Intercourse, by: Andrea Dworkin - Feminish

oom painted white, dressed in white satin; an Ark and Torahwere put in the room, and ten women were there with her as aminyan to pray, and women read from the Torah (all forbidden).Rechele was veiled. She stopped eating and ignored allphysical needs. Her skin became translucent. Her body lit upin the dark. And at midnight each night the rabbi came in,uncovered her, woke her up, kissed her feet. He told her that“ 'The Divine Parents are coupling face to face. . . This is thehour of union. ’”36Then he fucked her. She went in and out ofcomas.In this possession, Rechele is honored by the community.Reb Gedaliya gives her an identity in which she can knowthings and talk and pray and in which she is respected as holy:only by belonging to a man can she have a social identity; andthe full meaning of belonging to a man—for the community—isin the fuck without which she is socially erased. The cost toher is literally her mind, her body, and eventually her power tobe conscious on the simple biological plane: she becomescomatose. Her social identity—contingent on being carnallypossessed—is at the cost of her human existence— a paradigmaticcontradiction for women under male dominance.The degeneracy of her new husband is progressive; so that,for instance, he brings a prostitute into their home, engages ingroup sex and other debauchery, and aggressively commitsacts of sacrilege. Possessing is ambitious, imperialistic, alwaysextending its range; being possessed tends toward death— anend of self altogether, a sexuality in which the woman is in astate of exile from the human condition as such. There is nothingpersonal left to her, no personality, no individuality, no sovereigntyover herself, no self. She is used as female, used up,but the using of her does not stop; and sex is a mortification of