Intercourse, by: Andrea Dworkin - Feminish

States, sodomy was criminal, with rare exception a capitalcrime. The language of Leviticus was lifted, for instance, byConnecticut in its criminal sodomy statute of 1642:T hat if any man shall lie with mankind, as he lieth with wom ­ankind, both o f them have committed abomination; they shallbe put to death, except it shall appear that one o f the partieswas forced or under fifteen years o f age. . . 8Typically in secular law sodomy was characterized as “ detestable,” “ abominable, ” “horrible,” “against nature, ” and, inthis superb effort, an 1837 North Carolina statute, “ the abominableand detestable crime against nature, not [to] be namedamong Christians. ”9The key elements are simple, clear, consistent:against nature, abominable, detestable, lethal. In the nineteenthcentury, capital punishment was increasingly replacedby imprisonment, often for life, and hard labor as the penaltiesof choice. The first criminal sodomy statute to be repealed inthe United States was repealed by the state of Illinois in 1962.The concept of a crime against nature, male nature, was sopowerful that it resonated beyond the law itself, God’s or man’s.In culture it came to mean that the person who did the act had thenature that was the crime. He was too feminine in a world of real,natural, unpolluted masculinity. Norman Mailer, for instance,combined the best of Leviticus and Proust when he wrote:Yes, it is the irony o f prison life that it is a world where everythingis homosexual and yet nowhere is the condition o f beinga feminine male more despised. It is because one is used, one isa woman without the power to be female, one is fucked withouta womb. . . 10