Intercourse, by: Andrea Dworkin - Feminish

classes, and so we preserve the privacy of the former while insistingon the equality of the latter. Women flourish as distinct,brilliant individuals of worth in the feminine condition, includingin intercourse, and have distinct, valuable qualities. Formen and women, fucking is freedom; and for men and women,fucking is the same, especially if the woman chooses both theman and the act. Intercourse is a private act engaged in by individualsand has no implicit social significance. Repression, asopposed to having intercourse, leads to authoritarian socialpolicies, including those of male dominance. Intercourse doesnot have a metaphysical impact on women, although, of course,particular experiences with individual men might well have apsychological impact. Intercourse is not a political condition orevent or circumstance because it is natural. Intercourse is notoccupation or invasion or loss of privacy because it is natural.Intercourse does not violate the integrity of the body because itis natural. Intercourse is fun, not oppression. Intercourse ispleasure, not an expression or confirmation of a state of beingthat is either ontological or social. Intercourse is because theGod who does not exist made it; he did it right, not wrong; andhe does not hate women even if women hate him. Liberals refusecategorically to inquire into even a possibility that there isa relationship between intercourse per se and the low status ofwomen. Conservatives use what appears to be God’s work tojustify a social and moral hierarchy in which women are lesserthan men. Radicalism on the meaning of intercourse— its politicalmeaning to women, its impact on our very being itself—istragedy or suicide. “ The revolutionary, ” writes Octavio Pazparaphrasing Ortega y Gasset, “is always a radical, that is, he[sic] is trying to correct the uses themselves rather than themere abuses. . . ” *With intercourse, the use is already imbued