I’ve been thinking some more about why I came away from watching Norman Mailer act the macho man in "Town Bloody Hall" more, rather than less, impressed with him. Part of it was simply his charisma as an entertainer; I was grateful for the pleasure he gave me in the same way, maybe, that I can enjoy an old Dr. Dre song without thinking too much about the role that ho’s and tricks play in his personal cosmology (or maybe I’m enjoying both of them because deep down I want my misogyny but need the teaspoon of charisma to help the misogyny go down).
The more defensible argument for Mailer, however, is that the Town Hall panel on feminism and its discontents so obviously benefited by his willingness to offer arguments that might be perceived as anti-feminist (and that, in part, surely were). Not that the feminist heavy-hitters at Town Hall who mixed it up with Mailer—Germaine Greer, Susan Sontag and Cynthia Ozick in particular –needed a man in order to be persuasive in their presentation of feminist beliefs. In the absence of an aggressive but fair opponent like Mailer, however, it’s hard to imagine that the key points of difference could have emerged so quickly and clearly. He was the whetstone against whom they could sharpen their arguments. Without a Mailer, there would have good feminism, but it would have been good feminism a bit less aware of its potential vulnerabilities and of the ways in which it was likely to be attacked from the right.
A well-intentioned critic who’s willing to be proven wrong, in other words, is usually an asset to a movement, and I think Mailer was one of those, and there’s a role to be played, in the feminist movement, for male critics of good will (I understand why some male feminists feel like we have to get our own house in order before we throw the stones at the feminist glass houses, but I think it’s a mistake). My sense of the current conversation about feminism is that it is pretty open to such well-intentioned criticism, but that it suffers a bit from a dearth of well-intentioned critics or opponents.
It’s interesting that Camille Paglia, of whom I’m not always a fan, also found herself reacting to Mailer’s death with memories of “Town Bloody Hall.” She writes:
Mailer’s "The Prisoner of Sex" (the original 1971 Harper’s essay, not the book) was an important statement about men’s sexual fears and desires. His jousting with Germaine Greer at the notorious Town Hall debate in New York that same year was a pivotal moment in the sex wars. I loved Greer and still do. And I also thought Jill Johnston (who disrupted the debate with lesbo stunts) was a cutting-edge thinker: I was devouring her Village Voice columns, which had evolved from dance reportage into provocative cultural commentary.
Feminism would have been far stronger had it been able to absorb Mailer’s arguments about sex. If my own system seemed heterodox for so long, it’s because I appear to have been one of the few feminists who could appreciate and integrate all three thinkers — Mailer, Greer and Johnston. I’m sorry that Mailer, presumably cowed or pussy-whipped, abandoned the gender field. It would take Madonna, thanks to her influence on a generation of dissident young women, to bring authentically Dionysian ’60s feminism back from the dead. That pro-sex wing of feminism (to which I belong) has of course resoundingly triumphed, to the hissy consternation of the Puritans and the iconoclasts –those maleducated wordsmiths who don’t know how to respond to or "read" erotic imagery.
It makes sense that Paglia has such affection for Mailer. She’s much like him, and she’s suffered for it in some of the same ways. Her self-love and sense of persecution are exaggerated, but they can also be very charming, as they were with Mailer, and it’s been to the detriment of the feminist movement, and to the detriment of Paglia herself, that the feminist reaction has focused too much on her adolescent provocations and not enough on the ways that she makes the examined life seem exciting. It’s helped make Paglia somewhat bitter, and it’s cost feminism a bit of sexiness.
