Intercourse, by: Andrea Dworkin - Feminish

learned men, skilled orators; she won each debate and the fiftymen were burned. The Emperor wanted Catherine for hismistress and promised that her image would be worshippedeverywhere if only she would make a sacrifice to the gods. Sherefused, for Jesus and her faith. The Emperor threw her intoprison and had her terribly tortured. The Catherine wheel, aninstrument of torture, was invented for the purpose of evisceratingand killing her; but an angel destroyed the wheel.Catherine was killed by decapitation.St. Margaret was the patron saint of peasants and women inchildbirth, the latter not because she had children but becauseshe was swallowed by the devil in the form of a dragon, and herpurity and resistance were so great that he had to spew her upagain whole and unhurt. Viewed as someone miraculously rebornuninjured, she became a symbol of hope in the life-anddeathagony of childbirth. Margaret’s father was a pagan priest,but she was secretly baptized. She tended animals in the fields.The governor, Olybrius, saw her, wanted her, and had herbrought to him. She refused him and declared her faith. She wasimprisoned, flogged, and terribly tortured. In prison she wasswallowed by the dragon; and when she triumphed over thedragon, the devil confronted her again, this time in the form of asympathetic man who told her that she had suffered too much:But she seized his hair, hurled him to the ground, and placingher foot on his head, exclaimed:“ Tremble, great enemy. You now lie under the foot o f awoman. ” 30She was burned, torches applied to various parts of her body, butshe acted as if she felt no pain. She was killed by decapitation.