[In the following essay, Perrin discusses Hitchens's controversial position on abortion and defense of misogynist rap lyrics.]

Is Christopher Hitchens a feminist's enemy? From his pulpit in The Nation, Hitchens has issued columns on abortion and sexist rap lyrics, which drew a storm of repudiation from women's-rights advocates. Hitchens, who writes for Harper's and women's magazines and recently hilariously humbled pro-war Charlton Heston in a CNN debate, has never directly responded to feminist critics. Until now.

In April 1989, he wrote: “I have always been convinced that the term ‘unborn child’ is a genuine description of material reality. Obviously, the fetus is alive. …” So Hitchens suggested a “historic compromise” with right-to-lifers, which would make free contraception available, promote adoption, and provide free abortions to rape or incest victims, or women whose health is threatened. He made no mention of making abortion available under other circumstances, winding up: “It is a pity that instead of taking this course, the majority of feminists and their allies have stuck to the dead ground of ‘Me Decade’ possessive individualism. …”

Now he tells Mother Jones:

On the question of the right to choose, either I have to convict myself of expressing myself very badly indeed or of being willfully misunderstood, or maybe a bit of both. I don't think that the concept ‘unborn child’ is a nonsensical term. I think it's now agreed that the fetus is not a mere extension of the anatomy of the woman, that it is, at least in potentia, human life. … There is, in my opinion, no choice but choice. There is no way of avoiding the choice position. What I said was that conditions could be created by politics, by actual state intervention, if you will, where people might wish to exercise that choice less, and that would be a good thing. That there should be, therefore, a presumption in favor of the unborn. But if that fails, obviously you can't push it to the point of saying, ‘We will force you to carry a child to term.’ Everything in one revolts against that.

The column, says Hitchens, “brought on the accusation that I was a patriarchal fascist and quite a lot of other things I'm not and that I think the women's movement has rescued other men from having to be.”

Last July, Hitchens defended 2 Live Crew's lyrics, including: Jack and Jill went up the hill to have a little fun / Jack got made, kicked Jill in the ass / 'Cause she couldn't make him cum. “I'm sorry,” he wrote, “but I think that's very funny. … It's obvious to this reviewer that the Crew should be let alone, and that their foulmouthed attitude toward the gentler sex is a good-sounding excuse for a youth-hating and surreptitiously bigoted prosecution.”

Says Hitchens today:

It didn't seem to me that [the lyrics] expressed loathing for women. Although they were very filthy, they were just trying it on to see how far you can go, extract humor from the situation; in other words, to use something menacing, the idea of the physical edge of danger that's involved in sexual intercourse. … I thought a good case could be made for Luther Campbell as a very crude, very definite satirist. The responses were, ‘How can you possibly say that's anything other than an incitement to rape?’ No doubt many of the letters were by people who would have, if it were in their power, prevented those songs from being sung or printed.

Repression is the problem in the first place. The answer to it is complicated. We have a lot of sublimated misery and rage to deal with where sex is concerned. Whatever works, we know what doesn't work: repression doesn't.

Hitchens puts this wider frame on both debates:

I was never thrilled by the sudden discovery that the personal was political. I thought it had potential for stupidity and for conservatism as well, that your politics were defined by who you were and not what you thought, let alone by how you thought. Therefore, by being a homosexual or female, or, for that matter, being white, you already established most of what you could contribute and most of what people expect of you—a kind of group-think, and also a kind of grievance-think, or, in the case of being white, guilt-think. There's nothing to learn except which faction is which. It skips the role of ideas, and thus I'm not surprised to find some of the same people are interested in limiting what may be said and thought. They haven't got too much to gain from the open conduct of an argument.