JANUARY 23 – I finally got around to reading Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho, a book that the Guardian describes as one of the greatest novels of our time.

For the uninitiated, American Psycho is about Wall Street investment banker Patrick Bateman, a wealthy young man who knows everything about designer labels and likes torturing women to death.

The scenes are extremely graphic ― hands are nailed to the floor, eyeballs lit with a lighter until they burst and acid poured on genitals, besides dismemberment and cannibalism.

Feminists were outraged when American Psycho was published in 1991. The Los Angeles Chapter of the National Organization for Women (NOW) reportedly called for a boycott of the book.

Entertainment Weekly quoted the NOW chapter president Tammy Bruce as saying: "You won't see books being burned or fireworks when the novel is published. What you will see is our attempt... to show the gatekeepers of this culture... that the women of this country will no longer tolerate gratuitous violence for the sake of profit and entertainment."

I had similar sentiments in my initial reaction after reading the book.

It seemed to glorify misogynistic fantasies in an already violent world where women are beaten by their husbands, raped or sexually harassed.

I realised later that my early analysis of American Psycho was coloured by the fact that the author was male. If it had been a woman writing the book, I’d probably see it as a great modern classic that highlights the terrible violence experienced by women every day around the world.

It’s difficult to remain objective in analysing such a controversial book.

However, we must remember that an author is separate from the characters in a fictional story.

If we put the author’s gender aside, it’s easier to see how American Psycho is actually a brilliant satire of violence against women that we have become so inured to.

Why do the graphic scenes in the book shock us so, while we remain blasé to everyday reports of women being raped, assaulted or murdered by the very people who are supposed to love and protect them?

We cringe at the book's seemingly outrageous scenes of women’s genitals being mutilated by acid, but in real life, women in Pakistan suffer acid attacks from relatives or jilted lovers. 

In real life, women are killed for rejecting men’s sexual advances. 

American Psycho dramatises misogyny, if only to show us that our shock is misdirected. Instead of being disgusted at the many ways in which Bateman tortures his female acquaintances or prostitutes, we should express our horror at the daily violence committed against women.

We should make sexism as socially unacceptable as racism.

We should stop normalising cat-calling as just an irritating, ordinary occurrence in a woman's life.

Far from glamourising the isolated fantasies of a psychopath, the book tells us that such horrible violence is committed by the people closest to us, by men whose suaveness belies their savage nature.

American Psycho also holds up a mirror to the objectification of women and male entitlement to sex. Bateman and other male characters often describe attractive women as “hardbodies.”

None of the female characters in American Psycho stand out, not even Bateman’s empty-headed fiancée who seems to care too much about a Waldorf salad that she didn’t cook. Their only purpose is for sex, torture and dismemberment.

While most men (hopefully) do not share Bateman’s sadistic tendencies, their dismissal of women as equals with thoughts and ideas, as well as their desire to control women’s bodies and sexuality, are all too real.

American Psycho is not frightening. It’s the real world that is.

*This is the personal opinion of the columnist.