Intercourse, by: Andrea Dworkin - Feminish

the encounter, ” she writes. There is room for escape, she suggests,even in the here and now, even in the country she refersto as Amerika (more on this later), from the erotics of powerdifferential.But if one finds this kind of sublime sexual release specificallyin relinquishing control, what then? What does it mean tobe aroused by dominance in the societal context Dworkindescribes? And if it turns us on, do we care?The way women have eroticized sexual possession is of greatinterest to Dworkin, of course. “The experience of sexual possessionfor women is real and literal, ” she writes, “without anymagical or mystical dimension to it: getting fucked and beingowned are inseparably the same; together, being one and thesame, they are sex for women under male dominance as a socialsystem. ” She may not have been saying all sex is rape, butclearly she was suggesting that most sex is something damnclose when you live in a patriarchy. . . and where else are we tolive? In this world, which is the only world that exists, “ critiquesof rape, pornography, and prostitution are 'sex-negative’without qualification or examination, perhaps because so manymen use these ignoble routes of access and domination to getlaid, and without them the number of fucks would so significantlydecrease that men might nearly be chaste. ”Really?Do we believe that “most women are not distinct, private individualsto most men”? (Still? ) Is voluntary intercourse instigatedby female lust and desire something so uncommon? Areabuse and plunder the norm, mutual satisfaction the exceptionso rare it proves the rule?Your answer to these questions—and to many othersDworkin poses in this book—will depend on the experience of