Intercourse, by: Andrea Dworkin - Feminish

LAWN T E R C O U R S E IS AN A C T IV IT Y H EA VILY R E G U L A T E D BYIlaw: God’s law in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, for instance;the secular state; religious tribunals; tribal codes, customs,and taboos. Communities of every descriptionthroughout time have had rules on intercourse that say withsome specificity that people will fuck in this way and not inthat way; with this person and not with that person; under thiscircumstance and not under that circumstance. The rules arenot benign homilies on the good life, nor are they abstract standards.Those who break the rules can be punished with deathor exile or prison. Society says with the authority of its policepower how intercourse will and will not occur.Any act so controlled by the state, proscribed and prescribedin detail, cannot be private in the ordinary sense. Privacy is essentiallya sphere of freedom immune from regulation by thestate. In that sense, intercourse has never occurred in private.The society and its police (including priests in religious states)have had too much to do with establishing the terms of the actitself: not just what people do and do not do; but also what peo-