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CounterPunch
August
31, 2002
The Gangbang
Asthete
The Sexual Life Catherine M.
by
Dr. Susan Block
In The
Sexual Life of Catherine M., celebrated French intellectual
Catherine Millet gives us pornography that is both high-brow
and profound, as well as literature that is both exciting and
filthy. Millet writes with the cool, discerning eye of the art
critic that she is, examining her orgiastic adventures, fantasies,
blowjobs, anal probings and orgasms, as she might a series of
sculptures or paintings.
My favorite parts describe the gangbangs.
One woman and thirty men sounds like good odds to me. The venues
are also exciting: the Bois de Boulogne, a French Villa, various
parks and parking lots. Millet is not the first woman to enjoy
having sex with several men (and a few women) at once. Many ladies
enjoy and excell at group action: the swinger chick, the town
slut, the cheerleader that sucks off the football team, the porn
starlet who wins the consensual gangbang contest. However, such
women tend not to talk about their experiences much, for a variety
of reasons. For one, their mouths are filled with cock.
Even though Millet maintains, in her
feminine way, that she is not a feminist, her book is an eloquent
celebration of women's sexual power. No man can do this. A man
may have a harem with 100 women in it, but  he can't
fuck all of them in one night. Whereas Catherine fucks 100 men
in a night with some regularity, and with little difficulty except
a bit of soreness between the thighs. Then, you realize why men
have guarded, enslaved and punished women for millenia. Because
every woman can do this.
Not that it takes any great physical
ability. And certainly no mental talent. Of course, it takes
stamina. But just about any reasonably healthy young or middle-aged
woman can plunk herself down on a coffee table or park bench
and spread her legs for numerous men to fuck her as she strokes
and sucks and plays with the various cocks that surround her.
And yet it is an achievement. Even a
great achievement. Because, though every woman can do this, most
women don't--for fear of being labeled a slut, or because no
one asks them, or because they are so indoctrinated into the
idea of one man per woman, that it doesn't even occur to them.
Thus, very few women write about it,
even fewer writing about it well enough for respectable people
to read. The Sexual Life of Catherine M. serves up an art critic's
detailed, almost dispassionate perspective of being in the center
of a gigantic gangbang. The book makes you feel that this is,
in a way, what women's bodies are built for, to lie like an egg,
waiting to be fertilized by millions of sperm, penetrated by
dozens of cocks, fucked by dozens of men, all vying politely
to get inside. Or, as Millet herself alludes, like a spider in
her very sticky web.
My least favorite parts of the book are
the ones about dirt. This is not just "dirty" in a
spiritual sense, as in "talking dirty," although Millet
covers that subject pretty well too. This is dirt in the sense
of real, physical grime, crud (human and otherwise) and lack
of a shower. We Americans already tend to think that the French
don't bathe enough (thus, the fabulous perfumes), and Catherine
M. confirms all our worst fears about this aspect of the French.
She's constantly having sex in filth with dirty disgusting men
with rotten teeth and foul smells. It's a wonder she hasn't picked
up a lot more than just "the clap" along the way. She
calls it raising herself "above prejudice." I call
it yucky.
But she does seem to know what she's
doing. The Sexual Life of Catherine M. solidifies a belief that
Americans already have, that is, that Frenchwomen KNOW about
sex, dirty and otherwise. Other Frenchwomen who wrote about sex
from "the woman's point of view," shocking the cultures
of their time, include Colette, whose novels of the pleasures
and pains of love foreshadow Millet with their exact evocation
of sounds, smells, tastes, textures, and colors, and Anais Nin
who wasn't actually French, but lived in Paris when she wrote
her famous Delta of Venus and House of Incest. Then there's Simone
de Beauvoir, she of The Second Sex, and, Pauline Reage of The
Story of O. Now we have Catherine Millet, gangbang asthete.
It makes you wonder: Is there something
about being French or living in France that gives women the talent
to be their sexual selves, and then to describe female sexuality
in such a way that captures the imagination of an international
generation? Is it the joie de vivre? Le plaisir? La Cuisine?
The art that is everywhere you turn?
Part of the excitement of The Sexual
Life of Catherine M. is that Catherine Millet is a celebrity
in France, and she is not a sex celebrity, but a famous, distinguished
art critic. That makes it all the more exciting. She is a highly
respectable person talking about something not at all respectable.
The other day, I was interviewed for
"The Good News," a new show on France's Canal+ TV,
about whether I thought the American publication of The Sexual
Life of Catherine M. might set off some kind of sexual revolution
here. It's true that the French have been helping us Americans
with our revolutions ever since the Revolutionary War that gained
our so-called independence from the Brits. "Will Millet's
sex memoirs, already on the NY Times Bestseller list, as it has
graced the bestseller lists of many European journals, revolutionize
Americans?" Canal+ wanted to know.
Well, we already have consensual gangbangs.
We also have quite a few intellectuals writing porn, from Camille
Paglia to Carol Queen, not to mention Nicholas Baker. Of course,
Americans don't celebrate female intellectuals like the French
do. And Madonna did her SEX book a decade ago.
Though The Sexual Life of Catherine M.
probably won't set off an American revolution, at least not on
its own, it may well encourage a lot more intellectuals, artists,
writers and celebrities to write their sex memoirs. Hopefully,
this will be a good thing for those of us who appreciate literature
and/or porn. Hopefully, we won't be saying "Oh no, not another
erotic memoir by a celebrated intellectual!" in a couple
of years.
The Canal+ folks asked me if I thought
Catherine M. was shocking Americans. I don't think it shocks
us to see that the French are writing about sex. Isn't that what
they specialize in, besides crepes suzettes?
But what about an American celebrity?
I've been fantasizing about which respected female American celebrity
might shock us to our all-American cores with a book of sex memoirs.
Maybe Barbara Walters? The Sexual Life of Barbara W? Or how about
Julia R? Tina B? Hillary Rodham C? Who will it be?
Dr. Susan Block
is a sex educator, host of The Dr. Susan Block Show and author
of The 10 Commandments of Pleasure. Visit her website at http://www.drsusanblock.com.
If you'd like to contact Dr. Susan Block
with questions, comments or contributions, please email liberties@blockbooks.com
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August 31,
2002
Gavin Keeney
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Ralph Nader
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