o in U.S. News & World Report: "The book is totally hateful - in effect, a how-to manual on the torture and dismemberment of women." It may be noted that Bateman's victims in the novel are not limited to women. In the course of the novel, men, dogs, and even a child are also slaughtered. Nevertheless, the most violently detailed descriptions are concerned with Bateman's hate-crimes against women. In various scenes, accounts are given of Bateman using nail guns, scissors, saws, and other implements to mutilate women. In one passage, Bateman uses electrodes to explode a woman's breast. In one particularly disturbing section of the novel, Bateman forces a huge rat into a woman's vagina with the intention that it will gnaw its way back out again. Because of these types of descriptions, the National Organization for Women (NOW) in Los Angeles claimed that the novel "is socially irresponsible and legitimizes inhuman and savage violence masquerading as sexuality." Even before it was published, NOW called for a boycott of the book.
In contrast to this point of view, some people have argued that the descriptions in American Psycho actually help in deterring violence against women. Norman Mailer, for example, has claimed that "the female victims in American Psycho are tortured so hideously that men with the liveliest hostility toward women will, if still sane, draw back in horror." Nora Rawlinson, the editor of Library Journal, has pointed out that the controversy over Ellis' book encourages debate on the topic of sexual violence and thus helps in the search for solutions to the problem. In her words: "The very fact that NOW is using American Psycho as a way to bring attention to its own efforts to combat violence against women helps to make that point." Christopher Hitchens, in The Nation, has indicated that the disturbing descriptions in American Psycho are appropriate because they reflect the horrifying realities of mode...