Intercourse, by: Andrea Dworkin - Feminish

intercourse expressed both the opposition and the hierarchy.Intercourse became the “natural” expression of the different“natures” of men and women, each pushed away from having acommon human nature by laws that prohibited any recognitionof sameness; each pushed into a sexual antagonism createdby the dominance and submission that was the onlyintimacy they shared.There were also smaller laws, in different countries andcultures, created by interpretation; philosophers and scholarstook dogma and embellished it; there were customs that operatedwith the force of law. Many of the smaller rules were designedto restrain men so that they would not be seduced bypleasure from the obligations of power. Maimonides, in histwelfth-century codification of sexual ethics according to Hebrewlaw, said that a man “ should not cohabit except to maintainthe health of his body and to preserve his race (literally: hisseed). . . ” 15Unmarried men were not supposed to hold theirpenises because they might then have carnal thoughts. Marriedmen were allowed to hold their penises while urinating only.Men were not supposed to have intercourse by artificial lightor during the day, except for the scholar who could “envelophimself in darkness by spreading his cloak over himself andthen have intercourse. ” 16Men were not supposed to have intercoursewith their wives while thinking of other women norwhen drunk nor “in the midst of strife or hatred. ” 17There aresome warnings against coercing the wife; and there are relatedpassages advising the man to have intercourse in the middle ofthe night when his food is digested; he “should converse andjest a little. . . in order to put her at ease and he should thencohabit with modesty and not with impudence, and he shouldseparate immediately. ” 18Maimonides thought that one purpose