Intercourse, by: Andrea Dworkin - Feminish

The legends of both saints were well known in Joan’s timeand environment, common stories for everyone, not arcane anecdotesfor the educated. The narrative details were so familiarthat an evil and stupid person was even referred to, in the commonparlance, as an “ Olybrius. ” Women were named afterthese saints and celebrated name days. These saints were figuresof mass adoration in stories of adventure, romance, andheroism. There was an elaborate and epic imagery in thechurches to communicate visually the drama and scale of theirbravery and martyrdom. The artifacts and paintings in thechurches told the stories of the saints and their heroism andsuffering in dramatic, graphic pictures; a bold, articulate, mesmerizingiconography not rivaled for effect until the inventionof the wide screen in cinema. St. Catherine was pictured withthe wheel named after her, St. Margaret with a dragon, bothwith swords. They were shown with swords because they hadbeen decapitated, but the abridgement of the narrative into amartial image conveyed militance, not just martyrdom. Eachfaced what amounted to a state-waged war against her person:the whole power of the state—military, physical, sadistic— arrayedagainst her will and her resistance and the limits of abody fragile because human. This goes beyond the timorousambition of today: a woman fights off a rapist. Each of thesewomen fought off a rapist who used the apparatus of the state—prison and torture— to destroy her as if she were an enemy nation.Each refused the male appropriation of her body for sex,the right to which is a basic premise of male domination; eachrefused a man in whom male power and state power wereunited, a prototype for male power over women; and eachviewed the integrity of her physical body as synonymous withthe purity of her faith, her purpose, her self-determination, her