B.Y..V.I.R.G.I.N.I.A..V.I.T.Z.T.H.U.M As a Patti Smith-lovin', tomboy-turned-feminist, I've always resisted the notion that being a woman means being submissive. I want to move through the world as the subject not the object, the bee not the flower. And yet I never minded being the girl in bed. Being the one penetrated is so basic I didn't really see it. It was the one part of female destiny I never mourned. This is partly because heterosexual sex never lived up to the dire warnings it came with: that his gain would be my loss; that I'd get attached, enslaved and heartbroken; that I'd end up yesterday's garbage or, if I was lucky, monogamy's ball and chain. Thankfully, sex never felt like the war described by Republicans and mothers.
	Sex, those parties say, is something men want and women deny. The boys hear the same message, which makes them ashamed of their filthy urges at the same time it lets them off the hook. Boys will be boys, and if sex happens, it's the girl's fault. Since sex is our responsibility, I realized early on, part of my job was to obviate the shame that men carried into bed. Though that context has eroded considerably over the past 30 years, women's sexual power is still largely that of withholding something that they generally want too. Though politically I resent this ancient, absurd assignment, it does have its sweetness sexually: Submitting is both transgression and absolution, a blessing bestowed and a taboo broken. Even the most confident lover betrays an initial shock and gratitude that he's welcome inside my body.
		Women's hold on the supply side of sex may explain some of the patriarchy's most tenacious tenets: Outspoken, independent women still get tagged as dykes, bitches, dominatrixes. The rape victim -- if she can be portrayed as sexual in any way -- still asked for it. Single women are suspect while they're nubile, and after that they're invisible. But other attitudes lurking in the public sphere can't be traced to the supply and demand of sex -- especially not nowadays, when women generally do give it up to the men they date. Why has contempt for the slut persisted? Why does the military struggle so hard to keep women and gay men out? And why is homophobia as murderously vehement as ever? ____Sociological, historical, economic and biological theories of male domination and privilege don't fully answer those questions. They can't explain the anger and contempt for women and gay men that keeps bubbling up into the culture. The dissonance is sad and baffling, because I like men and often identify with them. Men are straightforward, generally easy to get along with, and I like having sex with them. ____All these contradictions carved out a blind spot, a gap between the personal and the political that made room for what I can only call an epiphany -- a glimpse of something not in me, but out there, pervasive and invisible as air. I had my revelation about the patriarchy when -- I challenge the gentle reader to put this more delicately -- I strapped on a dildo and fucked my boyfriend in the ass. N E X T P A G E - - - - - - - - - - + _ Defiling Adam