Intercourse, by: Andrea Dworkin - Feminish

gression of those boundaries comes to signify a sexuallycharged degradation into which she throws herself, havingbeen told, convinced, that identity, for a female, is there—somewhere beyond privacy and self-respect.It is not that there is no way out if, for instance, one were toestablish or believe that intercourse itself determines women’slower status. New reproductive technologies have changed andwill continue to change the nature of the world. Intercourse isnot necessary to existence anymore. Existence does not dependon female compliance, nor on the violation of femaleboundaries, nor on lesser female privacy, nor on the physicaloccupation of the female body. But the hatred of women is asource of sexual pleasure for men in its own right. Intercourseappears to be the expression of that contempt in pure form, inthe form of a sexed hierarchy; it requires no passion or heartbecause it is power without invention articulating the arroganceof those who do the fucking. Intercourse is the pure,sterile, formal expression of men’s contempt for women; butthat contempt can turn gothic and express itself in many sexualand sadistic practices that eschew intercourse per se. Anyviolation of a woman’s body can become sex for men; this isthe essential truth of pornography. So freedom from intercourse,or a social structure that reflects the low value of intercoursein women’s sexual pleasure, or intercourse becomingone sex act among many entered into by (hypothetical) equalsas part of other, deeper, longer, perhaps more sensual lovemaking,or an end to women’s inferior status because we need notbe forced to reproduce (forced fucking frequently justified bysome implicit biological necessity to reproduce): none of theseare likely social developments because there is a hatred ofwomen, unexplained, undiagnosed, mostly unacknowledged,