Intercourse, by: Andrea Dworkin - Feminish

there could be no private conscience, no personal relationshipto God, no way of life that was self-chosen, self-actualized, selfsustained.Joan died for this right of physical privacy fromwhich other rights could be derived, without which otherrights were meaningless—and in this sense, she died for and inbehalf of all women.The male clothing signified this right both for her and forthe Inquisitors. The Inquisitors wanted her stripped, violated,submissive; out of her male clothes, the equivalent of naked,fragile, accessible, female. She asked that if they found herguilty they allow her to wear a long dress and hood to her execution:“Asked why, since she has said that she wears man’sdress by God’s command, she asks a woman’s dress to wear inher last hours, She answered: 'It suffices that it be long. ’”50Anticipatingthe humiliation of public exposure, the vulnerability,the shame, she wants the privacy of a body clothed from headto toe. Female clothing or not, it was privacy she wanted.Repeatedly, she asks the Inquisitors to let her hear Mass,and they try to get her to say that, in exchange, she will give upmale clothes. She capitulates this far: “ Make me a long dress,right down to the ground, without a train, and give it to me togo to Mass, and then when I come back I will put on theclothes I now have. ”51 “Without a train” means without femininity—female ornamentation licensing invasion by look, bytouch, in thought. She did not want the clothes of sex; shewanted clothing that was a barrier to invasion by look, bytouch, in thought.After her recantation, Joan was returned to her prison celldressed female, and she was put back in chains. English soldiers,male, stayed in the cell day and night to guard her. Hervirginity, if it had any meaning, was undoubtedly now seen as