Pride

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

  But since it was obvious that they would not have the time personally t participate in the constitution-making work, I suggested that two persons enjoying their confidence should be a appointed along with me on the Constitution Committee, and that the number of its personnel should be limited to and the late Deshabandhu, who suggested the names of Sjts. Kelkar and I.B. Sen respectively as their proxies. The Constitution Committee could not even once come together, but we were able to consult with each other by correspondence, and in the end presented a unanimous report. I regard this constitution with a certain measure of pride. I hold that, if we could fully work out this constitution, the mere fact of working it out would bring us Swaraj. With the assumption of this responsibility I may be said to have made my real entrance into the Congress politics. 165THE BIRTH OF KHADII do not remember to have seen a handloom or a spinning wheel when in 1908 I described it in Hind Swaraj as the panacea for the growing pauperism of India. In that book I took it as understood that anything that helped India to get rid of the grinding poverty of her masses would in the same process also establish Swaraj. Even in 1915, when I returned to India from South Africa, I had not actually seen a spinning wheel. When the Satyagraha Ashram was founded at Sabar- mati, we introduced a few handlooms there. But no sooner had we done this than we found ourselves up against a difficulty. All of us belonged either to the lib- eral professions or to business; not one of us was an artisan. We needed a weaving expert to teach us to weave before we could work the looms. One was at last procured from Palanpur, but Maganlal Gandhi was not to be easily baffled. Possessed of a natural talent for mechanics, he was able fully to master the art be- fore long, and one after another several new weavers were trained up in the Ashram. The object that we set before ourselves was to be able to clothe ourselves entirely in cloth manufactured by our own hands. We therefore forthwith discarded the use of mill-woven cloth, and all the members of the Ashram resolved to wear hand-woven cloth made from Indian yarn only. The adoption of this practice brought us a world of experience. It enabled us to know, from direct contact, the conditions of life among the weavers, the extent of their production, the handicaps in the way of their obtaining their yarn supply, the way in which they were being made victims of fraud, and, lastly, their ever growing indebtedness. We were not in a position immediately to manufacture all the cloth for our needs. The alternative therefore was to get our cloth supply from handloom weavers. But ready-made cloth from Indian mill-yarn was not easily obtainable either from the cloth- dealers or from the weavers themselves.

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  “Califia here expresses the importance of homosexual sado-masochist literature,” wrote the trial judge, “in furthering the principles and values that underlie freedom of expression as outlined in Irwin Toy v. Quebec, supra. [That is, seeking and attaining truth, participating in social and political decision-making, and cultivating the diversity of forms of individual self-fulfillment and human flourishing in a tolerant or welcoming environment.] She further expresses a dominant theme prevalent in homosexual art and literature, and one that was attested to by many of the plaintiffs’ witnesses, that is, the need for self-affirmation and empowerment through expression.” The Little Sister’s case went all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada. While we were not successful in striking down the Customs legislation that allowed Customs officers to ban books and other expressive material at the border, we were successful in having the Supreme Court of Canada condemn the discriminatory, arbitrary, and irrational decision-making that was so prevalent prior to the Little Sister’s case. The Supreme Court of Canada said this: There was ample evidence to support the trial judge’s conclusion that the adverse treatment meted out by Canada Customs to the appellants and through them to Vancouver’s gay and lesbian community violated the appellants’ legitimate sense of self-worth and human dignity. The Customs treatment was high-handed and dismissive of the appellants’ right to receive lawful expressive material which they had every right to import. When Customs officials prohibit and thereby censor lawful gay and lesbian erotica, they are making a statement about gay and lesbian culture, and the statement was reasonably interpreted by the appellants as demeaning gay and lesbian values. The message was that their concerns were less worthy of attention and respect than those of their heterosexual counterparts. While here it is the interests of the gay and lesbian community that were targeted, other vulnerable groups may similarly be at risk from overzealous censorship. Little Sister’s was targeted because it was considered “different.” On a more general level, it seems to me fundamentally unacceptable that expression which is free within the country can become stigmatized and harassed by government officials simply because it crosses an international boundary, and is thereby brought within the bailiwick of the Customs department. The appellants’ constitutional right to receive perfectly lawful gay and lesbian erotica should not be diminished by the fact their suppliers are, for the most part, located in the United States. Their freedom of expression does not stop at the border. Whereas prior to the case, virtually every international shipment of books that was ordered by Little Sister’s was opened and inspected and many books detained or prohibited entry, I can happily report that today Customs does not even inspect, let alone detain or ban, any book that Little Sister’s has imported into Canada.1 That is a triumph for Little Sister’s; it is a triumph for the gay and lesbian community; it is a triumph for Canadians who care about freedom of expression and especially of sexual expression.

• From Under the Banner of Heaven (2003)

  Ervil also fancied himself a brilliant writer and scriptorian. According to Rena Chynoweth—who would become his thirteenth wife in 1975 and, two years later, pull the trigger of the gun that killed Rulon Allred * —Ervil would write scripture obsessively, in marathon sessions that might last for a week or more. “He would go for days without shaving or bathing, putting in twenty hours a day,” she recalled, sustaining himself “on continuous cups of coffee. When he sweated, that was all you could smell coming out of his pores—coffee.” Both Ervil and Joel were imbued with exceptional charisma—and both claimed to be the “one mighty and strong.” It was therefore inevitable, perhaps, that the LeBaron brothers would eventually clash. The terminal rupture began in November 1969, when Joel, the elder brother and nominal presiding prophet, booted Ervil out of the sect for insubordination. Soon thereafter Ervil had a revelation in which God explained that Joel—by all accounts an uncommonly benevolent man, routinely described by his followers as “saintlike”—had become an obstacle to His work and needed to be removed. On August 20, 1972, in the polygamist settlement of Los Molinos, which Joel had established eight years earlier on the Baja Peninsula, he was shot in the throat and head, fatally, by a member of the group loyal to Ervil. * After he ordered the death of Joel, Ervil initiated a divinely inspired series of murders, resulting in the killing of at least five additional people through 1975 and the wounding of more than fifteen others. In March 1976 he was arrested for these crimes and held in a Mexican jail, but Ervil’s followers on the outside continued to do his bidding. Operating out of a post office box in southern California, they distributed pamphlets denouncing taxes, welfare, gun control, and rival polygamists. When Jimmy Carter ran for president in 1976, Ervil’s subordinates even issued a decree threatening the candidate with death for his liberal views. Less than a year after he was incarcerated, Ervil was let out of jail. The official explanation was a “lack of evidence,” although everyone assumed that well-placed bribes had more to do with it. Within a few months of his release, he had a disobedient daughter killed, and shortly after that arranged the murder of Rulon Allred, whose followers Ervil coveted and hoped to convert to his own group, the Church of the Lamb of God.

• From Under the Banner of Heaven (2003)

  NINETEEN SCAPEGOATS Brigham Young saved his Church when Joseph was lynched, brought it to the Missouri, took it to Great Salt Lake, gave it safety, wealth and power. The state of Utah is his monument. . . . He was a great man, great in whatever was needful for Israel. Great in understanding, in will and fortitude and resolution, in finding the means which others could not find. Great in remembering also, in the command and management of men, the opposition and hostility and hate. A great leader, a great diplomat, a great administrator, and at need a great liar and a great scoundrel. BERNARD DEVOTO, THE YEAR OF DECISION “Look! Over here!” shouts six-year-old Randy Bateman. A pint-size tornado with a pertinacious blond cowlick, he kneels in the dirt to prop up a rock with one tiny hand while gesticulating furiously with the other. “Come see!” he yells again, with even greater urgency. “A scorpion hole!” A minute later he’s deftly plucked the sinister-looking arachnid from its lair and placed it in an empty Gatorade bottle. Then he scurries up the trail in a burst of dust to show off the prize to his father, DeLoy Bateman, the Colorado City teacher who has apostatized from the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. As the crow flies, Colorado City is less than fifty miles from the site of the Mountain Meadows massacre. William Bateman—the Mormon who approached the Fancher party under a white flag at the Mountain Meadow in order to arrange the false truce that persuaded the emigrants to surrender their weapons and walk into John D. Lee’s homicidal trap—was DeLoy Bateman’s great-great-great- uncle. * Although DeLoy isn’t proud of his ancestor’s notorious role in the massacre,

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  This was in 1920. They returned, Clifford and Constance, to his home, Wragby Hall, the family "seat." His father had died, Clifford was now a baronet, Sir Clifford, and Constance was Lady Chatterley. They came to start housekeeping and married life in the rather forlorn home of the Chatterleys on a rather inadequate income. Clifford had a sister, but she had departed. Otherwise there were no near relatives. The elder brother was dead in the war. Crippled for ever, knowing he could never have any children, Clifford came home to the smoky Midlands to keep the Chatterley name alive while he could. He was not really downcast. He could wheel himself about in a wheeled chair, and he had a bath-chair with a small motor attachment, so he could drive himself slowly round the garden and into the fine melancholy park, of which he was really so proud, though he pretended to be flippant about it. Having suffered so much, the capacity for suffering had to some extent left him. He remained strange and bright and cheerful, almost, one might say, chirpy, with his ruddy, healthy-looking face, and his pale-blue, challenging bright eyes. His shoulders were broad and strong, his hands were very strong. He was expensively dressed, and wore handsome neckties from Bond Street. Yet still in his face one saw the watchful look, the slight vacancy of a cripple. He had so very nearly lost his life, that what remained was wonderfully precious to him. It was obvious in the anxious brightness of his eyes, how proud he was, after the great shock, of being alive. But he had been so much hurt that something inside him had perished, some of his feelings had gone. There was a blank of insentience. Constance, his wife, was a ruddy, country-looking girl with soft brown hair and sturdy body, and slow movements, full of unusual energy. She had big, wondering eyes, and a soft mild voice, and seemed just to have come from her native village. It was not so at all. Her father was the once well-known R. A., old Sir Malcolm Reid. Her mother had been one of the cultivated Fabians in the palmy, rather pre-Raphaelite days. Between artists and cultured socialists, Constance and her sister Hilda had what might be called an aesthetically unconventional upbringing. They had been taken to Paris and Florence and Rome to breathe in art, and they had been taken also in the other direction, to the Hague and Berlin, to great Socialist conventions, where the speakers spoke in every civilised tongue, and no one was abashed. The two girls, therefore, were from an early age not the least daunted by either art or ideal politics. It was their natural atmosphere. They were at once cosmopolitan and provincial, with the cosmopolitan provincialism of art that goes with pure social ideals.

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  This was in 1920. They returned, Clifford and Constance, to his home, Wragby Hall, the family "seat." His father had died, Clifford was now a baronet, Sir Clifford, and Constance was Lady Chatterley. They came to start housekeeping and married life in the rather forlorn home of the Chatterleys on a rather inadequate income. Clifford had a sister, but she had departed. Otherwise there were no near relatives. The elder brother was dead in the war. Crippled for ever, knowing he could never have any children, Clifford came home to the smoky Midlands to keep the Chatterley name alive while he could. He was not really downcast. He could wheel himself about in a wheeled chair, and he had a bath-chair with a small motor attachment, so he could drive himself slowly round the garden and into the fine melancholy park, of which he was really so proud, though he pretended to be flippant about it. Having suffered so much, the capacity for suffering had to some extent left him. He remained strange and bright and cheerful, almost, one might say, chirpy, with his ruddy, healthy-looking face, and his pale-blue, challenging bright eyes. His shoulders were broad and strong, his hands were very strong. He was expensively dressed, and wore handsome neckties from Bond Street. Yet still in his face one saw the watchful look, the slight vacancy of a cripple. He had so very nearly lost his life, that what remained was wonderfully precious to him. It was obvious in the anxious brightness of his eyes, how proud he was, after the great shock, of being alive. But he had been so much hurt that something inside him had perished, some of his feelings had gone. There was a blank of insentience. Constance, his wife, was a ruddy, country-looking girl with soft brown hair and sturdy body, and slow movements, full of unusual energy. She had big, wondering eyes, and a soft mild voice, and seemed just to have come from her native village. It was not so at all. Her father was the once well-known R. A., old Sir Malcolm Reid. Her mother had been one of the cultivated Fabians in the palmy, rather pre-Raphaelite days. Between artists and cultured socialists, Constance and her sister Hilda had what might be called an aesthetically unconventional upbringing. They had been taken to Paris and Florence and Rome to breathe in art, and they had been taken also in the other direction, to the Hague and Berlin, to great Socialist conventions, where the speakers spoke in every civilised tongue, and no one was abashed. The two girls, therefore, were from an early age not the least daunted by either art or ideal politics. It was their natural atmosphere. They were at once cosmopolitan and provincial, with the cosmopolitan provincialism of art that goes with pure social ideals.

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

  So far as I can recollect, I have already said that I never resorted to untruth in my profession, and that a large part of my legal practice was in the interest of public work, for which I charged nothing beyond out- of-pocket expenses, and these too I sometimes met myself. I had thought that in saying this I had said all that was necessary as regards my legal practice. But friends want me to do more. They seem to think that, if I described however slightly, some of the occasions when I refused to swerve from the truth, the legal profession might profit by it. As a student I had heard that the lawyer’s profession was a liar’s profession. But this did not influence me, as I had no intention of earning either position or money by lying. My principle was put to the test many a time in South Africa. Often I knew that my opponents had tutored their witnesses, and if I only encouraged my client or his witnesses to lie, we could win the case. But I always resisted the temptation. I remember only one occasion when, after having won a case, I suspected that my client had deceived me. In my heart of hearts I always wished that I should win only if my client’s case was right. In fixing my fees I do not recall ever having made them conditional on my winning the case. Whether my client won or lost, I expected nothing more nor less than my fees. I warned every new client at the outset that he should not expect me to take up a false case or to coach the witnesses, with the result that I built up such a reputation that no false cases used to come to me. Indeed some of my clients would keep their clean cases for me, and take the doubtful ones elsewhere. There was one case which proved a severe trial. It was brought to me by one of my best clients. It was a case of highly complicated accounts and had been a prolonged one. It had been heard in parts before several courts. Ultimately the book-keeping portion of it was entrusted by the court to the arbitration of some qualified accountants. The award was entirely in favour of my client, but the arbitrators had inadvertently committed an error in calculation which, however small, was serious, inasmuch as an entry which ought to have been on the debit side was made on the credit side. The opponents had opposed the award on other grounds. I was junior counsel for my client. When the senior counsel became aware of the error, he was of opinion that our client was not bound to admit it. He was clearly of opinion that no counsel was bound to admit anything that went against his client’s interest. I said we ought to admit the error.

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  He slept in a pile of dirty socks and soiled jockstraps, souvenirs of the men he adored, sometimes acquired without their permission. In winter, for warmth, he pulled a leather hide over this nest and its virile odors. When he woke up, he ran three miles. His spartan breakfast was part of a careful diet supplemented with a bewildering rainbow of vitamins and minerals. Every other afternoon, he lifted weights. His body was well defined and hard, which pleased him, but not because he was narcissistic. It was the value others placed on his physique that gave him pleasure. The rest of each day, Monday through Friday, he worked diligently at his chosen profession. It brought him a comfortable income but placed no demands on his heart—or his evenings and weekends. It was the rest of his time that was important, the time when he could prowl and sniff for the men who made him hungry, carefully laying the plans that would allow him to pounce and feast. That was when he became the spoiler. When he went out, he always wore the same set of leathers. These carefully tailored black skins had cost him several times more than some men pay for an entire wardrobe of tanned cowhide. He wore a very tight, short-sleeved, black-leather shirt that laced up the front. This supple, buttery-soft garment clung to him, moved with him as if it were his by birth. He was fair-skinned, but very hirsute, so the black fur on his barrel chest sprang up around the laces, and the thick, curly hair on his biceps and forearms made it hard to tell where the sleeves ended and his bare arm began. He wore pants (not chaps) that fit snug across the ass, but were not tight enough in the crotch to mimic a hard-on if he was not really erect. His belt was a plain strap of leather, innocent of studs, well oiled and as flexible as a whore’s tongue, with a massive silver (not chrome, not aluminum) buckle. No keys hung from his belt. He did not wear a cock ring or a wrist watch. He had no epaulets to hang a chain from since he did not own a leather jacket. A cute clone in Adidas and a Daddy’s Boy T-shirt who saw him leaving the bar one night asked, trying to pick him up, “Did you forget your jacket?” “No. I don’t have a jacket.” Daddy’s Boy thought, ‘Thank God, he doesn’t take all this leather drag seriously, he’s not going to get me home and do something ungodly,’ and decided to cruise in earnest. “You should. You’d look hot in one.” The spoiler gave his admirer a puzzled frown. “But I don’t own a motorcycle,” he explained.

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  He began to read again his technical works on the coal-mining industry, he studied the Government reports, and he read with care the latest things on mining and the chemistry of coal and of shale which were written in German. Of course the most valuable discoveries were kept secret as far as possible. But once you started a sort of research in the field of coal-mining, a study of methods and means, a study of by-products and the chemical possibilities of coal, it was astounding, the ingenuity and the almost uncanny cleverness of the modern technical mind, as if really the devil himself had lent fiend's wits to the technical scientists of industry. It was far more interesting than art, than literature, poor emotional half-witted stuff, was this technical science of industry. In this field, men were like gods, or demons, inspired to discoveries, and fighting to carry them out. In this activity, men were beyond any mental age calculable. But Clifford knew that when it did come to the emotional and human life, these self-made men were of a mental age of about thirteen, feeble boys. The discrepancy was enormous and appalling. But let that be. Let man slide down to general idiocy in the emotional and "human" mind, Clifford did not care. Let all that go hang. He was interested in the technicalities of modern coal-mining, and in pulling Tevershall out of the hole. He went down to the pit day after day, he studied, he put the general manager, and the overhead manager, and the underground manager, and the engineers through a mill they had never dreamed of. Power! He felt a new sense of power flowing through him: power over all these men, over the hundreds and hundreds of colliers. He was finding out: and he was getting things into his grip. And he seemed verily to be reborn. _Now_ life came into him! He had been gradually dying, with Connie, in the isolated private life of the artist and the conscious being. Now let all that go. Let it sleep. He simply felt life rush into him out of the coal, out of the pit. The very stale air of the colliery was better than oxygen to him. It gave him a sense of power, power. He was doing something: and he was _going_ to do something. He was going to win, to win: not as he had won with his stories, mere publicity, amid a whole sapping of energy and malice. But a man's victory. At first he thought the solution lay in electricity: convert the coal into electric power. Then a new idea came. The Germans invented a new locomotive engine with a self-feeder, that did not need a fireman. And it was to be fed with a new fuel, that burnt in small quantities at a great heat, under peculiar conditions.

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

  One would expect a careful observance of the rules of sanitation and hygiene in a place which is regarded as holy. The authors of the Smritis, as I knew even then, have laid the greatest emphasis on cleanliness both inward and outward. 53TWO PASSIONSHardly ever have I known anybody to cherish such loyalty as I did to the British Constitution. I can see now that my love of truth was at the root of this loyalty. It has never been possible for me to simulate loyalty or, for that matter, any other virtue. The national Anthem used to be sung at every meeting that I attended in Natal. I was unaware of the defects in British rule, but I thought that it was on the whole acceptable. In those days I believed that British rule was on the whole beneficial to the ruled. The colour prejudice that I saw in South Africa was, I thought, quite contrary to British traditions, and I believed that it was only temporary and local. I therefore vied with Englishmen in loyalty to the throne. With careful perseverance I learnt the tune of the ‘national anthem’ and joined in the singing whenever it was sung. Whenever there was an occasion for the expression of loyalty without fuss or ostentation, I readily took part in it. Never in my life did I exploit this loyalty, never did I seek to gain a selfish end by its means. It was for me more in the nature of an obligation, and I rendered it without expecting a reward. Preparations were going on for the celebration of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee when I reached India. I was invited to join the committee appointed for the purpose in Rajkot. I accepted the offer, but had a suspicion that the celebrations would be largely a matter of show. I discovered much humbug about them and was considerably pained. I began to ask myself whether I should remain on the committee or not, but ultimately decided to rest content with doing my part of the business. One of the proposals was to plant trees. I saw that many did it merely for show and for pleasing the officials. I tried to plead with them that tree-planting was not compulsory, but merely a suggestion. It should be done seriously or not at all. I have an impression that they laughed at my ideas. I remember that I was in earnest when I planted the tree allotted to me and that I carefully watered and tended it. I likewise taught the National Anthem to the children of my family. I recollect having taught it to students of the local Training College, but I forget whether it was on the occasion of the jubilee or of King Edward VII’s coronation as Emperor of India. Later on the text began to jar on me. As my conception of ahimsa went on maturing, I became more vigilant about my thought and speech.

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

  But I interfered and requested the Magistrate not to postpone the case, as I wanted to plead guilty to having disobeyed the order to leave Champaran and read a brief statement as follows: ‘With the permission of the Court I would like to make a brief statement showing why I have taken the very serious step of seemingly disobeying the order passed under section 144 of Cr. P.C. In my humble opinion it is a question of difference of opinion between the Local Administration and myself. I have entered the country with motives of rendering humanitarian and national service. I have done so in response to a pressing invitation to come and help the ryots. Who urge they are not being fairly treated by the indigo planters. I could not render any help without studying the problem. I have, therefore, come to study it with the assistance, if possible, of the Administration and the planters. I have no other motive, and cannot believe that my coming can in any way disturb public peace and cause loss of life. I claim to have considerable experience in such matters. The Administration, however, have thought differently. I fully appreciate their difficulty, and I admit too that they can only proceed upon information they received. As a law-abiding citizen my first instinct would be, as it was, to obey the order served upon me. But I could not do so without doing violence to my sense of duty to those for whom I have come. I feel that I could just now serve them only by remaining in their midst. I could not, therefore, voluntarily retire. Amid this conflict of duties I could only throw the responsibility of removing me from them on the Administration. I am fully conscious of the fact that a person, holding, in the public life of India, a position such as I do, has to be most careful in setting an example. It is my firm belief that in the complex constitution under which we are living, the only safe and honourable course for a self- respecting man is, in the circumstances such as face me, to do what I have decided to do, that is, to submit without protest to the penalty of disobedience. ‘I venture to make this statement not in any way in extenuation of the penalty to be awarded against me, but to show that I have disregarded the order served upon me not for want of respect for lawful authority, but in obedience to the higher law of our being, the voice of conscience.’ There was now no occasion to postpone the hearing, but as both the Magistrate and the Government pleader had been taken by surprise, the Migistrate postponed judgment. Meanwhile I had wired full details to the Viceroy, to Patna friends, as also to Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya and others.

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  Until all deviants are no longer hounded, there will not be such a thing as vanilla sex, if by that you mean a sexuality free of compulsion. And the closest you will be able to come to sexual freedom of choice will be in the territories of the erotic minorities, which you must struggle hard to locate and gain admission to, which you must work hard to maintain a membership in, and which takes even more effort if you want to expand the little bit of territory your community has. If you don’t believe we choose to do S/M, you aren’t using the term “consent” in any meaningful way, but rather as a synonym for “mature,” “socially acceptable,” and “politically correct.” What we choose to do with our freedom may appall you, but it is none of your business. If you are prepared to do anything at all to compel us to make other choices, or even make it more difficult for us to wear our leather in public, buy S/M equipment and literature, and meet one another, are you really one of the good guys? Or just another vice cop without a badge? When attempts are made to keep people from reading about S/M or hearing us speak out, or even associating with us, it isn’t knowledge about S/M that is being banned or controlled. It is knowledge of itself that the supposedly egalitarian, democratic, vanilla majority fears. If someone believes that there is nothing wrong with the object of their desire, and yet is willing to repeatedly postpone obtaining it, to sacrifice it, to do without it, or trade it for a romance or a better job or a good reputation, they are bound to be angry when we insist on having our deviant desire, without guilt, apologies, or explanations. Some people cannot be trusted with a helpless body. You know who you are. Some people don’t choose to take responsibility for the pain they inflict on others. Some people think it’s kinder to ignore a need they don’t understand, to starve someone in the name of decency or equality or love. I don’t believe in an omnipotent, omniscient God, because that would make the world a truly horrible place, beyond human redemption. But if you’d feel safer spending a night with one of them than you would with me or some other macho slut, I’ll remember you in my prayers. Jessie I wandered around the huge loft, dodging elbows and carelessly held cigarettes. Small groups of women sprawled in chairs, doing more laughing than talking, unaware of how raucous they had become. “What was this, a benefit or something?” I heard someone ask behind me. No one answered her.

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  Macho sluts are supposedly a contradiction in terms, like virgins and whores. The slut is, in Dworkin’s parlance, male property—a victim of male violence—a woman who accepts male definitions of her sexuality. Instead, I believe that she is someone men hate because she is potentially beyond their control. If she has to pleasure many men briefly to escape belonging permanently to one particular man, she will. Whores are always accused of being lesbians because they get men to part with some of their property instead of becoming property themselves, and because they are more interested in how thick a man’s wallet is than the length of his dick. The whore does not sell her body. She sells her time. So she has time that is not for sale, that belongs to no one but herself. Domesticated women don’t dare put a price on their time. They wind up with no demarcation between business and pleasure, public and private, so they have no time and space of their own. They do everything for love, but nobody gives them the same care they lavish on others. If they are used and despised, they can’t protect themselves. They are poor because they give everything away. But it’s the john who has to give something away to the whore. He must tell her his secret desire if he is to get his money’s worth. The whore in turn gives nothing away, laughs at him while she keeps her secrets and pockets his cash. In this country, machismo is a survival mechanism by which minority men try to preserve their self-esteem and their culture. In the best sense of the word, it describes a person who is outnumbered, misunderstood, and outlawed who nevertheless strives to preserve a sense of pride and honor. Someone who has machismo insists on his right to dignity, and defends himself and what belongs to him even if it is a hopeless cause, even if he will be punished for making the attempt. Women are not supposed to have machismo, to be macho, but then, we’re not supposed to be sluts, either. And without machismo, a slut is just a commodity. In the midst of theoretical discussions, it’s important to remember that the state has power to take action against obscenity, and does not have serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value; appeals to prurient interests; goes substantially beyond customary limits of candor in description or representation of such matters; and depicts or describes in a patently offensive way, explicit sexual conduct of a specifically defined nature—that book is obscene, and it is contraband. Reading this won’t make you an outlaw (it’s not that easy, sweetheart), but if you enjoy it, you might think about why the law is trying to get in between you and your prurient interests.

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  In the short summer night she learnt so much. She would have thought a woman would have died of shame. Instead of which, the shame died. Shame, which is fear: the deep organic shame, the old, old physical fear which crouches in the bodily roots of us, and can only be chased away by the sensual fire, at last it was roused up and routed by the phallic hunt of the man, and she came to the very heart of the jungle of herself. She felt, now, she had come to the real bedrock of her nature, and was essentially shameless. She was her sensual self, naked and unashamed. She felt a triumph, almost a vainglory. So! That was how it was! That was life! That was how oneself really was! There was nothing left to disguise or be ashamed of. She shared her ultimate nakedness with a man, another being. And what a reckless devil the man was! really like a devil! One had to be strong to bear him. But it took some getting at, the core of the physical jungle, the last and deepest recess of organic shame. The phallus alone could explore it. And how he had pressed in on her! And how, in fear, she had hated it. But how she had really wanted it! She knew now. At the bottom of her soul, fundamentally, she had needed this phallic hunting out, she had secretly wanted it, and she had believed that she would never get it. Now suddenly there it was, and a man was sharing her last and final nakedness, she was shameless. What liars poets and everybody were! They made one think one wanted sentiment. When what one supremely wanted was this piercing, consuming, rather awful sensuality. To find a man who dared do it, without shame or sin or final misgiving! If he had been ashamed afterwards, and made one feel ashamed, how awful! What a pity most men are so doggy, a bit shameful, like Clifford! Like Michaelis even! Both sensually a bit doggy and humiliating. The supreme pleasure of the mind! And what is that to a woman? What is it, really, to the man either! He becomes merely messy and doggy, even in his mind. It needs sheer sensuality even to purify and quicken the mind. Sheer fiery sensuality, not messiness. Ah God, how rare a thing a man is! They are all dogs that trot and sniff and copulate. To have found a man who was not afraid and not ashamed! She looked at him now, sleeping so like a wild animal asleep, gone, gone in the remoteness of it. She nestled down, not to be away from him.

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  The idea of a new concentrated fuel that burnt with a hard slowness at a fierce heat was what first attracted Clifford. There must be some sort of external stimulus to the burning of such fuel, not merely air supply. He began to experiment, and got a clever young fellow who had proved brilliant in chemistry, to help him. And he felt triumphant. He had at last got out of himself. He had fulfilled his life-long secret yearning to get out of himself. Art had not done it for him. Art had only made it worse. But now, now he had done it. He was not aware how much Mrs. Bolton was behind him. He did not know how much he depended on her. But for all that, it was evident that when he was with her his voice dropped to an easy rhythm of intimacy, almost a trifle vulgar. With Connie, he was a little stiff. He felt he owed her everything, everything, and he showed her the utmost respect and consideration, so long as she gave him mere outward respect. But it was obvious he had a secret dread of her. The new Achilles in him had a heel, and in this heel the woman, the woman like Connie his wife, could lame him fatally. He went in a certain half-subservient dread of her, and was extremely nice to her. But his voice was a little tense when he spoke to her, and he began to be silent whenever she was present. Only when he was alone with Mrs. Bolton did he really feel a lord and a master, and his voice ran on with her almost as easily and garrulously as her own could run. And he let her shave him and sponge all his body as if he were a child, really as if he were a child. CHAPTER X Connie was a good deal alone now, fewer people came to Wragby. Clifford no longer wanted them. He had turned against even the cronies. He was queer. He preferred the radio, which he had installed at some expense, with a good deal of success at last. He could sometimes get Madrid or Frankfurt, even there in the uneasy Midlands. And he would sit alone for hours listening to the loud-speaker bellowing forth. It amazed and stunned Connie. But there he would sit, with a blank entranced expression on his face, like a person losing his mind, and listen, or seem to listen, to the unspeakable thing. Was he really listening? Or was it a sort of soporific he took, whilst something else worked on underneath in him? Connie did not know. She fled up to her room, or out of doors to the wood. A kind of terror filled her sometimes, a terror of the incipient insanity of the whole civilised species.

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  It was Mrs. Bolton's talk that really put a new fight into Clifford. His income, as she pointed out to him, was secure, from his father's trust, even though it was not large. The pits did not really concern him. It was the other world he wanted to capture, the world of literature and fame; the popular world, not the working world. Now he realised the distinction between popular success and working success: the populace of pleasure and the populace of work. He, as a private individual, had been catering with his stories for the populace of pleasure. And he had caught on. But beneath the populace of pleasure lay the populace of work, grim, grimey, and rather terrible. They too had to have their providers. And it was a much grimmer business, providing for the populace of work, than for the populace of pleasure. While he was doing his stories, and "getting on" in the world, Tevershall was going to the wall. He realised now that the bitch-goddess of success had two main appetites: one for flattery, adulation, stroking and tickling such as writers and artists gave her; but the other a grimmer appetite for meat and bones. And the meat and bones for the bitch-goddess were provided by the men who made money in industry. Yes, there were two great groups of dogs wrangling for the bitch-goddess: the group of the flatterers, those who offered her amusement, stories, films, plays: and the other, much less showy, much more savage breed, those who gave her meat, the real substance of money. The well-groomed showy dogs of amusement wrangled and snarled among themselves for the favours of the bitch-goddess. But it was nothing to the silent fight-to-the-death that went on among the indispensables, the bone-bringers. But under Mrs. Bolton's influence, Clifford was tempted to enter this other fight, to capture the bitch-goddess by brute means of industrial production. Somehow, he got his pecker up. In one way, Mrs. Bolton made a man of him, as Connie never did. Connie kept him apart, and made him sensitive and conscious of himself and his own states. Mrs. Bolton made him aware only of outside things. Inwardly he began to go soft as pulp. But outwardly he began to be effective. He even roused himself to go to the mines once more: and when he was there, he went down in a tub, and in a tub he was hauled out into the workings. Things he had learned before the war, and seemed utterly to have forgotten, now came back to him. He sat there, crippled, in a tub, with the underground manager showing him the seam with a powerful torch. And he said little. But his mind began to work.

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

  Under the Land Revenue Rules, if the crop was four annas or under, the cultivators could claim full suspension of the revenue assessment for the year. According to the official figures the crop was said to be over four annas. The contention of the cultivators, on the other hand, was that it was less than four annas. But the Government was in on mood to listen, and regarded the popular demand for arbitration as #lese majeste#. At last all petitioning and prayer having failed, after taking counsel with co-workers, I advised the Patidars ro resort to Satyagraha. Besides the volunteers of Kheda, my principal comrades in this struggle were Sjts. Vallabhbhai Patel, Shankarlal Banker, Shrimati Anasuyabehn, Sjts. Indulal Yajnik, Mahadev Desai and others. Sjt. Vallabhbhai, in joining the struggle, had to suspend a splendid and growing practice at the bar, which for all practical purposes he was never able to resume. We fixed up our headquarters at the Nadiad Anathashram, no other place being available which would have been large enough to accommodate all of us. The following pledge was signed by the Satyagrahis: ‘Knowing that the crops of our villages are less than four annas, we requested the Government to suspend the collection of revenue assessment till the ensuing year, but the Government had not acceded to our prayer. Therefore, we, the undersigned, hereby solemnly declare that we shall not, of our own accord, pay to the Government the full or the remaining revenue for the year. We shall let the Government take whatever legal steps it may think fit and gladly suffer the consequences of our non-payment. We shall rather let our lands be forfeited than that by voluntary payment we should allow our case to be considered flase or should compromise our self-respect. Should the Government, however, agree to suspend collection of the second instalment of the assessment throughout the district, such amongst us as are in a position to pay will pay up the whole or the balance of the revenue that may be due. The reason why those who are able to pay still withhold payment is that, if they pay up, the poorer ryots may in a panic sell their chattels or incur debts to pay their dues, and thereby bring suffering upon themselves. In these circumstances we feel that, for the sake of the poor, it is the duty even of those who can afford to pay to withhold payment of their assessment.’ I cannot devote many chapters to this struggle. So a number of sweet recollections in this connection will have to be crowded out. Those who want to make a fuller and deeper study of this important fight would do well to read the full and authentic history of the Kheda Satyagraha by Sjt. Shankarlal Parikh of Kathlal, Kheda. 150‘THE ONION THIEF’Champaran being in a far away corner of India, and the press having been kept out of the campaign, it did not attract visitors from outside.

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  But most importantly, Pat had wowed the trial judge. One has to appreciate that the judge came to the Little Sister’s trial with a tabula rasa. I don’t pretend to know his background, but I suspect he is very straight and had no experience with gay and lesbian pornography. But the trial was long, which provided us with the opportunity to educate the judge about the importance of gay and lesbian literature, and I believe that for him, like many of us, the trial was a transformative experience. The following passages from the trial judge’s decision were to me quite remarkable, and I credit Pat, perhaps more than anyone else in the trial, for moving Canadian law to the point where depictions or descriptions of S/M sexual practices were simply no longer per se obscene as Canada Customs and the courts had previously held them to be. The trial judge set the stage as follows: Considerable evidence and argument was directed to the topic of homosexual sado-masochism. The plaintiffs established that sado-masochism is a theatrical, ritualistic practice in which the consent of the participants is inherent, although they conceded consent is not necessarily always present. Customs officers routinely prohibit depictions and descriptions of sadomasochistic practices on the ground that they involve either explicit sex with violence or sex without violence that subjects persons to degrading or dehumanizing treatment. He then referred expressly to Macho Sluts to support his finding that sado-masochistic works should not be considered per se obscene: “Macho Sluts (Boston: Alyson Publications Inc., 1988), by Pat Califia, illustrates this point. The book is concerned with lesbian, sado-masochistic practices … The author’s introduction to the work is informative: “Liberty is the right not to lie.” —Albert Camus The things that seem beautiful, inspiring, and life-affirming to me seem ugly, hateful, and ludicrous to most other people. This may be the most painful part of being a sado-masochist: this experience of radical difference, separation at the root of perception. Our culture insists on sexual uniformity and does not acknowledge any neutral differences—only crimes, sins, diseases, and mistakes. This smug erotic totalitarianism does hidden violence to dissidents and perverts. It distorts our self-images, ambitions, and dreams. We think we are alone, or crazy, or ridiculous. Our desire learns to curb itself, and we come to depend on the strength of self-repression for our safety. We live in fear of being known, and such fear stifles the nascent erotic wish before the image of what is wished for can be fully formed. We know we are ugly before we have even seen ourselves, and the injustice of this, the falsehood, chokes me. What, then, are my choices, as a writer and a sadomasochist? I could keep my sexuality private, write about other issues, other sorts of people, and tell myself that these are more important themes, more universal characters, more valid as literature. That involves telling a lie by omission—becoming invisible as a pervert, assuming an undeserved mantle of normalcy and legitimacy.

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

  But I could not make my friends appreciate the beauty of self-help. In course of time I became an expert washerman so far as my own work went, and my washing was by no means inferior to laundry washing. My collars were no less stiff or shiny than others. When Gokhale came to South Africa, he had with him a scarf which was a gift from Mahadeo Govind Ranade. He treasured the memento with the utmost care and used it only on special occasions. One such occasion was the banquet given in his honour by the Johannesburg Indians. The scarf was creased and needed ironing. It was not possible to send it to the laundry and get it back in time. I offered to try my art. ‘I can trust to your capacity as a lawyer, but not as a washerman,’ said Gokhale; ‘What if you should soil it? Do you know what it means to me ? ‘ With this he narrated, with much joy, the story of the gift. I still insisted, guaranteed good work, got his permission to iron it, and won his certificate. After that I did not mind if the rest of the world refused me its certificate. In the same way, as I freed myself from slavery to the washerman, I threw off dependence on the barber. All people who go to England learn there at least the art of shaving, but none, to my knowledge, learn to cut their own hair. I had to learn that too. I once went to an English hair-cutter in Pretoria. He contemptuously refused to cut my hair. I certainly felt hurt, but immediately purchased a pair of clippers and cut my hair before the mirror. I succeeded more or less in cutting the front hair, but I spoiled the back. The friends in the court shook with laughter. ‘What’s wrong with your hair, Gandhi? Rats have been at it ? ‘ ‘No. The white barber would not condescend to touch my black hair,’ said I, ‘so I preferred to cut it myself, no matter how badly.’ The reply did not surprise the friends. The barber was not at fault in having refused to cut my hair. There was every chance of his losing his custom, if he should serve black men. We do not allow our barbers to serve our untouchable brethren. I got the reward of this in South Africa, not once, but many times, and the conviction that it was the punishment for our own sins saved me from becoming angry. The extreme forms in which my passion for self-help and simplicity ultimately expressed itself will be described in their proper place. The seed had been long sown. It only needed watering to take root, to flower and to fructify, and the watering came in due course. 66.

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  We decided early on in our preparation for the trial that we would adopt an approach that was singularly different than the standard civil libertarian take, which would amount to a concession of sorts that the material in question was indeed inferior but, “holding our noses,” we would “defend to the death” the right of the author to produce or publish the work in question. Rather, it was our position that the court should be persuaded that the material that Customs was banning from Canada had real importance and value. In other words, we wanted the Court to conclude that sexual expression and imagery—we didn’t shy away from calling it pornography—far from being a base form of expression, was every bit as important as political expression and was therefore entitled to the highest protection in law. I had decided that one of the best ways to defend Macho Sluts was to call its author as a witness to explain to the Court why she had written it. Pat was a wonderful witness. I knew she would be, as I had spent quite a bit of time talking to her before the trial and met her in person for the first time the night before. But I have to admit I was a bit worried about how she would present in court as she did appear as a “macho slut”—butch hairstyle, many tattoos and piercings, and decked out in leather. When I called her as my “next witness,” I couldn’t believe my eyes. She was wearing a dress—a long-sleeved one, so there were no tattoos showing—and she had also taken out her piercings and had a completely different hairstyle. When I asked her about it later, she said she went and got the dress especially for the occasion—it may had been the only one she had ever worn—and that she wanted to look like a librarian, which she did. Some may consider this a bit of a cop-out, but Pat understood the rules of the game. She was appearing in a conservative forum before a very conservative judge; the stakes were high, and she knew that presentation mattered. As it turned out, I don’t know how much it mattered, because Pat was one of the most articulate and persuasive witnesses in the trial. Pat the person appeared very differently from Pat the writer. And to some extent, this bore out one of our main arguments in the case, which was that there is a world of difference between our imagination (and the work that is the product of it) and who we are and what actually happens in real life. And yet that is probably too simplistic a dichotomy, since Pat did tell the judge that while Macho Sluts was a work of fiction, it did to a large extent tell the truth about her sexuality and those of other lesbians who practiced S/M. The following exchange took place during her testimony: