Intercourse, by: Andrea Dworkin - Feminish

nature. In English, a graceful language, she is even called apiece. It is likely to be her personal experience that she is insufficientlyloved. Her subjectivity itself is second-class, her experiencesand perceptions inferior in the world as she is inferiorin the world. Her experience is recast into a psychologicallypejorative judgment: she is never loved enough because she isneedy, neurotic, the insufficiency of love she feels being in andof itself evidence of a deep-seated and natural dependency. Herpersonal experiences or perceptions are never credited as havinga hard core of reality to them. She is, however, never lovedenough. In truth; in point of fact; objectively: she is never lovedenough. As Konrad Lorenz wrote: “ I doubt if it is possible tofeel real affection for anybody who is in every respect one’s inferior.” 1There are so many dirty names for her that one rarelylearns them all, even in one’s native language. There are dirtynames for every female part of her body and for every way oftouching her. There are dirty words, dirty laughs, dirty noises,dirty jokes, dirty movies, and dirty things to do to her in thedark. Fucking her is the dirtiest, though it may not be as dirtyas she herself is. Her genitals are dirty in the literal meaning:stink and blood and urine and mucous and slime. Her genitalsare also dirty in the metaphoric sense: obscene. She is reviledas filthy, obscene, in religion, pornography, philosophy, and inmost literature and art and psychology. Where she is not explicitlymaligned she is magnificently condescended to, as inthis diary entry by Somerset Maugham written when he was inmedical school:T h e Professor o f Gynaecology: He began his course o f lecturesas follows: Gentlemen, woman is an animal that m icturatesonce a day, defecates once a week, menstruates once a