay hissed, “you have gone too far.” “Jah may be dead,” Joy murmured, “but this tired world still need a little justice, gotta make it where we can.” “Your not-for-profit corporation just lost its tax-exempt status,” Tyre announced. “Baby, you are about to lose your tailpipe and muffler,” was Michael’s estimate. “Keel-hauling is too good for her,” Anne-Marie huffed. Chris didn’t know what to say, but it really didn’t seem like there was much to be added. “Aw, fuck all of you!” EZ shouted. “I never wanted to come to this goddamn party anyway. You all think you’re such hot shit. And that bitch over there, how does she rate? She’s nothing but a whore, and you’re all just pussy to me. Tryin’ to act tough and important, you’re just a bunch of girls.”

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  A federal grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia is probing interstate transportation of obscene materials, and has subpoenaed the corporate records of two New York porn distributors, one distributor in Los Angeles, and some local corporations. These businesses handle S/M material along with other types of porn. The subpoenas were handed out after the FBI raided Washington, D.C. area video rental stores and confiscated tapes and “marital aids.” This stepped up activity against sadomasochists and S/M imagery by the feds and local vice squads is a direct response to the Meese Commission’s report on pornography, which claims (in language provided by the feminist anti-porn movement) that “violent pornography” (i.e., S/M material) is itself violence against women and fosters it in the rest of society. After the report was issued, Attorney General Edwin Meese committed the Justice Department to an intensified campaign against pornography, and called for federal prosecutors to go after “child pornography, sadomasochistic scenes, rape scenes, depiction of bestiality or excretory functions and violent and degrading images of explicit sexual conduct, and other similar hardcore material.” He specifically exempted “soft-core pornography” from this vendetta. (He also vowed, “There will be no censorship while I am attorney general.”) Well, this is one woman who doesn’t feel that these law enforcement officials are making my life safer. It may seem odd for me to include information about specific cases in a book introduction since it will quickly become dated. But this anti-S/M moral panic is not being covered in a systematic, comprehensive way in the gay press or other progressive publications. Gayle Rubin has given a series of lectures about these disturbing events at several S/M and leather conferences, but it appears that nobody outside of the sexual minority that is under attack knows what is going on—or cares. The same anti-censorship forces that mustered to protest the dangerous biases of the Meese Commission have not called any press conferences, written any articles, or issued any public statements to denounce this witch-hunt. It would please me to be wrong about this, but I get the impression that most anti-censorship feminists are just relieved that it’s “only” S/M material, which they never approved of anyway, which is being threatened. When they attacked the Meese Commission or criticized obscenity legislation authored by anti-porn activists, these women were repeatedly characterized by their opponents as sadomasochists, supporters of child abuse, advocates of rape, pimps, fascists, etc. They resented being associated with what they think of as the sexual lunatic fringe. I don’t think many of them will have the guts to risk getting smeared again by trying to arouse some public indignation over gross violations of S/M people’s First Amendment rights and right to privacy. But somebody needs to say that this is censorship, that it is not okay, that we cannot afford to ignore it.

• From Under the Banner of Heaven (2003)

  into the hereafter, Leany might want to repent for certain sins some of the Toquerville brethren had accused him of committing. Leany replied angrily that “God shall bear me witness that I am clean of all of which they accuse me & they guilty of all that I accuse them & much more.” What Leany accused his fellow Saints of, the letter revealed, was “thieving whoredom murder and Suicide & like abominations.” He reminded Steele, moreover, that “you are far from ignorant of these deeds of blood from the day the picket fence was broke on my head to the day those three were murdered in our ward & the murderer killed to stop the shedding of more blood.” Five paragraphs later, Leany made another allusion to “the killing the three in one room of our own ward.” Baffled and intrigued by these provocative references to murder, Wesley Larsen deduced from historical records that the killings alluded to by Leany had occurred in 1869. Then he determined that only three men had been murdered that year in southern Utah: William Dunn and the Howland brothers. But why would the good Saints of Toquerville want to take the lives of three wayward explorers? Toquerville was founded in 1858, a year after the Mountain Meadows massacre, and most of the first families to settle there were headed by men who had participated in the slaughter. Many of these same men were living in Toquerville in 1869 when Powell floated down the Grand Canyon. The year prior to Powell’s expedition, Ulysses S. Grant had been elected president, and his administration had made it a priority to capture the perpetrators of the massacre and bring them to justice. Even before this new dragnet, moreover, a $5,000 bounty had been placed on the heads of Isaac Haight, John Higbee, and John D. Lee. By the time Dunn and the Howlands decided to abandon Powell’s expedition and walk to the Mormon settlements, many of Toquerville’s leading citizens were living in constant fear of arrest. The climate of paranoia that pervaded the region was at a particularly high pitch in the summer of 1869 thanks to Brigham Young, who had made a trip through southern Utah that season stoking hatred for the Gentiles. Cautioning that federal troops were about to launch a new invasion of Deseret, Brigham ordered sentries to stand watch at strategic points along the territory’s southern border. This was the volatile atmosphere that awaited Dunn and the Howlands as

• From Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions (1939)

  Escape she must from the unbearable tension! And the patient can do so only by exaggerating her weakness and her disarray, by distracting his attention from the task in hand and turning it upon herself (how unhappy I am!). Her own demeanour will transform Janet from her judge into her comforter by exteriorising and 'playing up' the very impossibility she finds in speaking, by commuting the precise need to give such and such information into a heavy, undifferentiated pressure of the whole world upon her. It is then that the sobbing and the nervous crisis ensue. Similarly it is easy to understand the fit of anger that seizes me when I can think of nothing more to reply to a mocker. Here anger does not play quite the same part as in the example given by Dembo. My need is to switch the discussion on to another plane. I have not been witty enough, so I become formidable and intimidating. I want to arouse fear. At the same time I make use of inferior alternatives (ersatze) to vanquish my adversary — insults, threats which have to 'do instead of' the shaft of wit I failed to think of; for the abrupt change of attitude that I impose upon myself makes me less exacting about the choice of means. And yet, at the point we have come to, we still feel unsatisfied. The emotional behaviour theory is perfect, but in its purity and perfection we can see its insufficiency. In all the examples we have quoted, the functional part played by emotion is indubitable. But as it stands, it is also incomprehensible. I mean that, for Dembo and the Gestalt psychologists, the passage from the state of seeking to the state of anger is explained as the break-up of one form and the reconstitution of another. And I can understand, if need be, the breakup of the form 'problem without solution'; but how can I admit the appearance of the other form? We must suppose that it presents itself clearly as the substitute for the previous form. It exists only in relation to this. We have, then, a single process — a transformation of form. But I cannot comprehend this transformation without first positing consciousness. Consciousness alone, by its synthetic activity, can break up and reconstitute forms without ceasing. It alone can account for the finality of emotion. Moreover, we have seen that the whole of the description of anger given by Guillaume according to Dembo shows that its aim is to transform the aspect of the world. It serves to 'weaken the barriers between the real and the unreal', to 'destroy the differentiated structure that the problem has imposed upon the world'.

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  He was a more excited lover that night, with his strange, small boy's frail nakedness. Connie found it impossible to come to her crisis before he had really finished his. And he roused a certain craving passion in her, with his little boy's nakedness and softness; she had to go on after he had finished, in the wild tumult and heaving of her loins, while he heroically kept himself up, and present in her, with all his will and self-offering, till she brought about her own crisis, with weird little cries. When at last he drew away from her, he said, in a bitter, almost sneering little voice: "You couldn't go off at the same time as a man, could you? You'd have to bring yourself off! You'd have to run the show!" This little speech, at the moment, was one of the shocks of her life. Because that passive sort of giving himself was so obviously his only real mode of intercourse. "What do you mean?" she said. "You know what I mean. You keep on for hours after I've gone off ... and I have to hang on with my teeth till you bring yourself off by your own exertions." She was stunned by this unexpected piece of brutality, at the moment when she was glowing with a sort of pleasure beyond words, and a sort of love for him. Because after all, like so many modern men, he was finished almost before he had begun. And that forced the woman to be active. "But you want me to go on, to get my own satisfaction?" she said. He laughed grimly: "I want it!" he said. "That's good! I want to hang on with my teeth clenched, while you go for me!" "But don't you?" she insisted. He avoided the question. "All the darned women are like that," he said. "Either they don't go off at all, as if they were dead in there ... or else they wait till a chap's really done, and then they start in to bring themselves off, and a chap's got to hang on. I never had a woman yet who went off just at the same moment as I did." Connie only half heard this piece of novel, masculine information. She was only stunned by his feeling against her ... his incomprehensible brutality. She felt so innocent. "But you want me to have my satisfaction too, don't you?" she repeated. "Oh, all right! I'm quite willing. But I'm darned if hanging on waiting for a woman to go off is much of a game for a man...."

• From The Story of My Experiments with Truth (An Autobiography) (1927)

  As he too was connected with Dada Abdulla & Co, he sent me word through Sheth Abdulla to go and see him. He talked with me quite frankly, and inquired about my antecedents, which I gave. Then he said: ‘I have nothing to say against you. I was only afraid lest you should be some Colonial-born adventurer. And the fact that your application was unaccompanied by the original certificate supported my suspicion. There have been men who have made use of diplomas which did not belong to them. The certificates of character from European traders you have submitted have no value for me. What do they know about you? What can be the extent of their acquaintance with you? ‘But,’ said I, ‘everyone here is a stranger to me. Even Sheth Abdulla first came to know me here.’ ‘But then you say he belongs to the same place as you? It your father was Prime Minister there, Sheth Abdulla is bound to know your family. if you were to produce his affidavit, I should have absolutely no objection. I would then gladly communicate to the Law Society my inability to oppose your application.’ This talk enraged me, but I restrained my feelings. ‘If I had attached Dada Abdulla’s certificate.’ said I to myself, ‘it would have been rejected, and they would have asked for Europeans’ certificates. And what has my admission as advocate to do with my birth and my antecedents? How could my birth, whether humble or objectionable, be used against me?’ But I contained myself and quietly replied: continue from here ‘Though I do not admit that the Law Society has any authority to require all these details, I am quite prepared to present the affidavit you desire.’ Sheth Abdulla’s affidavit was prepared and duly submitted to the counsel for the Law Society. He said he was satisfied. But not so the Law Society. it opposed