Reviews

Sex is economic. The display of force and coercion in a heterosexual encounter becomes a homology of the commercial exchange of goods and services that underwrite 20th-century capitalism. Helen DeWitt's smart corporate satire is an unbridled look at being "fucked over," and "fucking over," growing to encompass all its various permutations. DeWitt rips the clothes off the overpaid executive suits, with their fancy MBAs and high salaries, to reveal the naked flesh underneath: libidinal desire, appetite, masochism.

The novel presents an idea: what if, in an era of corporate sexual harassment scandals and second-wave feminism, instead of deprogramming men in blatant rape culture, businesses offered the anonymous bodies of female workers to predatory staff members, so that they might take out their lewd sexual fantasies without punishment. The women involved, likewise, take on a second professional responsibility: to be a "lightning rod," dutifully completing their office responsibilities and covertly getting paid to receive male sexual encounters on top of their more mundane work. What could have been a clever short story, however, takes this premise, of anonymous and covert office prostitution, and explodes it multiple times. What women take on this job? What men take advantage of this business practice? Far from being a quick service for men to "get their fix," the service is designed to satisfy dangerous and violent sexual fantasies. Sexual harassment doesn't happen because some men enjoy sex and female bodies; it happens because some men enjoy violating female bodies, inflicting harm on women in the workplace. Rather than digging into the root cause of this sadistic streak, DeWitt presents a corporate world that shrugs it off, using the "lightning rods" as masks for male sexual aggression.

Social problems cannot be solved through capitalism. Rape culture cannot be tackled by corporations. Instead, these businesses always elect to find a convenient solution. How about hide rape culture in the bathroom stall? How about hide behind a partially-obscuring wall, so that only her lower half visible? It's a cheeky (double entendre intended) play on the ultimate failure of corporations to handle crises. When we rely on fossil fuel companies to find a solution to climate change, their solution is to direct attention away from coal and petroleum consumption, to hush hush keep it behind a bathroom stall, where bodies can be objectified without any threat to a company's bottom line. It's not just the women behind the wall getting screwed, however; corporate-condoned degradation and sexual violence screws us all.

DeWitt frequently thinks about human waste, about shit. What do we do with it? Where does it go? Can someone clean shit for a couple years, save money, and kick-start a law career? Corporations want to hide the shit, to get rid of it, and so shitting and cleaning shit becomes central to corporate decision-making. What the corporations never ask is: does the shit need to exist? Under capitalism, the answer is yes: capitalism only thrives when creating waste, byproducts, and shit.

So get fucked, because we already are.