especial y because once parts of my life were a lot like parts of
hers. How many of her are there? On my own I’ve counted
quite a few.
These women are proud of me, and I don’t want to let them
down. I feel as if I’ve done nothing because I know that I
haven’t done enough. I haven’t changed or destabilized the
meaning of “white, ” nor could anyone alone. But writers
write alone even in the context of a political movement. I’ve
always seen my work as a purposeful series of provocations,
especially Pornography: Mlen Pos es ing Women, Ice and Fire,
142
Counting
Intercourse, and Mercy. In other books I’ve devoted myself to
the testimony of women who had no other voice. These
books include Let ers from a War Zone, currently being published in Croatia in its lonely trip around the world; the introduction to the second edition of Pornography: Men Pos es ing Women, which can also be found in Life and Death: Writings
on the Continuing War Against Women, a collection of essays;
and In Harm’s Way: The Pornography Civil Rights Hearings,
edited with Catharine A. MacKinnon and published by Harvard
University Press. I still don’t get to be white, because the
people who care about what I say have no social importance.
I’m saying that white gets to say, “Yes, it happened” or "No,
it didn’t. ” I’m saying that there are always either too many or
too few. I’m saying that I don’t count sheep at night; I see in
my mind instead the women I’ve met, I see their faces and I
can recollect their voices, and I wish I knew what to do, and
when people ask me why I'm such a hard-ass on pornography
it’s because pornography is the bible of sexual abuse; it is
chapter and verse; pornography is the law on what you do to
a woman when you want to have mean fun on her body and
she’s no one at al . No one does actually count her. She’s at the
bot om of the barrel. We’re al stil trying to tel the white guys
that too many - not too few - women get raped. Rape is the
screaming, burning, hideous top level of the rot en barrel,
acid-burned damage, what you see if you look at the surface
of violence against women. Rape plays a role in every form of
143
Heartbreak
sexual exploitation and abuse. Rape happens everywhere and
it happens al the time and to females of al ages. Rape is
inescapable for women. The act, the attempt, the threat - the
three dynamics of a rape culture - touch 100 percent of us.
144
Heartbreak
How did I become who I am? I have a heart easily hurt. I
believed that cruelty was most often caused by ignorance.
I thought that if everybody knew, everything would be different. I was a silly child who believed in the revolution. I was torn to pieces by segregation and Vietnam. Apartheid broke
my heart. Apartheid in Saudi Arabia still breaks my heart.
I don’t understand why every story about rising oil prices does
not come with an addendum about the domestic imprisonment of women in the Gulf states. I can’t be bought or intimidated because I’m already cut down the middle. I walk
with women whispering in my ears. Every time I cry there’s a
name at ached to each tear.
My ideology is simple and left: I believe in redistributing
the wealth; everyone should have food and health care, shelter
and safety; it’s not right to hurt and deprive people so that
they become prostitutes and thieves.
What I’ve learned is that women suffer from terrible shame
and the shame comes from having been complicit in abuse
because one wants to live. Middle-class women rarely understand how complicit they are unless they’ve experienced torture,
145
Heartbreak
usually in the home; prostituting women know that every
breath is bought by turning oneself inside out so that the
blood covers the skin; the skin is ripped; one watches the
world like a hunted animal on al fours in the darkest part of
every night.
There is nothing redemptive about pain.
Love requires an inner fragility that few women can afford.
Women want to be loved, not to love, because to be loved
requires nothing. Suppose that her love brought him into
existence and without it he is nothing.
Men are shits and take pride in it.
Only the toughest among women wil make the necessary
next moves, the revolutionary moves, and among prostituted
women one finds the toughest if not always the best. If prostituted women worked together to end male supremacy, it would end.
Surviving degradation is an ongoing process that gives you
rights, honor, and knowledge because you earn them; but it
also takes from you too much tenderness. One needs tenderness to love - not to be loved but to love.
I long to touch my sisters; I wish I could take away the
pain; I’ve heard so much heartbreak among us. I think I’ve
pretty much done what I can do; I’m empty; there’s not much
left, not inside me. I think that it’s bad to give up, but maybe
it’s not bad to rest, to sit in silence for a while. I’m told by my
friends that it’s not evil to rest. At the same time, as they
146
Heartbreak
know, there’s a child being pimped by her father with everyone around her either taking a piece of her or looking the other way. How can anyone rest, real y? What would make it
possible? I say to myself, Think about the fourth-generation
daughter who wasn’t a prostitute; think about her. I say,
Think about the woman who asked herself whether or not it
was bad to penetrate a baby with an object and figured out
that it might be; think about her. These are miracles, political
miracles, and there will be so many more. I think that there
will be many more.
147
Basics
Politics doesn’t run on miracles modest or divine, and the few
miracles there are have the quality of invisibility about them
because they happen to invisible people, those who have been
hurt too much, too often, too deep. There’s a jagged wound
that is in fact someone’s life, and any miracle is hidden precisely
because the wound is so egregious. The victims of any systematized brutality are discounted because others cannot bear to see, identify, or articulate the pain. When a rapist stomps on
your life, you are victimized, and although it is a social law in
our society that “victim” is a dirty word, it is also a true word,
a word that points one toward what one does not want to