Intercourse, by: Andrea Dworkin - Feminish

will we ever know? ) questions of female freedom. We takeoaths to truth all right, on the holy penis before entry. In so doing,we give up the most important dimension of what it meansto be human: the search for the meaning of our real experience,including the sheer invention of that meaning— calledcreativity when men do it. If the questions make the holy penisunhappy, who could survive what the answers might do? Experienceis chosen for us, then, imposed on us, especially inintercourse, and so is its meaning. We are allowed to have intercourseon the terms men determine, according to the rulesmen make. We do not have to have an orgasm; that terribleburden is on them. We are supposed to comply whether wewant to or not. Want is active, not passive or lethargic. Especiallywe are supposed to be loyal to the male meanings of intercourse,which are elaborate, dramatic, pulling in elements ofboth myth and tragedy: the king is dead! long live the king! —and the Emperor wears designer jeans. We have no freedomand no extravagance in the questions we can ask or the interpretationswe can make. We must be loyal; and on what scalewould we be able to reckon the cost of that? Male sexual discourseon the meaning of intercourse becomes our language. Itis not a second language even though it is not our native language;it is the only language we speak, however, with perfectfluency even though it does not say what we mean or what wethink we might know if only we could find the right word andenough privacy in which to articulate it even just in our ownminds. We know only this one language of these folks who enterand occupy us: they keep telling us that we are differentfrom them; yet we speak only their language and have none, ornone that we remember, of our own; and we do not dare, itseems, invent one, even in signs and gestures. Our bodies