Intercourse, by: Andrea Dworkin - Feminish

Sophie Tolstoy, having been “ transformed into a person” already,discovered another meaning in the word:To-day I woke up for the first time with a sudden awareness ofthe beauty o f nature; and my feeling was virginal— I mean,without associations, without the recollection o f anyonethrough whom I might have loved the beautiful nature o f thiscountryside in the past. Some time ago I worked out a wholetheory o f the virginal attitude to religion, art, and nature. Religionis pure and virginal when it is not connected with all thoseFathers. . . but connects my heart with God alone. 103Significantly, she found art virginal “when you love it for itsown sake and without reference to the artist. . . ” 104Experienceunmediated by male ego or interpretation is her idea ofvirginity. In the male frame, virginity is a state of passive waitingor vulnerability; it precedes and is antithetical to wholeness,to a woman existing in a way that counts; she countswhen the man, through sex, brings her to life. In the woman’sframe, virginity is a fuller experience of selfhood and identity.In the male frame, virginity is virtually synonymous with ignorance;in the woman’s frame, it is recovery of the capacity toknow by direct experience of the world. Parodying the maleframe, Italo Calvino wrote:We country girls, however noble, have always led retired livesin remote castles and convents. Apart from religious ceremonies,triduums, novenas, gardening, vintaging, whippings,slavery, incest, fires, hangings, invasion, sacking, rape andpestilence, we have no experience. What can a poor nun knowo f the world? 105