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)

  The Well Woman Body Care Center had agreed to set up a weekly clinic at the Calyx to do Pap smears and STD tests. They had sent a description of the kind of space, fixtures, and supplies they would need. “Do you believe how much cotton swabs cost? For that price they should come with an attachment for clitoral stimulation and vibrate at two speeds. Georgia, should we break their hearts and tell them they aren’t going to need any disposable paper drapes here? And what do they mean, they don’t know why I want them to stock latex dental dams! Jesus Christ on the Old Rugged Butt-Plug!” WIFE (Women for Images of Female Equality, a group Tyre referred to as “Better Living Through Censorship”) was threatening to picket the Calyx if Tyre didn’t change her advertising, which featured a woman in a trench coat saying, “Psst! Take a Tour of the Feminist Porn District.” Somebody had thrown a brick through the window of the women’s newspaper that reluctantly ran the ad in every issue. (The brick had a sticker on it that said, “This is violence against women.”) Tyre’s mouth got very grim. “Send somebody around to fix those windows,” she said, “and ask them if they want an alarm system installed. I’ll pay for it. Remember those pictures we took when Ricki Daft came here drunk on her ass and got obnoxious with the masseuse who didn’t want Ricki to pour chocolate syrup all over her? She’s WIFE’s director. Copy all that shit and just send it to her with a note on my letterhead saying that if any more bricks get thrown at On the Rag, they’ll get copies of it too. And remind me to double my annual contribution to the ACLU.” The phone rang. Georgia picked it up. “The Calyx of Isis,” she said. “Serving the Goddess in You. Yes, she’s in.” She hit the hold button. “Call for you, boss. I think it’s Marlon Brando.” Tyre accepted the receiver. “Am I speaking with the madam herself?” her caller asked. Tyre chuckled. The woman had a harsh-edged New York accent, and her rich alto sent caterpillar-feet down Tyre’s spine. “The very same,” she purred. “My name is Tyre, and you are?” “Alex. I understand that you sometimes handle special cases.” “Would you mind telling me how you came to be aware of that?” Alex gave her the name of an opera singer who had paid a great deal of money to be abducted by an all-woman crew of hardhats and turned inside-out on the bare beams of the thirty-fifth floor of a partially constructed skyscraper. “Well,” she temporized, “it isn’t every day, but yes, we sometimes arrange the extraordinary. Are you one of our regular clients?” “No. I just moved to the west coast, and I haven’t had the opportunity to visit your place yet. But my slave, Roxanne, knows one of your dominatrices, Anne-Marie. Before she met me she saw her fairly frequently.”

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  He actually, for a change, responded to me. He said, “Young lady, you do not know what you are talking about.” The insult was mind-ripping. My single cell of hatred fissioned, and I was hosting a colony of feverishly reproducing and breeding and multiplying rage. He then lambasted what he called the matriarchal “theory.” According to him, there was no evidence to support the belief that women had controlled all pre-industrial cultures. Nor was there any reason to believe that these societies, regardless of who ran them, were any more ecologically balanced, less violent, or more evolved than any other “community of homo sapiens.” He was repeatedly interrupted by a chorus of hisses from all the students. Some of the more timid boys were sneaking out the back door. “Cite your sources!” I shouted at him. He had to answer me. I was the only one saying something instead of drumming my feet on the floor and making a noise like a rabid goose. “If I were allowed to teach any anthropology in this benighted institution, I would!” he shouted back. Was this man having a nervous breakdown? He could not be that stupid. “The very name of that pseudoscientific cult discredits it,” I yelled. “How dare you call yourself a historian?” Another member of StudSolid, this girl who had ignored my tactful suggestion that one observer would attract less attention than two, was drowning us both out by shouting, “Boycott! Walk out! Boycott! Walk out!” And people were doing what she said. The small auditorium was emptying out. I was somehow going in the other direction, down to the front. It took forever to get there because of the contrary human traffic. By the time I was face to face with him, everyone else was gone. “I think I should inform you that you’ve been under investigation,” I said, struggling to be dignified and keep the excitement out of my voice. His eyes looked red, as if he had been crying, but I told myself it was just a cold. He was wearing perfume. This typically male vanity, a stock reference in every cheap romance novel I had ever read, stung my nose and made my lungs ache, the way you feel when you really need to be held and no one knows. His Adam’s apple bobbed. “Indeed? By that rotten little group of NATO generals you run around with?” “How dare you equate a grassroots organization of radicals that struggles to perpetuate the revolution with a bunch of collaborators who let the commies and the demmies turn Europe into rubble?” “How dare you investigate me? Do the words ‘academic freedom’ or ‘first amendment’ mean anything to you?” “There is a difference between the exercise of liberty and its abuse.”

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  Indeed, a boot in the face stopped his progress, and its owner removed her silver shades to give him one hard stare that shut his whining mouth. There was something funny about this, since she wasn’t even looking into his face. She was looking at the blood that ran in thin but eager trickles to the floor. In the middle of his renewed and tearful apologies, she spun on her heel and made for the door, tucking the blood-stained cat beside its fellows. “Shit!” Teddy said, and slammed his beer down on the bar. He turned to complain to Iduna, but she was not there. Kerry was not pleased to be intercepted between the coatcheck and the door by her personal, self-appointed voyeur, wine glass in hand. She made quite a provocative picture, this full-bosomed, very pale woman in her black dress, but she was in the way and a nuisance. Then she became impertinent. She tilted the glass to her lips and let a half-swallow of wine run out of the corner of her mouth. It was just a little too purple to be blood, that tiny rivulet, the few drops clinging to her lips. Kerry snarled and went sideways to get by, angry, almost pushing the woman who had arranged this strange tableau for her. A man who had behaved that way might have gotten a broken jaw for his bad manners. But she was known for her chivalry. It was part of a code she thought all true leathermen (regardless of gender) should obey. Let women make do with their feminine wiles and plots and foibles. She did not want to become entangled in them. This creed of Kerry’s took a form that dismayed many of the heavier masochists in the scene: she could rarely be persuaded to treat women like sides of beef. Only men were usually that stupid or lucky. In her lofty unconcern with women’s untidy minds and manipulative ways, Kerry had somehow omitted to learn who this impudent blonde (whom she had certainly seen many times before) was. Ignorance is bliss, but we are rarely allowed to remain in that happy state. There was another club, Roissy, just three blocks away, closer to the docks. That was where Kerry headed now, whips swinging at her hip, the knife scabbard bumping the small of her back, her boot heels making a satisfying tempo on the pavement, a rhythm that confirmed that she was in motion, making progress, getting away from those thin scarlet streams, the smell of life that made her mouth water and her jaws ache. She knew immediately that she was being followed. She also had no trouble detecting that the person behind her was wearing spike-heeled shoes, and so she knew who was following her. The why of it bothered her, and the notion that anybody in spikes could keep up with (let alone catch or combat) someone in boots amused her.

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

  He and his wife had laid me under a debt of gratitude, but I was not prepared to put up with his medical morals. ‘Doctor, tell me what you propose to do now. I would never allow my wife to be given meat or beef, even if the denial meant her death, unless of course she desired to take it.’ ‘You are welcome to your philosophy. I tell you that, so long as you keep your wife under my treatment, I must have the option to give her anything I wish. If you don’t like this, I must regretfully ask you to remove her. I can’t see her die under my roof.’ ‘Do you mean to say that I must remove her at once?’ ‘Whenever did I ask you to remove her? I only want to be left entirely free. If you do so, my wife and I will do all that is possible for her, and you may go back without the least anxiety on her score. But if you will not understand this simple thing, you will compel me to ask you to remove your wife from my place.’ I think one of my sons was with me. He entirely agreed with me, and said his mother should not be given beef tea. I next spoke to Kasturbai herself. She was really too weak to be consulted in this matter. But I thought it my painful duty to do so. I told her what had passed between the doctor and myself. She gave a resolute reply: ‘I will not take beef tea. It is a rare thing in this world to be born as a human being, and I would far rather die in your arms than pollute my body with such abominations.’ I pleaded with her. I told her that she was not bound to follow me. I cited to her the instances of Hindu friends and acquaintances who had no scruples about taking meat or wine as medicine. But she was adamant. ‘No,’ said she, ‘pray remove me at once.’ I was delighted. Not without some agitation I decided to take her away. I informed the doctor of her resolve. He exclaimed in a rage: ‘What a callous man you are! You should have been ashamed to broach the matter to her in her present condition. I tell you your wife is not least little hustling. I shouldn’t surprised if she were to die on the way. But if you must persist, you are free to do so. If you will not give her beef tea, I will not take the risk of keeping her under my roof even for a single day.’ So we decided to leave the place at once. It was drizzling and the station was some distance.

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  "'Elp yerselves!" he said. "'Elp yerselves! Dunna wait f'r axin!" He cut the bread, then sat motionless. Hilda felt, as Connie once used to, his power of silence and distance. She saw his smallish, sensitive, loose hand on the table. He was no simple working-man, not he: he was acting! acting! "Still!" she said, as she took a little cheese. "It would be more natural if you spoke to us in normal English, not in vernacular." He looked at her, feeling her devil of a will. "Would it?" he said in the normal English. "Would it? Would anything that was said between you and me be quite natural, unless you said you wished me to hell before your sister ever saw me again: and unless I said something almost as unpleasant back again? Would anything else be natural?" "Oh yes!" said Hilda. "Just good manners would be quite natural." "Second nature, so to speak!" he said: then he began to laugh. "Nay," he said. "I'm weary o' manners. Let me be!" Hilda was frankly baffled and furiously annoyed. After all, he might show that he realized he was being honoured. Instead of which, with his play-acting and lordly airs, he seemed to think it was he who was conferring the honour. Just impudence! Poor misguided Connie, in the man's clutches! The three ate in silence. Hilda looked to see what his table manners were like. She could not help realizing that he was instinctively much more delicate and well-bred than herself. She had a certain Scottish clumsiness. And moreover, he had all the quiet self-contained assurance of the English, no loose edges. It would be very difficult to get the better of him. But neither would he get the better of her. "And do you really think," she said, a little more humanly, "it's worth the risk." "Is what worth what risk?" "This escapade with my sister." He flickered his irritating grin. "Yo' maun ax 'er!" Then he looked at Connie. "Tha comes o' thine own accord, lass, doesn't ter? It's non me as forces thee?" Connie looked at Hilda. "I wish you wouldn't cavil, Hilda." "Naturally I don't want to. But someone has to think about things. You've got to have some of continuity in your life. You can't just go making a mess." There was a moment's pause. "Eh, continuity!" he said. "An' what by that? What continuity 'ave yer got i' _your_ life? I thought you was gettin' divorced. What continuity's that? Continuity o' yer own stubbornness. I can see that much. An' what good's it goin' to do yer? Yo'll be sick o' yer continuity afore yer a fat sight older. A stubborn woman an' 'er own self-will: ay, they make a fat continuity, they do. Thank heaven, it isn't me as 'as got th' andlin' of yer!" "What right have you to speak like that to me?" said Hilda.

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  "But Connie!" she said. "Whatever is the matter?" "Nothing!" said Connie, rather shame-facedly; but she knew how she had suffered in contrast to Hilda. Both sisters had the same rather golden, glowing skin, and soft brown hair, and naturally strong, warm physique. But now Connie was thin and earthy-looking, with a scraggy, yellowish neck, that stuck out of her jumper. "But you're ill, child!" said Hilda, in the soft, rather breathless voice, that both sisters had alike. Hilda was nearly, but not quite, two years older than Connie. "No, not ill. Perhaps I'm bored," said Connie a little pathetically. The light of battle glowed in Hilda's face: she was a woman, soft and still as she seemed, of the old amazon sort, not made to fit with men. "This wretched place!" she said softly, looking at poor old, lumbering Wragby with real hate. She looked soft and warm herself, as a ripe pear, and she was an amazon of the real old breed. She went quietly in to Clifford. He thought how handsome she looked, but also he shrank from her. His wife's family did not have his sort of manners, or his sort of etiquette. He considered them rather outsiders, but once they got inside they made him jump through the hoop. He sat square and well-groomed in his chair, his hair sleek and blond, and his face fresh, his blue eyes pale, and a little prominent, his expression inscrutable, but well-bred. Hilda thought it sulky and stupid, and he waited. He had an air of aplomb, but Hilda didn't care what he had an air of; she was up in arms, and if he'd been Pope or Emperor it would have been just the same. "Connie's looking awfully unwell," she said in her soft voice, fixing him with her beautiful, glowering grey eyes. She looked so maidenly, so did Connie; but he well knew the stone of Scottish obstinacy underneath. "She's a little thinner," he said. "Haven't you done anything about it?" "Do you think it necessary?" he asked, with his suavest English stiffness, for the two things often go together. Hilda only glowered at him without replying; repartee was not her forte, nor Connie's; so she glowered, and he was much more uncomfortable than if she had said things. "I'll take her to a doctor," said Hilda at length, "Can you suggest a good one round here?" "I'm afraid I can't." "Then I'll take her to London, where we have a doctor we trust." Though boiling with rage, Clifford said nothing. "I suppose I may as well stay the night," said Hilda, pulling off her gloves, "and I'll drive her to town tomorrow." Clifford was yellow at the gills with anger, and at evening the whites of his eyes were a little yellow too. He ran to liver. But Hilda was consistently modest and maidenly.

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  I feel my temper awaken, stretch, and glare at her. I knew I was going to have a bad time when Ms Homespun-and-Wholesome, cheerful as always in the face of other people’s problems, insisted I apply for the janitorial job at a women-only clinic. It had taken me all morning to find someone who knew about the job opening, and it took her another hour to find the application forms and figure out who was supposed to be doing the interviews. They had refused to give me an appointment, promising me that the woman in question would see me as soon as she had a minute (and implying that an unemployed parasite like myself didn’t have anything more important to do than wait on my betters anyway), so I’d waited three hours for this cosy little session of a consciousness-raising. This comes on top of a week in which I’ve been interrogated, harassed, interviewed, shunted from one desk jockey to another, and stood in a dozen rooms in front of people who despised the way I looked, talked, thought, and got my eggs off. I do not like being told that I am not good enough to empty the garbage, make coffee, and straighten up the literature table. I’m not some moron. After my six years of basic education, I didn’t go to a trade school, I made it into college-prep. The fact that I got expelled in disgrace does not make me forget that I could have been somebody, maybe even a doctor. I’m a street person, but I’m not a bag lady or a wino. I am royalty out there, even if this party hack is too dumb to recognize the flora and fauna of the urban wilderness. The women who want to polish my boots and eat my pussy pay highly for the privilege (well, they pay me in cash, anyway). I have no desire whatsoever to take their dirty examination drapes to the laundry, wash off the day’s used speculums, dust the desks, and mop their floors. I have lied, bowed, scraped, apologized, and held my tongue under more abuse than I can stand. Now this upright, tight-assed committee commando is going to stamp my application “under consideration” and sit on it and delay my claim at rehab until I get evicted and starve to death. I just can’t take it any more.

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  He stooped and took out the scotch, then put his weight against the chair. He was paler than Connie had ever seen him: and more absent. Clifford was a heavy man: and the hill was steep. Connie stepped to the keeper's side. "I'm going to push too!" she said. And she began to shove with a woman's turbulent energy of anger. The chair went faster. Clifford looked round. "Is that necessary?" he said. "Very! Do you want to kill the man! If you'd let the motor work while it would--" But she did not finish. She was already panting. She slackened off a little, for it was surprisingly hard work. "Ay! slower!" said the man at her side, with a faint smile of the eyes. "Are you sure you've not hurt yourself?" she said fiercely. He shook his head. She looked at his smallish, short, alive hand, browned by the weather. It was the hand that caressed her. She had never even looked at it before. It seemed so still, like him, with a curious inward stillness that made her want to clutch it, as if she could not reach it. All her soul suddenly swept towards him: he was so silent, and out of reach! And he felt his limbs revive. Shoving with his left hand, he laid his right on her round white wrist, softly enfolding her wrist, with caress. And the flame of strength went down his back and his loins, reviving him. And she bent suddenly and kissed his hand. Meanwhile the back of Clifford's head was held sleek and motionless, just in front of them. At the top of the hill they rested, and Connie was glad to let go. She had had fugitive dreams of friendship between these two men: one her husband, the other the father of her child. Now she saw the screaming absurdity of her dreams. The two males were as hostile as fire and water. They mutually exterminated one another. And she realised for the first time, what a queer subtle thing hate is. For the first time, she had consciously and definitely hated Clifford, with vivid hate: as if he ought to be obliterated from the face of the earth. And it was strange, how free and full of life it made her feel, to hate him and to admit it fully to herself.--"Now I've hated him, I shall never be able to go on living with him," came the thought into her mind. On the level the keeper could push the chair alone. Clifford made a little conversation with her, to show his complete composure: about Aunt Eva, who was at Dieppe, and about Sir Malcolm, who had written to ask would Connie drive with him in his small car, to Venice, or would she and Hilda go by train. "I'd much rather go by train," said Connie. "I don't like long motor drives, especially when there's dust. But I shall see what Hilda wants."

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  If even a single copy were included in a shipment from its American distributor to Little Sister’s, the entire shipment would be detained. From Canada Customs’ perspective, by ordering Macho Sluts we at Little Sister’s were attempting to import the worst, the filthiest, the most unclean type of literature. We were certainly treated like criminals for daring to bring this book into Canada. Repeatedly, the seized book would be reviewed by one Customs bureaucrat or another up the chain of command. In all of the memoranda that Customs would send out to its regional offices on the subject, its officials would have “guidance” for their judgment of whether the book was or was not obscene—according to Customs’ definitions. Over and over the book, given closer examination, could only be treated as having artistic merit, of being thoughtful in its themes rather than coldly exploitative, and then finally released to us. And yet, nearly every time we tried to order it again, the shipment would again be stopped or delayed, and we’d have to start from scratch. Of course, this context was all about potential readership, one supposes, because independent bookstores all across Canada could import the book if they wished, and without a second glance from Customs. One of the least palatable aspects of having to fight for freedom to read in Canada was that we found amongst our adversaries a camp of radical right-wing feminists for whom pornography and erotica were considered bastions of male power, and its authors and adoring fans were to be treated with disdain. Not satisfied with the absurd notion that their school of thought should be taken seriously by authors, readers, and all who sought liberation, they acted (and succeeded, in the Butler decision) to implement their regressive ideas as law—all in the name of feminism and women’s rights. Thanks in part to a new generation of women who feel they can decide for themselves the varying degrees of importance they place on womanhood, liberation, sexuality, independence, personal and community strength, physical boundaries and gender uniqueness, the Dworkins and MacKinnons of twenty-plus years ago will, and should, be seen as historically important gender theorists, but misguided in their views toward pornography. If the seizure of lesbian and gay books prevented crimes against women or produced a Utopia where inequality and subjugation no longer exist, the evidence is elusive and fleeting, to say the least. Steeped in this murky legal thinking of post-Butler censorship, Canada Customs somehow managed to get worse at their job when it came to books. Many books that were being seized were by women, and meant for an all-woman audience. While these same books were being circulated and discussed in the US, Canadian readers were not so lucky. Ultimately, at the end of the day, and in the minds of every judge who took the time to get off on it, Macho Sluts may be the single reason that “artistic merit” came to mean so much under Canadian law.

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  Seen in this light, lesbian pornography is “just” dyke entertainment, but I have never understood why anybody would think entertainment was trivial. If you live in a society that wishes you didn’t exist, anything you do to make yourself happy disrupts its attempts to wipe you out, or at the very least, make you invisible. Institutions that provide amusement always come under attack by puritans and fascists, partly because these people know they are pompous buffoons and easy targets for ridicule. The Cromwellians shut down the theater in England. The Victorians attacked the novel as a depraved and vicious literary form that was especially dangerous for women. Today, fundamentalist Christians go after MTV, and some women’s bookstores try to incise pornography from the lesbian body of literature. There is no easier, faster way to transmit information or a system of values than by presenting it in a format that makes people laugh, dance, get turned on, or just feel good. What is it that they don’t want you to hear? I do not believe that sex has an inherent power to transform the world. I do not believe that pleasure is always an anarchic force for good. I do not believe that we can fuck our way to freedom. But this is not what the discourse of sexual repression tells us. In that discourse unleashed sex has enormous disruptive potential. Minority forms of sex have to be repressed or the social contract will hang in tatters. People will look to their friends and lovers for warmth, affection, love, and support instead of to their biological families. Women and children will have no protection from male violence. Work for the sake of work will cease to be valued. The nine-to-five, five-days-a-week wage labor that is the foundation of commerce will be disrupted by bored and frustrated workers who use any excuse to come in late, get high as often as possible to alleviate their tedium, rip off their employers, and spend their evenings trying to pick somebody up in a bar or going to political meetings organized by antisocial elements. Nobody will go to church. Children will be thoughtlessly conceived and carelessly reared, and venereal diseases will flourish. This is, of course, in wild opposition to our present system. I suspect that what is really being protected by censorship, antiabortion, and homophobic campaigns is the self-image of the so-called majority. Consider how narrow the range of acceptable sexual behavior is. Nobody comes out looking normal once you know the whole truth about how they fuck and what they think about when they jerk off. The citizens are terrified of losing their heterosexual privilege, which will happen if the assumption that there is a sexual consensus, a few simple sexual things that are (or should be) enough for any normal person, is challenged.

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  "Meanwhile, my dear Connie, if you would enjoy to stay in Venice or in Switzerland till the beginning of August, I should be glad to think you were out of all this buzz of nastiness, which will have died quite away by the end of the month. "So you see, we are deep-sea monsters, and when the lobster walks on mud, he stirs it up for everybody. We must perforce take it philosophically."--The irritation, and the lack of any sympathy in any direction, of Clifford's letter, had a bad effect on Connie. But she understood it better when she received the following from Mellors: "The cat is out of the bag, along with various other pussies. You have heard that my wife Bertha came back to my unloving arms, and took up her abode in the cottage: where, to speak disrespectfully, she smelled a rat, in the shape of a little bottle of Coty. Other evidence she did not find, at least for some days, when she began to howl about the burnt photograph. She noticed the glass and the backboard in the spare bedroom. Unfortunately on the backboard somebody had scribbled little sketches, and the initials, several times repeated: C. S. R. This, however, afforded no clue until she broke into the hut, and found one of your books, an autobiography of the actress Judith, with your name, Constance Stewart Reid, on the front page. After this, for some days she went round loudly saying that my paramour was no less a person than Lady Chatterley herself. The news came at last to the rector, Mr. Burroughs, and to Sir Clifford. They then proceeded to take legal steps against my liege lady, who for her part disappeared, having always had a mortal fear of the police. "Sir Clifford asked to see me, so I went to him. He talked around things and seemed annoyed with me. Then he asked if I knew that even her ladyship's name had been mentioned. I said I never listened to scandal, and was surprised to hear this bit from Sir Clifford himself. He said, of course it was a great insult, and I told him there was Queen Mary on a calendar in the scullery, no doubt because Her Majesty formed part of my harem. But he didn't appreciate the sarcasm. He as good as told me I was a disreputable character who walked about with my breeches' buttons undone, and I as good as told him he'd nothing to unbutton anyhow, so he gave me the sack, and I leave on Saturday week, and the place thereof shall know me no more. "I shall go to London, and my old landlady, Mrs. Inger, 17 Coburg Square, will either give me a room or will find one for me. "Be sure your sins will find you out, especially if you're married and her name's Bertha."

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  "'Elp yerselves!" he said. "'Elp yerselves! Dunna wait f'r axin!" He cut the bread, then sat motionless. Hilda felt, as Connie once used to, his power of silence and distance. She saw his smallish, sensitive, loose hand on the table. He was no simple working-man, not he: he was acting! acting! "Still!" she said, as she took a little cheese. "It would be more natural if you spoke to us in normal English, not in vernacular." He looked at her, feeling her devil of a will. "Would it?" he said in the normal English. "Would it? Would anything that was said between you and me be quite natural, unless you said you wished me to hell before your sister ever saw me again: and unless I said something almost as unpleasant back again? Would anything else be natural?" "Oh yes!" said Hilda. "Just good manners would be quite natural." "Second nature, so to speak!" he said: then he began to laugh. "Nay," he said. "I'm weary o' manners. Let me be!" Hilda was frankly baffled and furiously annoyed. After all, he might show that he realized he was being honoured. Instead of which, with his play-acting and lordly airs, he seemed to think it was he who was conferring the honour. Just impudence! Poor misguided Connie, in the man's clutches! The three ate in silence. Hilda looked to see what his table manners were like. She could not help realizing that he was instinctively much more delicate and well-bred than herself. She had a certain Scottish clumsiness. And moreover, he had all the quiet self-contained assurance of the English, no loose edges. It would be very difficult to get the better of him. But neither would he get the better of her. "And do you really think," she said, a little more humanly, "it's worth the risk." "Is what worth what risk?" "This escapade with my sister." He flickered his irritating grin. "Yo' maun ax 'er!" Then he looked at Connie. "Tha comes o' thine own accord, lass, doesn't ter? It's non me as forces thee?" Connie looked at Hilda. "I wish you wouldn't cavil, Hilda." "Naturally I don't want to. But someone has to think about things. You've got to have some of continuity in your life. You can't just go making a mess." There was a moment's pause. "Eh, continuity!" he said. "An' what by that? What continuity 'ave yer got i' _your_ life? I thought you was gettin' divorced. What continuity's that? Continuity o' yer own stubbornness. I can see that much. An' what good's it goin' to do yer? Yo'll be sick o' yer continuity afore yer a fat sight older. A stubborn woman an' 'er own self-will: ay, they make a fat continuity, they do. Thank heaven, it isn't me as 'as got th' andlin' of yer!" "What right have you to speak like that to me?" said Hilda.

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  No man is good enough for ’em. And you! You!” He was almost choking, pointing at her with his finger and his cock, which strained against the fabric of his uniform trousers. “Walking down that street with your hair all hacked off, above it all, in that fag outfit. Rip that bike jacket off of her.” The two uniforms began to struggle with her, trying to hold her and remove her jacket at the same time. It wasn’t easy, but they finally got it off—after she had hit one of them in the mouth and kicked the other one to his knees. The patrolman grabbed it, and she expected him to throw it on the floor, but instead he draped it over one of the faded armchairs. Then he walked back to the center of the room and confronted her again. “What do you mean by running around like that?” he demanded. “The way I dress is my own damned business.” He slapped her with the front and then the back of his hand. “Bullshit. You still don’t know what the drill is, do you, sister? I just made it my business. Now answer me. What are you supposed to be?” She didn’t answer, just stared her hatred into him. “You got a leather jacket. You got a leather belt with fancy studs on it. You wear those engineer boots with the chain around them. I’ll bet you’ve got some of those leather pants with the front and the ass cut out, don’t you? And some whips and chains and all the rest of the gear those sickos collect. What are you, one of those sadomasochists?” “Yes!” she shouted, because the cops behind her had her up on her toes, and they were pressing their thumbs into her armpits, making it hurt good and strong. “Well, I never saw a freak of your particular type before. And I thought I’d turned over just about every piece of garbage in every gutter and sewer in this city. I’ve seen butch dykes and their foxy girlfriends, and I’ve seen those women’s libbers with their dirty, long hair and no bras, and I’ve even known a couple of smart-looking call girls who didn’t look like dykes but would cut your balls off if you laid a hand on their roommates. You must be some new kind of female pervert. Or are you just an imitation fag?” “A lot of people think so,” she said, teeth on edge. She was sweating. The pain was excruciating. “Well, if you are, you’re going to walk out of here a changed woman. You know that? You can’t be any harder to break than a leatherboy.

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  There’s a long-standing tradition among dykes of hating men. And I would be the last person to tell you that hatred doesn’t have a valid reason for existing. As the most powerful people in our society, men have been responsible for most of the lesbian-bashing that goes on. Not all of it, however, and that’s important to remember. Homophobic women are fully capable of rejecting their lesbian daughters and supporting moral panics that have done things like get lesbian professors fired from women’s colleges, kicked lesbians out of the armed forces, and caused other widespread forms of discrimination and misery. But when a man beats you up, fires you, or steals your girlfriend, it feels worse, because the playing field isn’t level. Lesbians don’t compete with straight women for a sense of sexual prowess or safety on the street and in their own bars and clubs. Men have attacked, hurt, defamed, violated, and murdered lesbians in the most cowardly and despicable ways it’s possible to imagine. Unfortunately, the most simplistic form of feminism encourages women to believe that sexism (and by extension, homophobia) are all men’s fault, and can only be fixed if men are utterly deprived of power. This has led to the dead-end alley of separatism in which fantasies of all-female societies are held out as alternatives where women can be strong, safe, and free. I think Joanna Russ, in her book The Female Man, is the only lesbian writer brave enough to spell out that the only way to get there from here is through the cultural catastrophe of a gender holocaust. Do we really want to support a form of feminism that tells us the only way to fix our admittedly broken, binary gender system is to kill all the men? Single-gender societies are not the answer, although they make great escapist fantasies that I continue to write and read and enjoy. This kind of feminism has another problem. It lets women off the hook. If we can attribute sexism to only one-half of the human race, we never have to answer troubling questions like, Why do some women hate other women? Why do some women hate lesbians? Why do women treat one another so badly? Why is it that a woman who acquires power is every bit as likely to misuse it as a man? How do we create nonexploitative forms of power that are linked to responsibility, so that we can still enjoy individual initiative and creativity without smothering everyone with tyrannical collectivity? As long as feminism is perceived as a politic that is for women only, its transformative and radical potential will be sharply limited. But I do not mean to imply that feminist women should change this. The men who don’t see the damage that a lopsided power dynamic does to them, who are not throwing their energy into looking for a better way to live, are culpable.

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  "I assure you, you were very elegant altogether out there in the wood. I was utterly ashamed of you. Why my father is ten times the human being you are: you _gentleman_!" He reached and rang the bell for Mrs. Bolton. But he was yellow at the gills. She went up to her room, furious, saying to herself: "Him and buying people! Well, he doesn't buy me, and therefore there's no need for me to stay with him. Dead fish of a gentleman, with his celluloid soul! And how they take one in, with their manners and their mock wistfulness and gentleness. They've got about as much feeling as celluloid has." She made her plans for the night, and determined to get Clifford off her mind. She didn't want to hate him. She didn't want to be mixed up very intimately with him in any sort of feeling. She wanted him not to know anything at all about herself: and especially, not to know anything about her feeling for the keeper. This squabble of her attitude to the servants was an old one. He found her too familiar, she found him stupidly insentient, tough and india rubbery where other people were concerned. She went downstairs calmly, with her old demure bearing, at dinnertime. He was still yellow at the gills: in for one of his liver bouts, when he was really very queer. He was reading a French book. "Have you ever read Proust?" he asked her. "I've tried, but he bores me." "He's really very extraordinary." "Possibly! But he bores me: all that sophistication! He doesn't have feelings, he only has streams of words about feelings. I'm tired of self-important mentalities." "Would you prefer self-important animalities?" "Perhaps! But one might possibly get something that wasn't self-important." "Well, I like Proust's subtlety and his well-bred anarchy." "It makes you very dead, really." "There speaks my evangelical little wife." They were at it again, at it again! But she couldn't help fighting him. He seemed to sit there like a skeleton, sending out a skeleton's cold grizzly _will_ against her. Almost she could feel the skeleton clutching her and pressing her to its cage of ribs. He too was really up in arms: and she was a little afraid of him. She went upstairs as soon as possible, and went to bed quite early. But at half-past nine she got up, and went outside to listen. There was no sound. She slipped on a dressing-gown and went downstairs. Clifford and Mrs. Bolton were playing cards, gambling. They would probably go on until midnight.

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  People who have never needed to question the sex that appears on their birth certificate display some double standards when they invalidate the gender identity of my people. A similar process takes place when we are expected to justify our sexual orientations far past the standard of proof that cisgendered people (genetic men and women) need to feel self-satisfied and secure. These contradictions are especially clear when “radical dyke feminists” are pitted against “sell-out transmen.” Most lesbians and gay men will tell you that they didn’t choose to be homosexual. It’s an intrinsic part of their nature, something they became aware of at an early age, an inherent quality that cannot be changed by fundamentalist Christian “reparative therapy” or other forms of bullying. And most cisgendered men and women never wonder where their gender identity came from. They just take it for granted, like having ten fingers and toes, or a certain skin color. So why should lesbianism become a privileged identity that is somehow superior to other sexual orientations? If you can’t choose whether to become a lesbian or not, why is it a moral failing for others to be something different? The sexual orientations and gender identities of transgendered people come from the same place that other people’s do. The same social and biological processes that shaped you, shape us. If you are the product of genetic predisposition—so are we. It may look as if we choose to be this way simply because we do have a choice about whether we own our self-knowledge, express it, and try to live it in the real world. But that’s only because we live in a world where the expectation is that everyone be either a feminine woman or a masculine man, and also heterosexual. If you want to be true to yourself, you have to speak up, and this makes it look like you are choosing to be a troublemaker who’s rocking the boat just to make other people uncomfortable. Does this sound familiar? Are you beginning to see that some of the same ironclad rules that oppress gay men and lesbians also oppress transgendered people?

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  I’m afraid that the opprobrium of right-wing, pro-censorship feminists is not the worst thing that will confront this book. We are in the middle of a crackdown on porn, especially S/M porn. For my birthday this year, I took a trip to Times Square to watch some loops in the peep show booths at my favorite porn store. This store used to feature a great diversity of material, and was always friendly to women. But all their S/M stuff was gone from the peep shows and the magazine racks. They had moved all their kinky magazines and videos to just one store, to protect the rest of them if that one got busted. If I wanted to look at an S/M movie now, I would have to buy the whole tape. I checked out several other adult bookstores on Times Square. Most of them were not selling any S/M material. I was very upset, but not because this meant I would be cut off from a primary source of arousal. The typical commercial S/M flick or magazine does not turn me on. Most of it is made by people who think S/M is weird and sick, and just want to make some easy money off the leather freaks. Many of the actors and actresses perform in S/M movies or pose for bondage photos because they get paid as well as they would if they did hard-core (penetration, cum shots, cock-sucking), but they don’t have to do any genital sex. Most S/M porn doesn’t even require full frontal nudity. I check out adult bookstores for the occasional gems—the movies that star friends of mine, the magazines that feature professional dommes who really enjoy what they do and do it well, the ’50s books put out by Mutrix, magazines illustrated by Stanton and other classic bondage and fetish artists, F. E. Campbell’s novels, reprints of John Willie’s drawings. Even this comparatively rare, high-quality material doesn’t include many of the staple images of my eroticism. The kind of woman I try to be and the kind of woman I cruise just isn’t sexy to straight sadomasochists.

• 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 Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  "But really? I want my wife, and I see no reason for letting her go. If she likes to bear a child under my roof, she is welcome, and the child is welcome: provided that the decency and order of life is preserved. Do you mean to tell me that Duncan Forbes has a greater hold over you? I don't believe it." There was a pause. "But don't you see," said Connie. "I _must_ go away from you, and I _must_ live with the man I love." "No, I don't see it! I don't give tuppence for your love, nor for the man you love. I don't believe in that sort of cant." "But you see, I do." "Do you? My dear Madam, you are too intelligent, I assure you, to believe in your own love for Duncan Forbes. Believe me, even now you really care more for me. So why should I give in to such nonsense!" She felt he was right there. And she felt she could keep silent no longer. "Because it isn't Duncan that I _do_ love," she said, looking up at him. "We only said it was Duncan, to spare your feelings." "To spare my feelings?" "Yes! Because who I really love, and it'll make you hate me, is Mr. Mellors, who was our gamekeeper here." If he could have sprung out of his chair, he would have done so. His face went yellow, and his eyes bulged with disaster as he glared at her. Then he dropped back in the chair, gasping and looking up at the ceiling. At length he sat up. "Do you mean to say you're telling me the truth?" he asked, looking gruesome. "Yes! You know I am." "And when did you begin with him?" "In the spring." He was silent like some beast in a trap. "And it _was_ you, then, in the bedroom at the cottage?" So he had really inwardly known all the time. "Yes!" He still leaned forward in his chair, gazing at her like a cornered beast. "My God, you ought to be wiped off the face of the earth!" "Why?" she ejaculated faintly. But he seemed not to hear her. "That scum! That bumptious lout! That miserable cad! And carrying on with him all the time, while you were here and he was one of my servants! My God, my God, is there any end to the beastly lowness of women!" He was beside himself with rage, as she knew he would be. "And you mean to say you want to have a child to a cad like that?" "Yes! I'm going to." "You're going to! You mean you're sure! How long have you been sure?" "Since June." He was speechless, and the queer blank look of a child came over him again. "You'd wonder," he said at last, "that such beings were ever allowed to be born." "What beings?" she asked.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Thereupon the lady, feigning to be mightily incensed, rose to her feet and said, 'Ill luck betide thee, dost thou hold me so little of wit that, an I had a mind to such filthy fashions as thou wouldst have us believe thou sawest, I should come to do them before thy very eyes? Thou mayst be assured of this that, if ever the fancy took me thereof, I should not come hither; marry, methinketh I should have sense enough to contrive it in one of our chambers, on such wise and after such a fashion that it would seem to me an extraordinary thing if ever thou camest to know of it.' Nicostratus, himseeming that what the lady and Pyrrhus said was true, to wit, that they would never have ventured upon such an act there before himself, gave over words and reproaches and fell to discoursing of the strangeness of the fact and the miracle of the sight, which was thus changed unto whoso climbed up into the pear-tree. But his wife, feigning herself chagrined for the ill thought he had shown of her, said, 'Verily, this pear-tree shall never again, if I can help it, do me nor any other lady the like of this shame; wherefore do thou run, Pyrrhus, and fetch a hatchet and at one stroke avenge both thyself and me by cutting it down; albeit it were better yet lay it about Nicostratus his cosard, who, without any consideration, suffered the eyes of his understanding to be so quickly blinded, whenas, however certain that which thou[355] saidst might seem to those[356] which thou hast in thy head, thou shouldst for nought in the world in the judgment of thy mind have believed or allowed that such a thing could be.' [Footnote 355: This sudden change from the third to the second person, in speaking of Nicostratus, is a characteristic example of Boccaccio's constant abuse of the figure enallage in his dialogues.] [Footnote 356: _i.e._ those eyes.] Pyrrhus very readily fetched the hatchet and cut down the tree, which when the lady saw fallen, she said to Nicostratus, 'Since I see the enemy of mine honour overthrown, my anger is past,' and graciously forgave her husband, who besought her thereof, charging him that it should never again happen to him to presume such a thing of her, who loved him better than herself. Accordingly, the wretched husband, thus befooled, returned with her and her lover to the palace, where many a time thereafterward Pyrrhus took delight and pleasance more at ease of Lydia and she of him. God grant us as much!" THE TENTH STORY [Day the Seventh] TWO SIENNESE LOVE A LADY, WHO IS GOSSIP TO ONE OF THEM; THE LATTER DIETH AND RETURNING TO HIS COMPANION, ACCORDING TO PROMISE MADE HIM, RELATETH TO HIM HOW FOLK FARE IN THE OTHER WORLD