72.3b

“Norman Mailer Visits Gaston Hall.” Article-interview by Emily Durso. Georgetown Voice, 15 February, 12-13. At Georgetown University on 11 February, Mailer spoke to an American literature class and then debated Barbette Blackington, a professor of sociology at American University. The title of the debate (which Mailer did not care for), was “Can Norman Mailer Find Happiness During Male Menopause?” He said that if he had tried “to hold a debate on the menopause of Barbette Blackington, her praetorian guard would have run him out of the auditorium.” Mailer listened to Blackington’s comments on male menopause, and replied that if people got the idea that he was a chauvinist pig from Kate Millett’s attack on him in her study Sexual Politics (1970), then they didn’t know how to read. He stated that Millett had extensively quoted him out of context and wondered how she got a doctorate from Columbia for a dissertation that was inaccurate. Further, he said that he found the Women’s Liberation Movement both exciting and frightening: “The one thing I can’t stand is that we must always have respect for women in all circumstances. What kind of totalitarian hogwash is that?”