Intercourse, by: Andrea Dworkin - Feminish

The hedonism was doctrinal, a cabalistic sexual-liberationcreed in which each transgression led to new, more far-rangingsensual experiments: all licensed by the rabbi who shrewdlyinterpreted the will of the coming Messiah. The rabbi himself,the leader of the law, “ explained to young matrons ways to enflametheir husbands and whispered in their ears that... thecommandment against adultery was void. ” 19Following an everexpanding new doctrine of sensuality as divinely sanctioned,men were exchanging wives, and incest too was indulged in:every lust was fulfilled. The authority of religion, in the personof the rabbi, insisted on an ideological commitment to andjustification for promiscuity and sensual indulgence; and behaviorconformed to the demands of ideology, the ecstaticsubstitute for Leviticus. Male authority, religious authority,and civic authority all converged, indistinguishable, at thepoint of entry into a woman’s body; and it was in this contextthat Rechele was sexually possessed, first by mortal men,these very authorities, then by a dybbuk. And in this same contextthe religious community of the Jews was transformed intoa social pornography of possession: a socially established imperativetoward sensual derangement; religion sexualized sothat it became the doctrinal imperative for the sexual possessionof women—by men, by force— even to the point of annihilationand death. Each act of possession is a sensualderangement for the woman—physical, overpowering, consuming;and each act of possession illuminates the meaning ofsex in which the woman is owned by the man, her body becominghis. The physical and spiritual impact of this sexualdominance is on the integrity of the woman. She is necessarily(because of the nature of the act) unable to withstand its assaultiveintensity; she is overwhelmed by it, driven to physical