Ljuben Dilov

THE LAST INTERVIEW OF ADAM SOUSBE

The just ended Year of Man has brought a new name to the historical
scene - Adam Sousbe. He first made the headlines with his film
treatise "What Am I - What Is She? ", as well as with his promotion
tours which gave an unexpected impetus to the rather anaemic men's
liberation movement. Our editor Sazi Vag had the happy idea of
accompanying him on his last tour and the even happier chance, by
journalistic standards, to be the last person to talk with him.

As reported in our morning edition, Adam Sousbe was shot last night
by his namesake, the philosophy student Adam Sousbe. During the
preliminary investigation the killer declared that the victim had
disgraced their common name and the honor of their sex with his
attempts to return men to their unnatural way of life of a thousand
years ago.

SAZI VAG: Do you consider the Year of Man to have been of benefit to
society?

ADAM SOUSBE: By declaring 2980 the Year of Man, the Planetary
Council, 85 % of whose members are women, only reacted, in fact, to
the already existing struggle for men's rights. The motives, though,
as far as I can see, were neither very clever, nor sufficiently humane.
In this way the Planetary Council gave the ever-swelling ranks of
restless men a bitter-sweet lollipop to suck on, in the hope that peace
would finally reign in society. Even so, the year has been useful. In
two aspects. First, designating an year as The Year of Man gave
official recognition to the fact that a male problem exists. Until now
the main problem was that our hardship had never been officially
admitted, that it had never been voiced in public, due to which most
men were torpidly buried in oppression; their rebellion remained
individual and chaotic, resulting in mass neuroses among them.
Secondly, in most parts of the Mother Planet the Year of Man was
celebrated with a monstrous cynicism. This was not a Year of Man, but
a World Championship of mockery and jokes about men, with every
woman a willing contender. Women used this year to frolic and have
fun to the hilt, naturally showing the worst of themselves. That's the
benefit of it.

SAZI VAG: So you are capable of mockery, too! (laughs) You are also
personally affected, no doubt. This year the mass media paid a lot of
attention to you and, I must admit, not exactly in a very flattering
manner, either.

ADAM SOUSBE: I was constantly bespattered and soiled. That did not
surprise me, but still, it hurt a lot. I had expected at least the more
serious journalists to abstain from attacking me personally in such an
irrational fashion, by focusing on the lower regions of my body. I was
called an 'emancipath' and 'emancipathetic', by analogy with the word
'psychopath'. I was pictured as loud, frigid, frustrated, ugly and
hysterical. They tagged this image onto anybody who decided to fight
for men's lib in an organized way. This started immediately after the
first screening of my film 'What Am I - What Is She? '. I kept asking
myself how they could possibly write and say such shameless things
about me. I felt raped, I screamed sometimes from the pain of it all, I
trampled the newspapers with my feet, I even broke the screen of my
holovision. Then I got used to it... I told myself: there is probably no
other way, seeing that nearly all the decision-makers in the media are
women.

This reaction, however, is just one side of the struggle. On the other
hand there are the thousands of letters which I receive from those
men who have established an inner, sympathetic contact with me
through my film and my books. Strange men sometimes secretly shake
my hand on the streets, whispering with hope and timid faith: 'Keep up
the good work, old man!' It is these things which have rewarded me a
thousandfold for your abuse.

SAZI VAG: It was not only your personal activity that the media
reported in this spirit. The men's liberation movement itself is
regarded as a funny alliance of eccentrics. Isn't this also due to your
inability to champion your cause?

ADAM SOUSBE: I've already told you: this way of reporting things is
typical of the mass media. In our allegedly democratic society male
journalists who are allowed to make their own decisions as to what
and how to report are few and far between. The mass media, as well as
most middle and high-level posts, are the domain of women. And every
woman, no matter how enlightened and tolerant she might be, has at
least a little bit of the dictator in her. It is only natural for them to
react thus, when the issue at stake threatens to shake the very
foundations of our polished and sugar-coated matriarchate.

I can admit, though, that many of the men who join the movement
easily provoke such a flippant and contemptuous attitude, in one way
or another. They are still unaware of the real nature of the struggle
for their rights, they are unable to master its philosophy. Their
protest tends to be selfish and anarchistic, aimed at a sole oppressor
- the woman in their home, rather than against the matriarchal
institution itself. Joining the struggle, they are still unable to see
the institution which has enslaved them as the real enemy. They see
only their own wife instead and they want to revenge themselves on
her. This does, in fact, turn some of them into clamoring, frustrated
hysterics. This is why for the time being our mission is essentially to
enlighten and instruct. Whatever we manage to wrest from society
along the way will be a small battle won, a battle paving the road
towards our future victory. The Year of Man was the first of them.

SAZI VAG: What oppresses you most, what is the first thing you want
to change first in the present-day situation of men?

ADAM SOUSBE: If you try to be at least a little bit unprejudiced, you
will see it for yourself. First of all let us look at the prevailing
views, which are unfortunately still shared by most men. It is
considered that Nature has destined man for two things: to create
children and to go hunting in order to feed them. If science is to be
believed, this was indeed the case in the primitive matriarchate. The
men went hunting and the women managed life in the cave and in the
tribe. But what about the situation today, in the year 2980? The year
in which from early childhood onward we are taught that we men must
stay true to our own nature?

It is women who once more manage the distribution of goods and take
care of the global and everyday problems of human coexistence. I can
even concede that they manage no worse that we would, but what is
there left for us to do? Robots produce the goods, robots go shopping
for them, robots clean the house, robots feed and educate the
children, which in most cases are not even truly ours, because the
transplant system of controlled reproduction and heredity selection
has rendered the term 'father' ridiculous. Man has been turned into a
primitive tool for the amusement of women - in the nuptial bedroom
(where the untiring and ubiquitous robot frequently replaces him also)
and in the stadiums where he is unleashed to prove his masculinity in
front of artificial bears and tigers, or by shooting automated rabbits
with a bow and arrow. At best, under the influence of their atavistic
maternal feelings, women treat us as eternal babies who must
constantly be admonished and instructed. Take another look at your
beloved mass media! There, man is nothing more than a competitor in
some favored by women sport, or else a fashion model. In any movie, in
any kind of show, man is pictured as so and so many kilograms of meat
with specific proportions. This has long ago stopped having anything
in common with the cult towards beautiful bodies, this is plain
pornography. Why does, for instance, every ad for a new brand of
shampoo have a male figure on it, and a nude one at that? True, men
are more beautiful than women, but this kind of attitude undermines
our dignity.

Take a look in any office! No physically well-built man can find a
decent job without giving Caesar his due, if you'll excuse the ancient
expression! What I meant to say was: without his lady-boss getting a
piece of his most cherished possession. Thus man is corrupted as an
employee. The offices are full of men who do nothing but drink endless
cups of coffee all day long, gossiping about fashion and sports, and
rotting in a bureaucratic lethargy just because each of them is some
lady's man.

SAZI VAG: These are strong words, indeed! But let's look at the men
themselves. As far as I know your opponents among them are, for the
time being, a thousandfold more than your followers.

ADAM SOUSBE: True. But don't forget about the need for historical
development. Eight hundred years of matriarchate are not easily wiped
out from their poor brains. Then again, slavery, too, has its comforts
and coziness for the lazy, the square, the conformist. The pride of
place among my many opponents belongs to those naturally perverted
or morally degraded men whose innermost wish is to be women, to be
like women, so as to be able to get to the top of the Establishment. In
addition to that the majority of the male population is still unable to
shake off its political apa...

SAZI VAG: At this point our conversation was terminated forever by
the silent flash of the laser shot with which the unusually handsome
and virile student of philosophy Adam Sousbe (age 23, height 188 cm,
hair blond, eyes brown, a superb hunter, university lion-tearing and
continental sling-shot champion, terminated the leader of the
emancipaths. Details of the incident were reported in our morning
edition.

STOP PRESS

This issue had already gone to press when a report reached us that
the victim was not a real man, not even a real human being. The
preliminary investigation has established that the corpse belongs to
the Astro-stellar class psychorobot who disappeared five years ago
from the Pluto colony under circumstances which still remain unclear.
Deserting from his duties, which are defined as the conquest of space
for humanity, the damaged psychorobot secretly returned to trouble
the Mother Planet. A check has already been initiated to establish
whether other psychorobots who have criminally ignored the fourth
law of robotics are not hiding behind the guise of men's lib activists.
The fourth law of robotics stipulates that a robot is always obliged
to identify himself as a robot. For more details see tomorrow's issue.
For the time being the editorial board urges its readers to rally
behind the just call: FREEDOM FOR ADAM SOUSBE, THE MAN!