Intercourse, by: Andrea Dworkin - Feminish

Dworkin’s response to this incident was her first act ofpurposeful bravery: she wrote scores of letters to newspapersdetailing what had happened, and the story was reported inthe New York Times, among other papers, which led to a governmentinvestigation of the prison. It was eventually torndown, and in its place today is the idyllic flower garden at thefoot of the Jefferson Market clock tower on Sixth Avenue inManhattan.Like many members of the women’s liberation movement,Dworkin started out as an antiwar activist and found her way tofeminism when she became disillusioned with the men of theNew Left. She wrote about the experience in Mercy, a book of“fiction” about a girl named Andrea, who, like Dworkin, wasfrom Camden, New Jersey, and was molested at around 9,protested the war, and was jailed and sexually assaulted in aNew York City prison. “I went to the peace office and insteadof typing letters for the peace boys I wrote to newspapers sayingI had been hurt and it was bad and not all right and becauseI didn’t know sophisticated words I used the words Iknew and they were very shocked to death; and the peace boyswere in the office and I refused to type a letter for one of thembecause I was doing this and he read my letter out loud toeveryone in the room over my shoulder and they all laughed atme, and I had spelled America with a 'k’ because I knew I wasin Kafka’s world, not Jefferson’s, and I knew Amerika was thereal country I lived in. ” (In some of her books, Dworkin’s writingechoes with the influence of the Beats. Allen Ginsberg wasan early mentor who later became a nemesis of Dworkin’s becauseshe despised his sexual pursuit of underage boys. )Because she wanted adventure and experience, and becauseshe wanted to escape all the media attention following her battle