Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 2002. Vol. 8. Eger Journal of American Studies.(Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 28)

Studies - Enikő Bollobás: (De-) Gendering and (De-) Sexualizing Famale Subjectivities: Woman-Hating and Its Revisions in Literature and Painting

norms of patriarchy, or, in Adrienne Rich's well-known words, "compulsory heterosexuality." As long as women are portrayed as fulfilling heterosexual plots controlled by men, the constructions of womanhood, idolized or debased, are easily subordinated to male interests. As long as women are portrayed as objects of male desire, as passive extras in male quest plots, or simply as occupying the social places left vacant by men, these women have a very good chance of being obliterated from the text, erased and effaced, or relegated into mere decoration at best, or into objects evoking male repulsion at worst.

1 As long as women are denied their stories and appear only as characters in male texts, the perpetuation of heterosexism is unavoidable. "In a sexist culture," Judith Fetterley argues, "the interests of men and women are antithetical, and, thus, the stories each has to tell are not simply alternative versions of reality, they are, rather, radically incompatible" (159-160). Therefore, the misogynist portrayal of women seems to be a predictable and even necessary consequence of heterocentrist gender culture that makes antagonists out of women and men. * Such major American women modernists as Gertrude Stein, Willa Cather, Djuna Barnes, and H. D. provide alternative scripts to woman hating. As they subvert traditional patriarchal depictions of women by de-gendering and de-sexualizing female subjectivities, these writers ultimately revise and transcend male misogynist representations of femininity. These authors propose loving alternatives: the women portrayed here manage to escape heterosexist hatred, manifest erasure, ' The contemporary Hungarian poet Imre Oravecz seems to provide a wealth of examples for this latter case of blatant textual misogyny, especially his 1988 book entitled September 1972 [1972. szeptember]. Here young women are almost always portrayed as having repulsive bodies and genitals, posing an atavistic threat to the man victimized by their mere presence or intimidated into impotence (see the poem "Several times before" [„Előtte többször is"]). Elsewhere women appear as whores and predators, as selfish women with an insatiable sexual desire that, for the man, seems lo conflict with what appears as their mask of autonomy, intelligence, and feminism (see the poem "You were not quite" l„Nem voltál egészen"]). In these misogynist texts women become representations of "perversity" by even providing the mental and physical image which helps turn him on and start masturbation (see poem "Now about" [„Most arról"]). Ill