Intercourse, by: Andrea Dworkin - Feminish

h i s is n i h i l i s m ; o r t h i s is t r u t h . He h a s t o p u s hin past boundaries. There is the outline of a body, distinct,separate, its integrity an illusion, a tragic deception, because unseenthere is a slit between the legs, and he has to push into it.There is never a real privacy of the body that can coexist withintercourse: with being entered. The vagina itself is muscledand the muscles have to be pushed apart. The thrusting is persistentinvasion. She is opened up, split down the center. She isoccupied—physically, internally, in her privacy.A human being has a body that is inviolate; and when it isviolated, it is abused. A woman has a body that is penetrated inintercourse: permeable, its corporeal solidness a lie. The discourseof male truth—literature, science, philosophy, pornography—callsthat penetration violation. This it does with someconsistency and some confidence. Violation is a synonym forintercourse. At the same time, the penetration is taken to be ause, not an abuse; a normal use; it is appropriate to enter her, topush into (“violate”) the boundaries of her body. She is human,of course, but by a standard that does not include physical privacy.She is, in fact, human by a standard that precludes physicalprivacy, since to keep a man out altogether and for a lifetimeis deviant in the extreme, a psychopathology, a repudiation ofthe way in which she is expected to manifest her humanity.There is a deep recognition in culture and in experiencethat intercourse is both the normal use of a woman, her humanpotentiality affirmed by it, and a violative abuse, her privacy irredeemablycompromised, her selfhood changed in a way thatis irrevocable, unrecoverable. And it is recognized that the useand abuse are not distinct phenomena but somehow a synthesizedreality: both are true at the same time as if they were oneharmonious truth instead of mutually exclusive contradictions.