Humiliation

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 Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  Your maid was a slum-girl, wasn’t she? Didn’t you have her from a prison or a home? You know what the women get up to in prison, don’t you? I should think they must frot until their parts are the size of mushrooms!’Diana turned her eyes from me, and drew on her pink-tipped fag; and then she smiled. ‘Mrs Hooper!’ she called. ‘Where is Blake?’‘She is in the kitchen, ma’am,’ answered the housekeeper from her station at the bowl of wine. ‘She is loading her tray.’‘Go and fetch her.’‘Yes ma’am.’Mrs Hooper went. The ladies looked at one another, and then at Diana. She stood very calm and steady beside the bust of cold Antinous; but when she raised her glass to her lip, I saw that her hand was trembling slightly. I shifted from one foot to the other, my briefly flaring lust all faded. In a moment, Mrs Hooper had returned, with Zena. When Diana called to her, Zena walked blinkingly into the centre of the room. The ladies parted to let her pass, then stepped together again at the back of her.Diana said, ‘We have been wondering about you, Blake.’Zena blinked again. ‘Ma’am?’‘We have been wondering about your time at the reformatory.’ Now Zena coloured. ‘We have been wondering how you filled your hours. We thought there must be some little occupation, to which you turned your idle fingers, in your solitary cell.’Zena hesitated. Then she said, ‘Please, m’m, do you mean, sewing bags?’At that, the ladies gave a roar of laughter, which made Zena flinch, and blush worse than ever, and put a hand to her throat. Diana said, very slowly, ‘No, child, I did not mean sewing bags. I meant, that we thought you must have turned frigstress, in your little cell. That you must have frigged yourself until your cunt was sore. That you must have frigged yourself so long and so hard, you frigged yourself a cock. We think you must have a cock, Blake, in your drawers. We want you to lift your skirt, and let us see it!’Now the ladies laughed again. Zena looked at them, and then at Diana. ‘Please, m’m,’ she said, beginning to shake, ’I don’t know what you mean!’Diana stepped towards her. ‘I think you do,’ she said. She had picked up the book that Dickie had given her, and now she opened it, and held it oppressively close to Zena’s face, so that Zena flinched again. ‘We have been reading a book full of stories of girls like you,’ she said. ‘And now, what are you suggesting? That the doctor who wrote this book - this book that Miss Reynolds gave me, for my birthday - is a fool?’‘No, m’m!’‘Well then. The doctor says you have a cock. Come along, lift your skirts!

• From A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (BDB) (1907)

  +071 vb. lick (NH ?0.; so Aram. 709, ys; Ar. ds) ;—Qal Inf. estr. App Nu 22+ (E), sq. ace.; of ox licking up grass. Pi. Pf. 3 fs. non? 1 K 18%; Jmpf. 3 mpl. sandy Nu 22* Mi 7”; sn" Wy 72° Is 49°; lick up (sq. acc.), fire fr. heaven the water in trench ד‎ K 18%; of Isr. consuming produce of land Nu 22°(E); esp. 72Y ל‎ lick the dust, sign of humiliation Mi 7" y 72° Is 49”. 1 -חם]‎ ] 2 vb. fight, do battle (N H Hithp. ; ואלתחם‎ 111-1545: perh. = order the battle, of, ו ו א‎ Ar 755 fit close together, so NH ond Pi., Syr. Pa. wnite, pos jit; also threaten; Gerber Y*?-P™. thinks vb. in Heb. denom. fr. מִלְחָמָה‎ battle-line, but dub.) ;— +Qal (poet.) only Zmv. ms. and Pt. act.—fight, do battle with, rare, only Wy, appar. later usage אֶתדלחָמִי--:‎ pnp ץר‎ 35'do battle with those battling with me (dub. whether את‎ is ace. sign or prep. with, 61. O1; || *2 NS 13"); לחמִים לי‎ 56° doing battle against me; on) לץ‎ as subst. Wiph. ,,, Pf. D022 Jug” +, H2022) S158, OND Dt 1 consec., ete.; Jmpf.‏ ד יוו Ex 14" Dt 1; 2b ond) Ne 44, on Ex‏ יִלָהָם t.; 3 fs. DOA Ze 14"; 3 mpl. won)‏ 19+17° mpl. NN‏ 2 ;"109 ץ Ju 15+ 13 t.; sf. ‘PONY‏ K-12™, etc.;: dmv.‏ ד תלחמוּן ;+ 4 + 22% aK‏ הלחמו Dna Ex17° 1S 187; ia onda 209%; pl.‏ cestr.‏ ;11% גר Ne 4’; Inf. abs. pind‏ 10% )א 2 535 לחוס

• From A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (BDB) (1907)

  t [by] vb.denom. act or play thea child ;—only Po. Pt. מעולל‎ YH BY Is 3? my _ people—its ruler is acting the child. “pais ןל‎ vb. insert, thrust in (Ar. jé, whence Ae yoke; cf. OAram. dby, & ,עלל‎ Syr. SS, all enter) ;—only Po’. Pf. ז‎ s. 7592 ְעלַלְתִי‎ קרני‎ Jb 16" fig. of humiliation. thy go גגנ.11‎ ,1 5 24 yoke ;—’y abs. Ho 114+; estr. Isg*+; sf. apy 16 2% Is 47%, by Gn27"+, על כֶם‎ 1 K 12”, etc.;—-yoke, for cattle, Dey mby ע'‎ 18 67, cf. Nu1g?(P), Ya M2 Dt 21%; usu. fig. of servitude x K 12*10-1-1144—— 2 Ch 10% meats by ע'‎ IN) א ז‎ 12*%=2 Chio*®; ע'‎ jn עלהצוָּארף‎ 272 Dt 28%, 8016 28% עלקו הכְבּרְתּ ע'‎ Is 47°; also בְּעל‎ JANIS נָתַן (הָבִיא)‎ 1 6 2 שָבַר ע'‎ break the yoke Je2™ 5° 28741 308 as by), so ‘Y מטת.‎ Ly 26%(H), Ez 34” (v. M49); ע'‎ PIB Gn 27 (J; +/¥ Sy); ע'‎ nny Is q°; 64. הָרִים ע/‎ Ho 114; 8150 סור ע' מָעַל צ'‎ ₪ 10”, and 14”; fig. of transgressions La 1 ע'‎ GB Lohr Bu, but read על‎ vb (v, id.); of hardship, ע'‎ 8W2 3°. toby appar. n.[m.], only צַרוּף 3ע'‎ 42 נש לְאָרֶץ‎ 27, usu. (after 5 ורא‎ ( furnace, crucible (Hup fr. 111. עלל‎ ; De al. workshop, fr. I. (עלל‎ but wholly dub.; NH openly Levy #8": 4; Che Du del. as gloss; cf. discussion Che Expos. T. 111. 236, 336 Ne ib, 287, 379 j עלם‎

• From A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (BDB) (1907)

  No™ 4", OAram. Nab. Palm.13 (and (בן‎ Lzb?**; Sab.43 acc.to Mordtm ¥™ *1*7; =}3, | becoming .ה‎ Philippi ZMG xxxii (1373), 36 ff. Brock Syr. Gr. 6 al.; V diff. fr. בן‎ acc. to JH Mich Thes K** al.; BH 72 Aramaism for ]3( ;--69. ב'‎ Dn 3”+; sf. m2 5”; pl. cstr. 22 Ezr 6°+; sf. 103 67. בניהון‎ Dn 6”;—1. son(s) Ezr 5'*? 6'* Dn 5” 6” Ezr 6" 7%; 812 °22 6*= Israelites, D2 123 =captives v Dn 2% 5" 6"; WIN ל‎ one of human kind, SOS 23 men 2® 5%; PINT 3” ₪ divine (or angelic) being (v. Dr, and ef. BH Gn6? Jb1°); 03) שָנִין‎ 12 6' ₪ son of 62 years =62 years old (BH j2 9). 2. of bullocks, תורין‎ "32 Ezr 6°. iy. av. .ברר‎ iP] vb. kneel, bless (so BH);—Pe. Pt. 1. act. NII2-Y JB Dn 6" kneeling on his knees (in prayer). 2. pass. ]"12 Dn 3” blessed 1085 גבר (be) the God, etc. Pa. bless, praise: Pf. 3 ms.‏ 1s. N22 (K'™4) 4%, both c.5 of God;‏ 2% 372 Pt. pass. J222 2% the name of God (be) blessed.‏ n. [£.] knee ;—pl. sf. 71372 Dn 6".‏ ]772[ 1 tT [אַרכְבָּה]‎ n.f. id.(by transp.; cf. EXP, x NAD ; Chr-Pal. INsa05/ Schwally ts (who > expl. from 7 רכב‎ , cf. Schulth >*'%( ; Ar. 425; 90.( ;- 1.81. אַרְכְַבּתָה‎ Dn 5° his knees. adv. with advers. force, only,‏ ברסז nevertheless (der. uncertain: N6™*’=N2+‏ lit. except what: ¥ D2 oft. for TS, DW;‏ ,72 Chr-‏ ; שמח Syr. pe Ex 9" 21", and in NT for‏ Pal. ae +>) ;—Dn 2” 4" hew down the tree,‏ D2 only leave the stump, etc.,‏ . . . שְבק etc.,‏ Ez 533,‏ זז v2‏ +Jb 397).‏ 72 , ברר (“of foll.; BH‏ ברר tu. [72] 2. [m.] open field ;—emph. 872‏ mn), Dn 2% 42:18-20-22.29.‏ הַשָרֶה כ ) חַיוֶת 2/ in‏ NSD |‏ די ב/ Twa n.m. flesh (¥ 1D2, Syr. sms; BH Wwa, / ב '.8ג---; (בשר‎ Dn 7° flesh (as devoured by beast); emph. 812 2" flesh = mankind, “a3 4°=all creatures. T [Ma] n.[m.] bath, liquid measure (Z; perh. loan-word from BH (בתת /, , ,3 ,זז‎ ;--1 abs. בַּתֶּי[‎ Ezr 77”, Wa +. sub אַתַר‎ . (prob. V of foll.; BH 783 rise up).‏ גאה T7712 af. pride (E72; BH 783; of. KS‏ (but also6a)) -__abs. 22 Dn 4™ in pride. [23] n. [m.] either back (I 33 back, top; BH 33, 7 233), or < side (233, ef. Ar, 5 side, Syr. hag side, / Sig, ;—v.also 1( "%%( ;- - pl. sf. Dn 7° Kt wings עלנביה‎ on its sides (Bev Behrm Dr; Qr 733 perh. 2/8 back, so most). T[3h] nu.m. pit, den of lions (X 33, Syr. כ‎ pit; tcf. BH 33 n.priloc., / 333) ;—cstr. ג'‎ Dn 6: גוב‎ y's; emph. N23 yy }7-15.20.21.25.24.25 “V2 (oY of foll.; be strong, so 3 ; BH 123).

• From Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance (1995)

  “That’s right, I remember now.” Reverend Smalls sipped his coffee and leaned back in his chair. “I told that white man he might as well pack up and get on out of here. We don’t need nothing like this around here.” “I—” “Listen … what’s your name again? Obamba? Listen, Obamba, you may mean well. I’m sure you do. But the last thing we need is to join up with a bunch of white money and Catholic churches and Jewish organizers to solve our problems. They’re not interested in us. Shoot, the archdiocese in this city is run by stone-cold racists. Always has been. White folks come in here thinking they know what’s best for us, hiring a buncha high-talking college-educated brothers like yourself who don’t know no better, and all they want to do is take over. It’s all a political thing, and that’s not what this group here is about.” I stammered that the church had always taken the lead in addressing community issues, but Reverend Smalls just shook his head. “You don’t understand,” he said. “Things have changed with the new mayor. I’ve known the district police commander since he was a beat cop. The aldermen in this area are all committed to black empowerment. Why we need to be protesting and carrying on at our own people? Anybody sitting around this table got a direct line to City Hall. Fred, didn’t you just talk to the alderman about getting that permit for your parking lot?” The rest of the room had grown quiet. Reverend Reynolds cleared his throat. “The man’s new around here, Charles. He’s just trying to help.” Reverend Smalls smiled and patted me on the shoulder. “Don’t misunderstand me now. Like I said, I know you mean well. We need some young blood to help out with the cause. All I’m saying is that right now you’re on the wrong side of the battle.” I sat there, roasting like a pig on a spit, as the pastors went on to discuss a joint Thanksgiving service in the park across the street. When the meeting was over, Reverend Reynolds and a few of the others thanked me for coming. “Don’t take Charles too seriously,” one of them advised. “He can be a little strong sometimes.” But I noticed that none of them left with my flyers; and later in the week, when I tried to call some of the ministers back, their secretaries kept telling me they were gone for the day. We went forward with our police meeting, which proved a small disaster. Only thirteen people showed up, scattered across rows of empty chairs. The district commander canceled on us, sending a community relations officer instead. Every few minutes an older couple walked in looking for the Bingo game. I spent most of the evening directing this wayward traffic upstairs, while Ruby sat glumly onstage, listening to the policeman lecture about the need for parental discipline. About halfway through the meeting, Marty arrived.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  Diana put a hand to my cheek.‘The excitements of the day have proved too much for you,’ she said.But she said it rather coldly; and all through the long ride back to Felicity Place we sat in silence. When Mrs Hooper had let us in and bolted the great front door behind us, I walked with Diana to her bedroom, but then stepped past her, towards my own. As I did so, she put a hand on my arm: ‘Where are you going?’I pulled my arm free. ‘Diana,’ I said, ‘I feel wretched. Let me alone.’She seized me again. ‘You feel wretched,’ she said, with scorn in her voice. ‘Do you think it matters to me, how you feel about anything? Get in my bedroom at once, you little bitch, and take your clothes off.’I hesitated. Then: ‘No, Diana,’ I said.She came closer. ‘What?’There is a way rich people have of saying What?: the word is honed, and has a point put on it; it comes out of their mouths like a dagger coming out of a sheath. That is how Diana said it now, in that dim corridor. I felt it pierce me through, and make me sag. I swallowed.‘I said, “No, Diana.’” It was no more than a whisper. But when she heard it, she seized me by the shirt, so that I stumbled. I said, ‘Get off me, you are hurting me! Get off me, get off me! Diana, you will spoil my shirt!’‘What, this shirt?’ she answered. And with that, she put her fingers behind the buttons, and pulled it until it ripped, and my breasts showed bare beneath it. Then she caught hold of the jacket, and tore that from me too - all the time panting as she did so, and with her limbs pressed close against my own. I staggered, and reached for the wall, then placed my arm over my face — I thought she would strike me. But when I looked at her at last I saw that her features were livid, not in fury, but in lust. She reached for my hand, and placed my fingers at the collar of her gown; and, miserable as I was, when I understood what it was that she wanted me to do, I felt my own breath quicken, and my cunt gave a kick. I pulled at the lace, heard a few stitches rip, and the sound worked on me like the tip of a whip, snapping against the haunches of a horse. I tore it from her, her gown of black and white and silver, that came from Worth’s to match my costume; and when it was wrecked and trampled on the rug, she had me kneel upon it and fuck her, until she came and came again.Then she sent me to my own room, anyway.I lay in the darkness and shook, and put my hands before my mouth to keep from weeping.

• From Pleasure Activism (2017)

  Still searching for that thing. Today I created a profile on Match.com. I made it under the “woman seeking man” category. I figure, you know, maybe if I just really connected with someone and he was cool enough, I could come out to him as trans later.26 Like after I’m pregnant. This feels like a good plan to me, since I don’t know and I am not meeting any cismen who are able or want to be my donor and/or uncle or guncle. I could just pretend like I’m a ciswoman—and of course I’m still queer and just desiring at most a friends-with-benefits arrangement, some presence in the child’s life, and no financial support for the intentional creation or rearing of the child.27 This woman-passing plan feels like my last resort within the impossible options of people who produce sperm. Such people being cismen and some transwomen. I have not yet cultivated close enough relationships with any transwomen to consider anyone as a viable sperm donor. So then the cisguys. There are cis gay men who think I’m “cute” (just like a puppy, I can only assume), who, however, claim that I don’t have the body parts that excite them for sexual activity. I’m caught between that and cis straight men who either freak out if I tell them off tops that I’m a transguy, because then rolling with me would make them gay. Which is true. Or the cis straight men who say whatever you need to hear in order to get with you. I think curating a potential donor/lover via Match.com is a good look! Also it seems like a good way to get that kind of sex. Just saying. November 2012 Padre dios, this is harder (and more humiliating) than I thought it would be. Match.com is a trip. People really love Jesus, and everyone is a “people person.” What does that even mean? I am getting a lot of messages from people but not many that I’m both interested in and attracted to. But I did go on my first date. Homeboy wasn’t quite as cute as his picture, but he was a big Outkast fan and also fancied soccer, so I don’t ask for much. But ugh. Chile, I don’t know how to play these narrow ass rules of straight engagement. We met at a restaurant, and when we were being seated at our table I friggin pulled the chair out for him. He gawked at me and said “What are you doing?,” spitting out each syllable like he had a bad taste in his mouth and an inflamed canker sore. “Oh!” I snapped to his reality and tried to make a joke out of it. I pushed the chair back to the table and awkwardly stepped back to allow him to pull the chair out for me. Pray for me.

• From Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (2014)

  The massacre was revenge for the murder of fifty-nine Jews in Hebron on August 24, 1929. Goldstein died in the attack and is revered by the Israeli far right as a martyr. His action would inspire the first wave of Muslim suicide bombing in Israel and Palestine. A collective memory of humiliation and imperial domination has also inspired a desire for a national character of strength in India. 64 When they look back in history, Hindus are divided. Some see a paradise of coexistence and a culture in which Hindu and Muslim traditions combine. But Hindu nationalists see the period of Muslim rule as a clash of civilizations, in which a militant Islam forced its culture on the oppressed Hindu majority. 65 The structural violence of empire is always resented by subject peoples and can persist long after the imperialists have left. Founded in the early 1980s, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the “Indian National Party,” an affiliate of RSS (Hedgewar’s nationalist religious party), feeds on this bitterness and enhances it. It campaigned for a militarily strong India, a nuclear arsenal (whose warheads are named after Hindu gods), and national distinctiveness. At first, however, it made no headway in the polls, but its fortunes changed dramatically in 1989, when the issue of the Babri mosque once again hit the headlines. 66 In India as in Israel, sacred geography has become emblematic of the nation’s disgrace. Here too, the spectacle of a Muslim shrine atop a ruined temple aroused huge passions, because it so graphically symbolized the Hindu collective memory of Islamic imperial dominance. In February 1989 activists resolved to build a new temple to Ram on the site of the mosque and collected donations from the poorer castes throughout India; in the smallest villages bricks for the new shrine were cast and consecrated. Not surprisingly, tensions flared between Muslims and Hindus in the north, and Rajiv Gandhi, who had tried to mediate, lost the election. The BJP, however, had made large gains at the polls, and the following year its president, L. K. Advani, began a rath yatra (“chariot pilgrimage”), a thirty-day journey from the west coast to Ayodhya, that was to culminate in the rebuilding of the Rama temple. His Toyota van was decorated to resemble Arjuna’s chariot in the last battle of the Mahabharata and was cheered by fervent crowds lining the route. 67 The pilgrimage began, significantly, at Somnath, where, legend has it, Sultan Mahmud of the Central Asian kingdom of Ghazni had slaughtered thousands of Hindus way back in the eleventh century, razing Shiva’s ancient temple to the ground and plundering its treasure.

• From My People (2022)

  Taunts, Tear Gas, and Other College MemoriesThe New Yorker NOVEMBER 13, 2015 Hearing about the indignities faced by students of color at the University of Missouri, I am taken back fifty-four years, to when Hamilton Holmes and I entered, and then matriculated, at the University of Georgia as its first two black students. The initial response of many white students to our presence was overtly racist. One night, students and others gathered outside my dormitory and shouted, “Nigger go home.” The town police threw around tear gas, ostensibly to disperse an already-thinning crowd. By the time the state troopers arrived, the protesters were long gone. The university suspended me for, they said, my own safety. (Hamilton, who lived with a black family a few blocks away, was also suspended.) As I left the dorm that night, a group of girls who had been told to change their sheets, so as not to be affected by the tear gas, formed a semicircle, and one threw a quarter at me and yelled, “Here, Charlayne, go and change my sheets.” Although “nigger” was their preferred shout-out, the students would also use other words they thought would be hurtful. They didn’t realize they were complimenting me when they yelled out “Freedom Rider.” And there were other, nonverbal incidents. Both Hamilton and I had our car tires flattened from time to time, and on at least one occasion the side of my little white Ford Falcon became a maze of knife scratches. The first semester was the worst, and things died down after that. But what we might today call “microaggressions” were still evident: The time I went to see if I could work on the school newspaper and was welcomed by the editor, but never got an assignment. Or when professors went a whole term without addressing me in class. I never reacted to any of this publicly, but I spent a lot of time, especially early on, in the university infirmary with mysterious stomach pains. My one visitor was Hamilton, who was finding it difficult to make friends. Despite all the stress, he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and went on to enroll as the first black student at Emory University School of Medicine. He became an orthopedic surgeon and, at one time, the medical director of Grady Memorial Hospital, the gargantuan public hospital in Atlanta. In 1995, he died, at the age of fifty-four. I read that they thought it was heart failure. Now that I know about PTSD, and as I cope with my own post-college problems with claustrophobia, I wonder if that didn’t have something to do with it. I still tear up when I speak of Hamilton, but have been comforted by the fact that the doors that were shut for so long to black students are now open.

• From Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (2014)

  Their response to this humiliation is instructive. The press mounted a virulent campaign exposing Bryan and his fundamentalist supporters as hopeless anachronisms. Fundamentalists had no place in modern society, argued the journalist H. L. Mencken: “They are everywhere where learning is too heavy a burden for human minds to carry, even the vague, pathetic learning on tap in the little red schoolhouses.” He mocked Dayton as a “one-horse Tennessee village” and its citizens the “gaping primates of the upland valleys.”7 Yet whenever a fundamentalist movement is attacked, either with violence or in a media campaign, it almost invariably becomes more extreme. It shows malcontents that their fear is well grounded: the secular world really is out to destroy them. Before the Scopes Trial, not even Hodge had believed that Genesis was scientifically sound in every detail, but afterward “creation science” became the rallying cry of the fundamentalist movement. Before Dayton, some leading fundamentalists still engaged in social work with people on the left; afterward, they swung to the far right, retreating altogether from the mainstream and creating their own churches, colleges, broadcasting stations, and publishing houses. They grew and grew below the mainstream cultural radar. Once they became aware of their considerable public support, in the late 1970s they would reemerge from the margins with Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority. American fundamentalism would ever after vie to be heard as a decisive voice in American politics—with notable success. It would not resort to violence, largely because American Protestants did not suffer as greatly as did, for example, the Muslims of the Middle East. Unlike the secular rulers of Egypt or Iran, the U.S. government did not confiscate their property, torture and assassinate their clergy, or cruelly dismantle their institutions. In America secular modernity was a homegrown product, which was not imposed militarily from outside but had evolved organically over time, and when they arrived on the public scene in the late 1970s, American fundamentalists could use well-established democratic channels to make their point. Although American Protestant fundamentalism was not usually an agent of violence, it was, to a degree, a response to violence: the trauma of modern warfare and the psychological assault of the aggressive disdain of the secularist establishment. Both can distort a religious tradition in ways that reverberate far beyond the community of the faithful. Nevertheless, fundamentalism in America shares with other disaffected groups the sensibility of the colonized, in its defiant self-assertion and in a determination to recover one’s own identity and culture against a powerful Other.

• From Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (2014)

  Qutb’s program distorted Islamic history, since it made no mention of Muhammad’s nonviolent policy at Hudaybiyya, the turning point of the conflict with Mecca. Humiliation, foreign occupation, and secularizing aggression had created an Islamic history of grievance. Qutb now had a paranoid vision of the past, seeing only a relentless succession of jahili enemies—pagans, Jews, Christians, Crusaders, Mongols, Communists, capitalists, colonialists, and Zionists—intent on the destruction of Islam. 57 Executed in 1966, he did not live long enough to work out the practical implications of his program. Yet unlike some of his later followers, he seems to have realized that Muslims would have to undergo a long spiritual, social, and political preparation before they were ready for armed struggle. After his death, however, the political situation in the Middle East deteriorated, and the increasing violence and consequent alienation meant that Qutb’s work would resonate with the disaffected youth, especially those Brothers who had been likewise hardened in Egyptian jails and felt that there was no time for such a ripening process. When they were released in the early 1970s, they would bring Qutb’s ideas into mainstream society and try to implement them practically. After the Six-Day War between Israel and its Arab neighbors in June 1967, the region experienced a religious revival not only in the Muslim countries but also in Israel. Zionism, we have seen, had begun as a defiantly secular movement, and the military campaigns of the Jewish state had had no religious content; their violent suppression of the Palestinian people had been the result of their secular nationalism rather than a religious imperative. Before the war, as they listened to Nasser vowing to throw them all into the sea, many Israelis had been convinced that yet another attempt would be made to exterminate them. They responded with lightning speed, achieving a spectacular victory in which they took the Golan Heights from Syria, the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, and the West Bank and the Old City of Jerusalem from Jordan. Although religion had not figured in the action, many Israelis would experience this dramatic reversal of fortune as a miracle similar to the crossing of the Red Sea. 58 Above all, the conquest of the Old City of Jerusalem, closed to Israelis since 1948, was a numinous experience. When in 1898 the Zionist ideologue Theodor Herzl had visited the Western Wall, the last relic of Herod’s temple, he had been repelled by the sight of the Jewish worshippers clinging cravenly to its stones. 59 But in June 1967 tough paratroopers with blackened faces and their atheistic officers leaned against the Wall and wept, their secular ethos momentarily transformed by sacred geography. Nationalism, as we have seen, easily segues into a quasi-religious fervor, especially in moments of heightened tension and emotion.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  For a moment we floundered together inelegantly; she let out a burst of nervous laughter, more jarring than her first thin shriek of fear.At last she gave a wriggle; there was - monstrously distinct in the sudden silence, and horribly incriminating - a kind of sucking sound; then she was free. She stood at the side of the bed, the dildo bobbing before her. One of the ladies at Diana’s side said, ‘She has a prick, after all!’ And Diana answered: ‘That prick is mine. These little sluts have stolen it!’Her voice was thick - with drunkenness, perhaps; but also, I think, with shock. I looked again at the wide and spilling box, that she was so vain and jealous of, and felt a worm of satisfaction wriggle within me.And I remembered, too, another room, a room I thought that I had carefully forgotten - a room where it was I who stood speechless at the door, while my sweetheart shivered and blushed beside her lover. And the sight of Diana, in my old place, made me smile.It was the smile, I think, which deranged her at last. ‘Maria,’ she said - for Maria was with her, too, along with Dickie and Evelyn: perhaps they had all come to the bedroom to retrieve a dirty book - ‘Maria, get Mrs Hooper. I want Nancy’s things brought here: she is leaving. And a dress for Blake. They are both going back to the gutter, where I got them from.’ Her voice was cold; as she took a step towards me, however, it grew warmer. ‘You little slut!’ she said. ‘You little trollop! You whore, you harlot, you strumpet, you bitch!’ But they were words that she had used on me a thousand times before, in lust or passion; and now, said in hate, they were curiously devoid of any sting.Beside me, however, Zena had begun to shake. As she did so, the dildo bobbed; and when Diana caught the motion she gave a roar: ‘Take that thing from your hips!’ At once, Zena fumbled with the straps; her fingers jumped so that she could barely grasp the buckles, and I stepped to help her. All the time we worked, Diana hurled abuses at her - she was a half-wit, a street-whore, a common little frigstress. The ladies at the door looked on, and laughed. One of them - it might have been Evelyn - nodded to the trunk, and called: ‘Use the strap on her, Diana!’ Diana curled her lip.‘They will strap her well enough, at the reformatory,’ she said; ‘when she returns there.’At that, Zena fell to her knees and began to cry. Diana gave a sneer, and drew her foot away so that the tears should not fall upon her sandal.

• From My Secret Garden (1973)

  INSUFFICIENCYBefore we go on to more provocative reasons for fantasy, positive reasons with which I personally identify but about which I still feel—even after putting together this book—an odd mix of excitement and anxiety, let me give you four more variations on this theme of frustration; it is one of the great and universal themes of sexual loneliness, one whose reality we can all understand. The first interview below is with forty-five-year-old Louella, a totally sexually deprived woman; the second with Irene, twenty-five, who might as well be. Next comes a letter from Annette, who was young enough—nineteen—and frantic enough to have probably done something about her frustration by now. I think the violence and alienation of some of the themes these women explore is a measure of how much the human being will rage against sexual famine. The well-fed diner will idly choose between this dessert and that; the starving person will dream of “eating a horse.” LouellaPerhaps the basis for my fantasy about my stepson is the humiliation I feel because my husband only married me to be a housekeeper and in order to look after his son. My husband is sexually impotent, but the boy is blatantly sexual. Sometimes I feel I cannot tear my eyes away from the bulge in the boy’s trousers. I know what’s there, it seems to run the full length of his belly. In my fantasy I call for him to get up out of bed, I know he isn’t sleeping. I listen outside the bedroom door and know he is lying there playing with himself. I am about to call him again but another boy, a school friend, comes to call and I let them go off by themselves because I know what they are up to.

• From My Secret Garden (1973)

  ROOM NUMBER FIVE: DOMINATION, OR, “HOW HUMILIATING! THANK YOU.”I’d put this room next to Rape and Masochism. Not for the convenience of the clients—a woman is faithful to her favorites, and there’d be very little running about from room to room—but for the economy of the management: the costumes and props are interchangeable among the three. There, however, the sharing stops; force may be applied in all three rooms simultaneously—but to different degrees and in different directions, and the precise emotions being aroused and released will differ dramatically. Or “deliriously,” as the clients themselves might say. Whatever their reasons for wanting it, the domination fantasists long to feel low. They relish being debased and reduced by whatever means to a state of abject humiliation. How they get down there doesn’t matter: Poppy (below) doesn’t even bother to say how she is “made” to perform her humiliating tasks; Nathalie may get spanked into submission, but spanking is such an obvious childhood symbol of domination that we don’t need Nathalie to tell us that it isn’t the spanking itself that turns her on. It’s the state to which that humiliating act reduces her that matters. And the more exactly specified those depths can be, the better. Heather doesn’t just long to be knocked off the pristine pedestal her lover has put her on, she wants to be flat on her ass, in the lowest, most purely sexual, position; Nathalie doesn’t stop at yearning to be reduced to that bane of proud and liberated women, an object—she wants it all the way, to be a thoroughly, exclusively sexual object at that. As women move more strongly into their recently won sexual freedom, and leave their historic role of second (and “silent”) sex behind, I predict that they will, ironically, get into domination fantasies more and more. But the move will be in two different directions. First, the new reality of being man’s equal makes them unconsciously nervous about their identity as women, and so throws them back into longing for the traditional, safe, and “known” role vis-à-vis the dominating man; but second, they will want to explore, and signal even to themselves, their new liberated age by putting themselves into the dominant position of the sexual brute. Whether as brute or brutalized, in fantasy at least the centuries of female submission are about to be avenged. But what it all comes back to in the end is that if you’re into the sadomasochistic thing it really doesn’t matter, of course, which end of the stick (or whip!) you’re on; turnabout can be lovely play, and as long as somebody is being debased, and you’re in on it, it’s great.

• From Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (2014)

  Student protests became more aggressive as Sadat drew closer to the West and became more autocratic. In 1978 he issued the Law of Shame: any deviation in thought, word, or deed from the establishment was to be punished with loss of civil rights and confiscation of passports and property. Citizens were forbidden to join any group, take part in any broadcast, or publish anything that would threaten “national unity or social peace.” Even a casual remark, made in the privacy of one’s own home, would not go unpunished.30 In response to government oppression, at the University of Mina students started vandalizing Christian churches—associated with Western imperialism—and attacking those who wore Western dress. Sadat closed down the jamaat, but suppression nearly always makes such movements more extreme, and some students joined a clandestine movement dedicated to armed jihad. Khaled Islambouli had studied at the University of Mina and joined one of these cells. Shortly before his assassination, Sadat had rounded up over fifteen hundred opposition figures in September 1981, including cabinet ministers, politicians, intellectuals, journalists, and ulema as well as Islamists; one of the latter was Khaled’s brother Muhammad.31 The ideology of Sadat’s murderers had been shaped by Abd al-Salam Faraj, spiritual guide of the Jihad Network, who was executed with Khaled in 1982. His treatise, The Neglected Duty, had been circulated privately among members of the organization and was published after the assassination. This plodding, graceless, and ill-informed document also shows how misguided the secularizing reformers had been to deprive the people of adequate religious guidance. Faraj was another freelancer: he had graduated in electrical engineering and had no expertise in Islamic law. But it seems that by the 1980s, the maverick ideas that he was expressing had spread, unchecked by the sidelined ulema, until they were widely accepted in society. The “neglected duty” of the title was aggressive jihad. Muslims, Faraj argued, had been convinced by feeble-minded apologists that fighting was permissible only in self-defense. Hence Muslims were living in subjection and humiliation and could recover their dignity only by resorting to arms. Sadat was no better than an infidel because he ruled by the “laws of unbelief” imposed on the ummah by the colonialists.32 Despite their apparent orthodoxy, Sadat and his government were a pack of apostates who deserved to die. Faraj cited Ibn Taymiyyah’s fatwa against the Mongol rulers, who, just like Sadat, had been Muslims only in name. In the time of al-Shafii, Muslims had feared only an external attack; now infidels were actually ruling the ummah. In order to create a truly Islamic state, therefore, jihad was fard ayn, the duty of every able-bodied Muslim.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  This ingenuous defense merely excited laughter; I was assured I'd not been alone, that they were certain I had accomplices to whom, as I fled, I had transferred the stolen funds. Then the malicious Dubois, who knew of the brand which to my misfortune Rodin had burned upon my flesh long ago, in one instant Dubois put all sympathy to rout. "Monsieur," said she to the officer, "so many mistakes are committed every day in affairs of this sort that you will forgive me for the idea that occurs to me: if this girl is guilty of the atrocity she is accused of it is surely not her first; the character required to execute crimes of this variety is not attained in a night: and so I beg you to examine this girl, Monsieur... were you to find, by chance, something upon her wretched body... but if nothing denounces her, allow me to defend and protect her." The officer agreed to the verification... it was about to be carried out... "One moment, Monsieur," said I, "stay; this search is to no purpose; Madame knows full well I bear the frightful mark; she also knows very well what misfortune caused it to be put on me: this subterfuge of hers is the crowning horror which will, together with all the rest, be revealed at Themis' own temple. Lead me away, Messieurs: here are my hands, load them with chains; only Crime blushes to carry them, stricken Virtue is made to groan thereby, but is not terrified." "Truth to tell," quoth Dubois, "I'd never have dreamt my idea would have such success; but as this creature repays my kindness by insidious inculpations, I am willing to return with her if you deem it necessary." "There's no need whatsoever to do so, Madame la Baronne," rejoined the officer, "this girl is our quarry: her avowals, the mark branded on her body, it all condemns her; we need no one else, and we beg your pardon a thousand times over for having caused you this protracted inconvenience." I was handcuffed immediately, flung upon the crupper of one of the constables' mounts, and Dubois went off, not before she had completed her insults by giving a few crowns to my guards, which generously bestowed silver was to aid me during my melancholy sojourn while awaiting trial. O Virtue! I cried when I perceived myself brought to this dreadful humiliation; couldst thou suffer a more penetrating outrage? Were it possible that Crime might dare affront thee and vanquish thee with so much insolence and impunity!

• From My Secret Garden (1973)

  ME: My legs hurt, my arms ache, my crotch is splitting. Please! HIM: A little pain is good for you. ME: (More obscenities) HIM: Honey, stop that. ME: (More obscenities) He reaches out and pinches the inside of both my thighs, very hard. HIM: You will be quiet now, darling, please. ME: Yes. (Crying more from pain and rage) He then leaves the room for what seems like hours, because of the strain on my arms and legs. When he returns he is nude and he has an enormous erection, which makes me whimper in anticipated pain. He doesn’t touch me. He kneels at the foot of the bed, gazing at my exposed vulnerable pubic area. I am utterly mortified, because I have no control now. I can’t shield myself or put my legs together or roll over. My whole crotch is so exposed and open to his eyes and mouth and/or penis. I’m totally at his mercy. I keep saying, “What are you going to do to me?” and he just sits there. Then the fantasy takes one of several courses. Sometimes he loves me all over with his mouth, until I beg him to enter me. Sometimes he enters me without foreplay and seemingly just takes me as if I’m nothing. Sometimes he enters my mouth, from above, which I hate because of the control he has and the gagging depth he can achieve. (In real life, I love performing fellatio, but only when I’m above him, so I can keep it shallow.) Whatever he does, the fantasy ends with him releasing me and hugging me and massaging my sore muscles and my sobbing with relief and thanking him—not for letting me go, but for tying me up!

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  Greatly humiliated by the adventure and firmly resolved, whatever might happen to me, not to expose myself a third time, I returned to where I was lodging. I announced my intentions to Desroches, paid her, and heaped maledictions upon the criminal capable of so cruelly exploiting my misery. But my imprecations, far from drawing the wrath of God down upon him, only added to his good fortune; and a week later I learned this signal libertine had just obtained a general trusteeship from the Government, which would augment his revenues by more than five hundred thousand pounds per annum. I was absorbed in the reflections such unexpected inconsistencies of fate inevitably give rise to, when a momentary ray of hope seemed to shine in my eyes. Desroches came to tell me one day that she had finally located a house into which I could be received with pleasure provided my comportment remained of the best. "Great Heaven, Madame," I cried, transported, throwing myself into her arms, "that condition is the one I would stipulate myself Ä you may imagine how happy I am to accept it." The man I was to serve was a famous Parisian usurer who had become rich, not only by lending money upon collateral, but even by stealing from the public every time he thought he could do so in safety. He lived in the rue Quincampoix, had a third-story flat, and shared it with a creature of fifty years he called his wife and who was at least as wicked as he. "Therese," this miser said to me (such was the name I had taken in order to hide my own), "Therese, the primary virtue in this house is probity; if ever you make off with the tenth part of a penny, I'll have you hanged, my child, d'ye see. The modest ease my wife and I enjoy is the fruit of our immense labors, and of our perfect sobriety.... Do you eat much, little one?" "A few ounces of bread each day, Monsieur," I replied, "water, and a little soup when I am lucky enough to get it."

• From Sexual Politics (1970)

  My “feminist classic” had become a radical text, dubious, “far out,” a risky proposition. This had an amusing as well as an irritating side as one trade publisher or university press after another considered putting the book back into print and then backed off. Parts of the text were routinely plagiarized for class use without permission; then with the new rules at the copy houses, portions were duly reprinted with permission, but you still couldn’t get the whole book. Meanwhile, readers who once couldn’t believe that Sexual Politics was actually out of print began to realize the book was now unobtainable and grew incensed. One might account for this quiet type of censorship (I was surely not the only one to feel it) through “backlash” or the false rationale of “the market-place”—as the vast corporate conglomerates that control American publishing explain it to us as they systematically eliminate thought-provoking materials from public view. But for me, the long blackout was a grievous period. I had recovered all my copyrights and wanted several other titles back in print as well. Everything I had ever written had vanished from the world except for The Politics of Cruelty. These were years of a curious spectral experience of having lived beyond my time. Was there any point in writing new books when the earlier ones were already dead? To continue to write was made harder and more uncertain than it need to have been. Trying to get back into print was tedious, humiliating, and time consuming, sapping the energy for new writing. Life was on hold for months and then years while one or another editor failed to call back. I held out not only for Sexual Politics, my doctoral thesis and first book, but also for the handful of titles that were my life’s work. Then one day Will Regier, prompted by Kim Grossmann, of the University of Illinois Press called up out of the blue and offered to reprint the four titles in this series: Sexual Politics, Sita, Flying and The Loony Bin Trip. The heavens opened.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  She gently took hold of my hand, and my name appeared at the bottom of the second paper. Wanda looked once more at the two documents, and then locked them in the desk which stood at the head of the ottoman. “Now then, give me your passport and money.” I took out my wallet and handed it to her. She inspected it, nodded, and put it with other things while in a sweet drunkenness I kneeled before her leaning my head against her breast. Suddenly she thrusts me away with her foot, leaps up, and pulls the bell-rope. In answer to its sound three young, slender negresses enter; they are as if carved of ebony, and are dressed from head to foot in red satin; each one has a rope in her hand. Suddenly I realize my position, and am about to rise. Wanda stands proudly erect, her cold beautiful face with its sombre brows and contemptous eyes is turned toward me. She stands before me as mistress, commanding, gives a sign with her hand, and before I really know what has happened to me the negresses have dragged me to the ground, and have tied me hand and foot. As in the case of one about to be executed my arms are bound behind my back, so that I can scarcely move. “Give me the whip, Haydée,” commands Wanda, with unearthly calm. The negress hands it to her mistress, kneeling. “And now take off my heavy furs,” she continues, “they impede me.” The negress obeyed. “The jacket there!” Wanda commanded. Haydée quickly brought her the kazabaika, set with ermine, which lay on the bed, and Wanda slipped into it with two inimitably graceful movements. “Now tie him to the pillar here!” The negresses lifted me up, and twisting a heavy rope around my body, tied me standing against one of the massive pillars which supported the top of the wide Italian bed. Then they suddenly disappeared, as if the earth had swallowed them. Wanda swiftly approached me. Her white satin dress flowed behind her in a long train, like silver, like moonlight; her hair flared like flames against the white fur of her jacket. Now she stood in front of me with her left hand firmly planted on her hips, in her right hand she held the whip. She uttered an abrupt laugh. “Now play has come to an end between us,” she said with heartless coldness. “Now we will begin in dead earnest. You fool, I laugh at you and despise you; you who in your insane infatuation have given yourself as a plaything to me, the frivolous and capricious woman. You are no longer the man I love, but my slave, at my mercy even unto life and death. “You shall know me!