Intercourse, by: Andrea Dworkin - Feminish

Intercourse in reality is a use and an abuse simultaneously, experiencedand described as such, the act parlayed into the illuminatedheights of religious duty and the dark recesses ofmorbid and dirty brutality. She, a human being, is supposed tohave a privacy that is absolute; except that she, a woman, has ahole between her legs that men can, must, do enter. This hole,her hole, is synonymous with entry. A man has an anus that canbe entered, but his anus is not synonymous with entry. Awoman has an anus that can be entered, but her anus is not synonymouswith entry. The slit between her legs, so simple, sohidden— frankly, so innocent— for instance, to the child wholooks with a mirror to see if it could be true— is there an entranceto her body down there? and something big comes intoit? (how?) and something as big as a baby comes out of it?(how?) and doesn’t that hurt? — that slit that means entry intoher— intercourse—appears to be the key to women’s lower humanstatus. By definition, as the God who does not exist madeher, she is intended to have a lesser privacy, a lesser integrity ofthe body, a lesser sense of self, since her body can be physicallyoccupied and in the occupation taken over. By definition, as theGod who does not exist made her, this lesser privacy, this lesserintegrity, this lesser self, establishes her lesser significance: notjust in the world of social policy but in the world of bare, true,real existence. She is defined by how she is made, that hole,which is synonymous with entry; and intercourse, the act fundamentalto existence, has consequences to her being that maybe intrinsic, not socially imposed.There is no analogue anywhere among subordinated groupsof people to this experience of being made for intercourse: forpenetration, entry, occupation. There is no analogue in occupiedcountries or in dominated races or in imprisoned dissidents or