Part I is here. As with the previous panel I attended the second half of this one was devoted to questions from the audience. The first person to the mike asked what the authors decided not to include because it was personal. Only Millet's work is autobiographical and she said that it is a question of self-censorship. She decided that she wanted to leave aside as little as possible. But when she started writing she discovered that her memory had censored her against her will and she had to go back to old writing to recapture the memories. Michalopoulou said that fiction writers are always asked, "Is it real?" and that she sometimes feels threatened when people assume that what she has written must be real.
Millet was then asked why she rejected the feminist label and the others were asked if they considered them feminists. I'm always a bit bothered by women who are quick to reject the idea of being feminists so I was happy to hear this question. Millet explained that what she meant was that she never belonged to the feminist movement--historical feminism. She then went on to say that there is now New Feminism in which she recognizes herself much more. She also noted that they call this new feminism "pro-sex" which makes one wonder if old feminism was anti-sex. She also noted that writing her book brought her closer to women and now maybe she is a little bit feminist. None of the others answered the question.
The next question was asked by a man who complimented Millet in a rather awkward and over-the-top manner (And I wasn't the only one who thought so as the women in my row were all smiling at each other while laughing silently). I wasn't quite clear on the question but the compliments basically expressed a belief that Millet's book could change the way people have sex or something to that effect. It was weird. Anyway, Millet said that she was not trying to be a model or set a path for others or change them. Her goal in writing the book was to show that one could write a book entirely about sex that people could read on the subway. She said that erotic literature should not be in a ghetto and artistic works should have the freedom to be graphic.
A question was then asked about the translation of the graphic parts. Sicking said that she finds that translation into English changes the tone a great deal, generally speaking, the changes are not more significant in the sexual parts than in the other parts. Hedaya explained that the sex parts do change quite a bit when translated into English because of the nature of Hebrew. As a modern, spoken language, Hebrew is actually quite young (having only been used for religious purposes for many years) and so when writing sex scenes one runs into the problem of not having enough words. Thus the scenes can seem either sluttish or gynecological.
Someone then asked about visual imagination. Millet replied that the first sexual organ is the eye. Michalopoulou said that she doesn't believe in genre but in good and bad novels and that visual imagination has to do with all writing of novels.
Returning to the subject of an all women's panel, someone asked a question about sexuality versus sex as the domain of women. The panelists (Michalopoulou and Millet answered) basically said that they didn't think sensuality was exclusive to women nor did they think that women are inherently sensual.
For the first time in a PEN event that I have seen, someone then asked the moderator a question. Saytal was asked if he thought he had been chosen to host the panel due to the sexual content of his upcoming book. He said that he thought that was part of it but that it was also to have a man on the panel and due to the idea of the gay man as go-between.
Two questions were then asked and answered simultaneously: one on the danger of intellectualizing something intrinsically carnal and one on the obstacle of feeling ashamed as a woman. Sicking said that she doesn't worry about feeling ashamed because her writing is not autobiographical. She also said, which I thought was more interesting, that the writer is always defending the individual. Michalopoulou said that in re: to intellectualizing, explaining instead of showing is always a danger. She also said that she never worries about self-censorship. Hedaya explained that while she neither censors nor writes about herself she does sometimes get carried away with a scene and have to go back and question what its purpose is and whether or not it is pornographic.
The final question was whether or not it is harder to turn people on with the ever-present erotica in today's society. Millet's answer to this was that as a writer one writes about sex to correct what one finds in the media--to bring a realist approach to sexuality.
And with that, the panel ended. While I do wish that the panel had included a male voice I did find it interesting and I don't have a problem with a panel looking at how female writers approach sex and sexuality, I just think it should have perhaps been billed as such.
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