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SEXUALITY FOR SALE 217
depends on our knowledge that women do not usually drink Guinness—they are
‘ladylike’ (and castrated): it depends on the difference between women’s ‘lack’
and men’s plenitude—the full glass of Guinness. However, that difference is
disavowed in the condensation of ‘Ladylike—Guinness’: women can and do
drink Guinness but remain ‘ladylike’. But the future pouring of the commodity
Guinness between the as-yet-closed lips—the as-yet-‘ladylike’ lips— is also a
metaphor for the sexual act: man’s penetration of the lips, the vagina, which
provides affirmation of women’s ‘castration’. We are dared to drink Guinness,
but our daring, after the grounds of ‘femininity’ have slightly shifted, continues
to place us firmly within the conventional bounds of patriarchal relations.