From chapter 2 of Gyn/Ecology, pp. 93–96.
From chapter 2 of Gyn/Ecology, pp. 93–96.
Sado-Ritual Syndrome: a set of interconnected components of sado-rituals which, when Dis-covered, can be seen by Searchers as links among seemingly unrelated atrocities, such as witchburnings, gynecological practices, lynchings, pogroms, nuclear arms buildup, the exploitation and torture of animals.
—Wickedary, p. 94
This short excerpt shows Daly at her most critical, but also shows the scope of the patriarchal mindset she opposed. Most shocking—to her, to her readers, and to her future audience—would be the revelations about Paul Tillich’s indulgence in sadistic pornography, a fact exposed by his wife, Hannah Tillich. Given Daly’s earlier extensive use of Tillich’s thought and work, this revelation came as affirmation of the universal nature of the cruelty of the patriarchal mind. Linda Barufaldi, one of the editors, recalls that when she first read Hannah Tillich’s From Time to Time, she thought that his pornographic exploits proved that “We feminists were not making this up.”
Aside from the shock, though, of Tillich’s pornographic understanding of the cross, Daly placed this incident among a set of appalling instances of sado-masochistic torture: from the Rolling Stones to the Nazi death camps, from early modern torture of heretics to the impregnation of the Virgin Mary, from contemporary hospitals to the torture of political prisoners. Far from being a vindictive strike against a former inspiration, her inclusion of Tillich’s pornographic imagination here dramatically revealed the scope of patriarchy.
—Editors
In christendom as well as in postchristian secular society, the words/expressions of female spirit are raped, twisted, tortured, dismembered. From the witch trials, brought about by the bonding of theologians and legal specialists, to the Hearst trial, effected by the bonding of secular theologians (psychiatrists) and attorneys, the dis-spiriting process is essentially the same. Whereas the christian cross glorified suffering as a means to purification and ultimate joy in the “Afterlife,” the contemporary secular sadomasochistic gospel proclaims that female suffering is joy. Thus even the agony of Patricia Hearst was perceived by many as “a rich girl getting her kicks.”
A Rolling Stones billboard atop Sunset Strip in Los Angeles in 1976 depicted a woman with hands tied together and legs tied spread apart, accompanied by the words, “I’m ‘Black and Blue’ from the Rolling Stones—and I love it!” The anonymous authors of a 1977 Time article entitled “Really Socking It to Women” paternally discusses some gimmicks of “kings of kink” who admittedly seek revenge against women. With Timely detachment they write of the men who shoot photos of women mutilating themselves, and describes the men who design albums with pictures of women chained, women hanged, women gang-raped. Predictably, they find a woman psychiatrist who is willing to claim that all of this corresponds to masochistic fantasies of independent women.1 Thus the rape of female mind/will, the message of the Virgin Mary’s impregnation by the holy ghost, is repeated and completed in the “joyful” secular S and M resurrection of the torture cross.
I suggest that theologians have always fantasized a female hanging on the cross. Hannah Tillich, in her lucid autobiography, From Time to Time, describes the pornographic exploits of her husband, Paul Tillich, the famous theologian. She describes entering his room during his showing of a porn film for his own private entertainment:
There was the familiar cross shooting up the wall. . . . A naked girl hung on it, hands tied in front of her private parts. . . . More and more crosses appeared, all with women tied and exposed in various positions. Some were exposed from the front, some from the side, some from behind, some crouched in fetal position, some head down, or legs apart, or legs crossed—and always whips, crosses, whips.2
Tillich was not atypical. He simply had a wife who was determined to publish the truth after his death, despite all the attempts of theologians, psychologists such as Rollo May, and other “friends” at first to stop her and later to discredit her.3 His private life and fantasies reflected the essential symbolic content of his and other theologians’ christology. Indeed, these sadomasochistic fantasies were the juice/sap of his impressive theologizing. Hannah, who after his death unlocked his drawers (supposed to contain his “spiritual harvest”), found the details of his sex-obsessed life:
All the girls’ photos fell out, letters and poems, passionate appeal and disgust. I was tempted to place between the sacred pages of his highly esteemed lifework those obscene signs of the real life that he had transformed into the gold of abstraction—King Midas of the spirit.4
Hannah Tillich thus helps to place the high symbolism and abstract rationalizations of christian theology of the cross in realistic perspective.
Torture for “higher causes,” religious and secular has always been legitimated by christian cross-bearers. In the fifteenth century witchcraft was defined as crimen exceptum, removing all legal limits to torture. Thus it is not surprising that the secular sadomasochistic society which has descended from christianity by no means restricts its brutality to the realm of advertising, pornographic films, and kinky sex orgies. There is abundant evidence that systematic torture of political prisoners is carried on by many—probably most—governments. Here the rationalization is not “joy in sex” but something like “national security.” In the 1970s, Amnesty International, an organization devoted to the release of all political prisoners in the world, reported evidence that brutal political torture is a worldwide practice. While this reality is not new, and while the evidence of the horrors of the Nazi death camps and of American torture of Vietnamese is easily available, it is important to see this in the context of the superrefinement and simultaneous coarsening of postchristian secular extensions of christian myth.5
Considering the horrors of the torture of heretics and witches in the beginnings of the patriarchal “modern” period, it would appear that the application of torture cross mythology could hardly get coarser. It does, in the sense that coarsening blends with superrefinement of technique. The most hideous/harsh/coarse torture is carried out with the sophisticated techniques of modern medicine, including “life-prolonging” machines and a variety of pharmacological means also used in hospitals. Indeed, the sadistic methods used in the Nazi death camps, in contemporary political prisons, and in hospitals, including “mental hospitals,” bear striking resemblances to each other.6 Each of these subcultures of sadism has its own hierarchy, apprenticeship, initiation rites, and its own language. The subculture of torture in Brazil is a bizarre example, with its “parrot swings,” its “dragon chair,” its “spiritual seance,” and its “advanced school of torture.”7 Moreover, women have a special role in these subcultures as subservient token torturers of other women. The “bitch of Buchenwald” and female torturers of female political prisoners in such countries as Argentina are illustrations of this traitor-token syndrome.
My point here is not that the sadosymbolism of christianity is the unique source for worldwide S and M. Sadomasochism is the style and basic content of patriarchy’s structures, including those antecedent to and outside christianity. Rather, christianity, with its torture cross symbolism, has been one expression of this basic pattern. I am contending, however, that within Western culture this symbolism has provided legitimation and impetus for subsequent refinements/coarsenings of sadomasochism. Virtually all of modern patriarchal society has been influenced/shaped profoundly by the West, becoming a sort of Total Westworld. Thus, the ever more deceptively refined/coarsened/extended tentacles of the torture cross syndrome pervade the planet.