The Gangbang Aesthete

a book review of Catherine Millet's
The Sexual Life of 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 excel 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 Anaïs 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 aesthete.

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? La Liberté? 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 Nicholson 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 crêpes 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?

Buy the Book

Watch Dr. Suzy talk about The Sexual Life of Catherine M." on "The Good News" on

(aired Monday, September 9, 2002)

Check out Dr. Suzy's "The Gangbang Asthete:
The Sexual Life of Catherine M." in

Letters in response to Dr. Suzy's
"The Gangbang Asthete:
The Sexual Life of Catherine M."

Subject: Your note on catherine
Date: Mon, 28 Oct 2002 15:06:09 +1100
From: "Cesar" <cesarbenalcazar@optusnet.com.au>
To: liberties@blockbooks.com>
Dear Susan: How lovely putting things not only in the right perspective but also providing a lot of distinctions! I have been laughing all the way through. Thanks!! How about Sex and the City? Regards, Cesar Benalcazar

Subject: Cathrine M.
Date: Fri, 6 Sep 2002 08:16:03 -0600
From: "Gary J. Klein" <gklein@networld.com>
To: <liberties@blockbooks.com>
Greetings! Loved your article; gutsy, strong, in your face and to the point. Hope you write more. Sincerely, Gary

Subject: The Gangbang Aesthete
Date: Fri, 6 Sep 2002 12:10:46 -0700 (PDT)
From: Brian Hellauer <brianhell@yahoo.com>
To: liberties@blockbooks.com
Dear Dr. Block, I very much enjoyed this piece on counterpunch.org. However, it could've used a steadier hand at the copy editing wheel -- it's aesthete, not asthete, and Nicholson Baker, not Nicholas. My quibbling nits aside, keep up the your very good work. Regards,BH

Subject: comment
Date: Sat, 5 Sep 2002 00:51:02 -0700
From: "Barbara" <barbara@scattercreek.com>
To: liberties@blockbooks.com
Your article, "The Sexual Life Catherine M.", was vile and repulsive. Maybe that type of woman is a gay man trapped in a woman's body, but no normal woman wants to be treated like that. It's a shame to see the CounterPunch website lower itself to showcase your article.

Subject: The Gangbang Asthete
Date: Wed, 4 Sep 2002 21:43:37 +0530
From: "Sundeep Dougal" <sundeep@outlookindia.com>
Organization: Outlook India
To: "Dr. Susan Block" <drsuzyb@blockbooks.com>
Dear Dr. Susan, Greetings. Saw the above at counterpunch, and wondered if, as before, we could take the liberty of putting it up on our website. Hope you have been well. With warm regards, Sincerely, Sundeep Dougal, Executive Editor, Outlook India

Subject: millet
Date: Tue, 3 Sep 2002 12:19:38 -0400
From: "Kit Schmauch" <chriskit@nh.adelphia.net>
To: <liberties@blockbooks.com>
Hi, Your article-review posted on Counterpunch assumes that the content of Millet's book is true. I'm of the opinion that it is largely a product of her fantasies (a la Anais Nin). Dave S.

Subject: The Sexual Life of You Know Who
Date: Mon, 2 Sep 2002 13:12:13 +0800
From: "Sidney Shapiro" <shapiros@public3.bta.net.cn>
To: liberties@blockbooks.com>
Dear Susan, I loved your piece in Counterpunch. For the American celebrity whose sexual exploits are truly massive the accolade surely belongs to President George W. Bush. He tried to fuck the entire American public and most of the rest of the world. Although he didn't succeed, no one can say it was for lack of diligence. What a memoir that man could write! Sidney Shapiro (of Brooklyn and Beijing)

Subject: On the sexual life of Catherine Millet...
Date: Sun, 1 Sep 2002 20:53:43 -0700
From: stich01@earthlink.net
To: liberties@blockbooks.com
Perceptive point on why men have enslaved and dominated women from times immemorial. But regarding Millet...has it ever ocurred to anyone that the woman is a nymphomaniac? I'm familiar with the cultural mores of the US and France...regardless of how Victorian yet hypocritical one is when compared with the other...there are examples of sexual behavior that fit both. Millet is a nymphomaniac, regarless of country or culture...She's also middle aged and, I'm sure has suffered much more than just the occasional clap attack...

Subject: (no subject)
Date: Sat, 31 Aug 2002 20:16:34 -0700
From: Anthony Mata <amata@earthlink.net>
To: liberties@blockbooks.com
What's the big deal? People have been fucking for millennia. There are approximately 6 billion folks on this planet each the product of one or more fuckings. I think a good book about celebrity fucking would be best initiated by you with a forward by someone in your distant past who begins "...in my wildest dreams I never thought she would/could, ever do..." I think it would be better if we all went naked. We would laugh more.

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