Sex wars, what are they good for?
On Norman Mailer, Germaine Greer and the virtues of intellectual combat
Not all feminists have been revolutionaries. After the radicalism of the suffragettes, the women’s movement became respectable and mainstream — its proponents were married, and its goals were palatable. Many of the feminists of the 1960s and ‘70s were much the same. After the publication of The Feminine Mystique (1963), Betty Friedan set up the organised front of the women’s movement with the foundation of the National Organisation for Women (NOW). It advocated equal pay and participation, and represented the mainstream of bourgeois feminism. Their goals were ambitious. But in the drug fumes of the 60s, some began longing for a radical edge. By the end of the 70s, the factions of American feminism were fully embroiled in the Sex War. But in 1970, it still looked like feminists were fighting on the same front, despite their varying degrees of radicalism. In 1970 Kate Millett published Sexual Politics which took the fight to the culture by defining the ego of the male artist as the root of the patriarchy — featuring the works of Henry Miller, D.H. Lawrence and Norman Mailer.
Mailer was not the obvious face of the patriarchy politically. He was anti-war and anti-establishment, and a critic of the role of the church and religion in American politics. He reaped the benefits of sexual liberation both in his writing and personal life, and he was not best pleased with Millett’s reading of his novels through the lense of Women’s Lib. In a 90,000 word article in Harper’s Magazine he called “the land of Millett” a “barren and mediocre terrain, its flora reminiscent of a Ph.D. tract, its roads a narrow argument and its horizons low.” In the Prisoner of Sex, Mailer’s autobiographical protagonist attempts to come to terms with the new women’s movement, and defend himself and his fellow targets. Despite his obvious contempt for Millett, he did not want to see himself as an outright opponent of Women’s Liberation — even then, the worst thing a New York intellectual could be was a crusty conservative. Harper advertised the piece by promising it would have “Women’s Lib picketing the news-stands” which made Mailer wince, but this gloss was not wholly to blame for their reactions.
Watching their fierce exchanges, it is clear that this fire is missing from the modern war of the sexes
Join Britain’s most civilised publication.
![]()
Subscribe NowChallenge the consensus. Access rigorous analysis.
Shirley Broughton, whose Theatre for Ideas otherwise operated from her stuffy New York City studio loft, saw an opportunity for the showdown of the decade. The Theatre for Ideas put on A Dialogue on Women’s Liberation in the Town Hall in New York City. Millett did not wish to participate but Germaine Greer’s recently published Female Eunuch landed her an invitation. She was a true radical. On the opponents of women’s suffrage, she argued that “their extremism was more clear-sighted than the woolly benevolence of liberals and humanists” who had supported the women’s movement. Not all feminists were revolutionaries but, according to Greer, even the “unwitting suffragettes” were paving the way for a revolution.
Watching their fierce exchanges, it is clear that this fire is missing from the modern war of the sexes. On stage were Mailer, Greer, Jacqueline Ceballos representing the “square” faction of the women’s liberation movement, poet and writer Jill Johnston, and “lady” literary critic Diana Trilling. Mailer was chairing, but found himself the centre of attention, not least because the great and good of New York feminism had come to take aim at his male ego in particular. The debate was later immortalised in Pennebaker and Hegedus’ 1979 documentary Town Bloody Hall. It was not produced straight away; between limited funds — and the fact that the cameramen had been chased around the venue by a heckler — the footage was considered unusable. Chris Hegedus did not get her hands on the footage until she teamed up with Pennebaker in the late 70s. As a result, even at publication the event was distant history — feminists were now irrevocably entrenched in the porn wars.
Mailer assumed a defensive pose, and his uncompromising positions are accompanied by tedious hedging. Mailer, who enjoyed the company of the hard-nosed ladies of Women’s Liberation, did not want to oppose their movement. But he could not help but defend the male ego — of which, according to Millett, his own was a perfect specimen. Women’s Liberation was “humourless.” He argued that “Biology is not destiny, but it is half of it,” and as such, any attempt at political “liberation” without recognition of this fact would necessarily require social engineering by authoritarian means. The Prisoner of Sex defended not only the male ego, but took offence at allegedly impoverished readings of both literature and sex that were necessary for Millett’s interpretations.
Though they were brought together by their shared distaste for Mailer, the four women on stage had little in common — and the internal tensions of the women’s movement were bubbling away beneath the surface. Ceballos presented the ambitious but rather dull goals of the mainstream of the women’s movement. Trilling, who had spent her career making a name for herself as a critic, not a woman, was keen to distinguish herself from her fellow female panellists. Jill Johnson’s performance of a poem that began “all women are lesbians” — followed by an onstage enactment of a lesbian orgy — seems slightly out of place, if not for the fact that Friedan, who was also in the audience, had recently expelled the lesbians from NOW’s New York chapter, condemning them as a “lavender menace.”
Mailer’s only real intellectual adversary on the stage on the topic at hand was Greer, and they get the closest to understanding each other. Hegedus reflected later that, on account of the sexual tension between the two, she “almost edited it as a love story in a certain way.” The intellectual exchanges are sharp, but in that opposition there is clear mutual respect. Both understood the revolutionary potential in the women’s movement, for better or worse. Mailer respected the force of Women’s Liberation, often more than the feminists themselves. Greer, herself chasing greatness, was conflicted because “of the concept I have of the importance of the artist. Because of my own instinctive respect for him.” But ultimately, she saw the only path to women’s liberation through the destruction of ego altogether.
Mailer rejected entirely the notion that women’s bondage was structural, or that men were to blame: “we must face the simple fact that it may be that there is a profound reservoir of cowardice in women, which had them welcome this miserable and slavish life.” Mailer was offended by the notion that his ego had come about entirely with the grain, as a natural expression of patriarchal society; that he was, as Ceballos charged him with, “the establishment.” Society also had expectations for men, of fidelity, of law-abiding respectability — and Mailer was not a model citizen on any of those fronts. In 1960, he stabbed his second wife Adele Morales which ended his first attempt at becoming New York mayor, and continued to haunt his reputation. With exasperation he wondered whether his adversaries could imagine that men had a tough time of it as well. Greer blamed women’s slavishness on a patriarchal socialisation that had to be excised. Mailer believed it to be a perennial problem that must be overcome by the individual.
In a 1991 interview with Martin Amis about his novel Harlot’s Ghost, Mailer said that “You need to write for your adversaries as much as for your friends.” The Prisoner of Sex did just that, and the debate posed Greer and Mailer as worthy ones. But it was not just Millett who declined the invitation — many major feminist figures did, on the grounds that it posed women’s liberation as a question, and that Mailer was involved. “No debate” was already becoming a feminist strategy. By the ‘90s, Mailer had settled into his label “Left Conservative” and had retreated into his study, and Greer had started weighing in on the “men who mutilate themselves and are given passports as statutory females.” Women’s Liberation had largely been successful as a cultural revolution, but according to Mailer, the sex wars had left men adrift. There are plenty of signs that they have yet to find their way.
The only thing worse than someone proving you wrong is someone not respecting you enough to try
Greer and Mailer represented a forceful dialectic; the modern sex wars by contrast are suffused with cowardice and dishonesty. Few women have the erudition of Greer to articulate the revolutionary case, and feminists now refer to the “softness” or empathy inherent in female leadership, or make other rather essentialist appeals to female emotionality. Women increasingly report that “performative males” lie about their politics for sex, and drop the act at the first whiff of rejection — it is no wonder the young women are angry. Men hiding or lying about their politics might have short-term benefits, but it leaves men feeling bitter and women feeling patronised. Those who argue against feminism today are more likely to invoke a mystical unexpressed female self-interest, enabled in part by Louise Perry and Mary Harrington, and amplified by podcast bro-science. In a recent episode of “Modern Wisdom”, they look for sources of gendered polarisation in the “female disposition” rather than taking their radicalism at face value. Few men are willing to put forward the selfish case against feminism — that ultimately, Mailer found it beneath his genius to do the dishes. Mailer would not have the cheek to suggest he had women’s best interests at heart — nor I think would most of his ex-wives.
Amis asked Mailer whether the relationship between the men and women was always a war. Mailer responded that “no; there’s usually a war, and even when there isn’t a war… they really have to be aware of the possibility of that war all the time.” There was little difference in this regard between the intimate relationships between individual men and women, and the broader war between the sexes stirred by the Women’s Liberation movement. We should calm down, and embrace the war between the sexes. Mailer might have had a patronising tone, but he respected the female intellect enough to give the “ladies” a piece of his mind. The only thing worse than someone proving you wrong is someone not respecting you enough to try. All we can ask for is some intellectual honesty — as Mailer and Greer prove, the sexual tension will come naturally.
Enjoying The Critic online? It's even better in print
Subscribe today to Britain's most civilised magazine
Subscribe
