Intercourse, by: Andrea Dworkin - Feminish

Occupation/Collaboration“ iniquity and morbidness” of intercourse under male dominancewould end if women could exercise a materially real selfdeterminationin sex. The woman having material control ofher own sex organs and of each and every act of intercoursewould not lead to a reverse dominance, the man subject to thewoman, because of the nature of the act and the nature of thesex organs involved in the act: this is the sense in which Woodhulltried to face the fundamental questions raised by intercourseas an act with consequences, some perhaps intrinsic.The woman could not forcibly penetrate the man. The womancould not take him over as he took her over and occupy hisbody physically inside. His dominance over her expressed inthe physical reality of intercourse had no real analogue in desireshe might express for him in intercourse: she simply couldnot do to him what he could do to her. Woodhull’s view wasmaterialist, not psychological; she was the first publisher of theCommunist Manifesto in the United States and the first womanstockbroker on Wall Street. She saw sex the way she sawmoney and power: in terms of concrete physical reality. Malenotions of female power based on psychology or ideas wouldnot have addressed for her the real issues of physical dominanceand power in intercourse. The woman would not forceor rape or physically own the man because she could not.Thus, giving the woman power over intercourse was giving herthe power to be equal. Woodhull’s vision was in fact deeply humane,oriented toward sexual pleasure in freedom. Forwomen, she thought and proclaimed (at great cost to herself),freedom must be literal, physical, concrete self-determinationbeginning with absolute control of the sexual organs; this wasa natural right that had been perverted by male dominance—and because of its perversion, sex was for women morbid and