Intercourse, by: Andrea Dworkin - Feminish

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directly, most eloquently, in fucking women. Lawrence’s phallicreality meant power over, and his “ordinary, vulgar people”had the same religion. Women stayed dirty because womenstayed inferior. Lawrence wanted to reform an attitude and avocabulary, but he wanted to keep the power relations betweenmen and women the same. Worshipping “ cunt” and hatingwomen were not, in real life, exactly distinguishable anyway—as Freida, Lawrence’s own wife, battered, might have testifiedhad she not valued his life, as he did, more than her own.Change requires a change in power relations, a redistributionof power, an equality of worth that is socially true. The meaningof words that express derision of inferiors does not changeuntil or unless the hate and power they signify change. Currentdogma is to teach by rote that sex is “healthy” as if it existedoutside social relations, as if it had no ties to anything mean orlowdown, to history, to power, to the dispossession of womenfrom freedom. But for sex not to mean dirt—for sex not to bedirty— the status of women would have to change radically;there would have to be equality without equivocation or qualification,social equality for all women, not personal exemptionsfrom insult for some women in some circumstances. The nextquestion— a real one and a fascinating one— then is: withwomen not dirty, with sex not dirty, could men fuck? To whatextent does intercourse depend on the inferiority of women?Racially degraded people—women and men—are also devaluedas dirt: experienced as deep-down filthy; sexualized asdirty; desired as dirty for fucking and for genocide. Racist ideologyspells out how the degraded race is filthy and intenselysexed, dirty and sensual, contaminating. Dirty provokes thesexual interest, the fuck itself, the sexual humiliation, thesexual exploitation, the sex-murder of the racially despised.
Inferiority— sex-based or race-based or both— seems to be therequisite context for fucking. James Baldwin reminds us:W hen the loveless come to power, or when sexual despaircomes to power, the sexuality o f the object is either a threat or afantasy. T hat most men will choose women to debase is not amatter o f rejoicing either for the chosen women or anybodyelse; brutal truth, furthermore, forces the observation, particularlyif one is a black man, that this choice is by no means certain.T h a t men have an enorm ous need to debase othermen— and only because they are men— is a truth which historyforbids us to labor. 8The sexual abuse and humiliation of racially despised womenblends into the commonplace abuses of women as such, inferiorand dirty as women. When the acts of insult and injuryare recognized as abuses, the reason is that the acts are seen tobe assaults on the integrity of the racially despised men— attemptsto unman them by taking their women. The abuses ofwomen are not so much sexual crimes against the women intheir own right as misappropriations of them, thefts filled withracist malice against the men to whom the women are supposedto belong. The sexualized hatred of racism appears tosingle out the man, focusing on him to destroy him, perhapsbecause to devalue a man as sexualized dirt at all is to unmanhim, feminize him by giving him something real in commonwith women. Unmanning the man is a primary goal of racism,the institutionalized rapism of the continuing assault on hismanhood resembling nothing so much as prison rape, theonly common form of man-on-man rape. As described in astudy of Philadelphia prisons:
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Published by Basic BooksA Member of
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True rebels, after all, are as rare
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FOREWORDLike most writers, Andrea D
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She begins with an exploration of s
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sex you’ve been lucky or unlucky
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against the prison, and because her
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Though she was herself middle class
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movement. The term “prosex femini
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Forewordhelp people understand what
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Forewordattractive, even if we don
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PREFACEWhen I finished writing Inte
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strategy of threat that usually wor
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Adam—and die material power he st
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chapteroneREPULSIONN 1 9 0 5 , A T
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Repulsionphenomenon, and aversive.
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Repulsion 7state censor for permiss
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story, because the sex act makes th
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Repulsionof male domination, with s
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Depravity, debauchery, dissolutenes
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exploiter is what he brings to the
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Repulsionyears— this passage bein
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e reduced to being this sexual obje
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This anguish ended only with killin
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were part of the wealth he owned; a
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separate bodies; and then, with som
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identity becomes a new, tough, impe
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What one feels on the skin is overw
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— A sultry wind is blowing betwee
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self-involvement that pass for feel
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logic, no purpose. In this vision o
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his bedpost, he uses touch to get a
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intercourse stops, when one person
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The men, civilized, in shells of id
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STIGMAST IG M A C O M E S F R O M T
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The meaning of the tattoo here is n
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affectations; she has a nervous lau
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weakness of the flesh; needing and
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and there he is—Stanley Kowalski!
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my empty heart with.. . . I think i
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Physical beauty is passing. A trans
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COMMUNIONn A m e r i k a , t h e r
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with imagination is pushed forward
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e better than the world. ’”4Bei
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and what he had paid, what he had b
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to explicate this morality is aston
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violence o f the deep.. . . Her bre
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elty, more than this trouble and pa
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ecomes impersonal. ” 35 Passion b
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passion, from the commitment and th
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flowed towards Yves. It was this vi
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POSSESSIONN T E R C O U R S E IS C
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muscles that contract like a fist s
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equires access to every hidden inch
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ody dies, or the lover discards the
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animals, blood, feathers, knives, t
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jesting and frivolity that evening.
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collapse and the abandonment of wil
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piously went about their work. ”
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and when Rechele went to confide in
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her flesh. Comatose or not, that sa
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and she spread her legs to show her
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THE FEMALE CONDITIONYou mention the
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yet, including the Nazis, has kille
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oundaries and degraded possibilitie
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this same Robert that I must go int
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avest of her troop. And there Fortu
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who maketh thee so bold to allow th
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than they had ever been but not hum
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learned men, skilled orators; she w
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honor. This was not a puerile virgi
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would have held virginity to be a s
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accounts are happily invisible in t
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was free, a rare and remarkable qua
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which she wore as men did, she was
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exception. Joan’s intransigence c
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“ the key to her strength and pow
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could or should belong to a woman,
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fantasy, in the ether, not ever hav
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“ It was he who might rather have
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pursue sex. The intercourse itself,
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Romance was her suicidal substitute
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Sophie Tolstoy, having been “ tra
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Modern versions of the story, espec
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y sex in that she is not carnal, no
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The sexual predator is murderous, a
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In Dracula, vampirism is—to be pe
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OCCUPATION/COLLABORATIONOh, God, wh
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Intercourse in reality is a use and
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classes, and so we preserve the pri
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one in which men have social, econo
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We are poorer than men in money and
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[There might be] more a mutual lyin
Page 191 and 192: Occupation/Collaborationhe might no
Page 193 and 194: Occupation/Collaborationnot at the
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Page 201 and 202: gression of those boundaries comes
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Page 209 and 210: POWER, STATUS, AND HATEIs that a gu
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Page 213 and 214: eal hierarchy that nature or God cr
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Page 217 and 218: way. In fact the relationship which
Page 219 and 220: Proust too described the “feminin
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Page 233 and 234: ejaculated into her vagina, her cap
Page 235 and 236: “ But if you can’t rape your wi
Page 237 and 238: DIRT/DEATHN FER IO R ITY IS N O T B
Page 239 and 240: month, parturiates once a year and
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Page 245 and 246: The racially despised men pollute t
Page 247 and 248: . . . Perched in this roost about f
Page 249 and 250: apes at all; he is visually impaire
Page 251 and 252: are faceless. Without consciously r
Page 253 and 254: She painted the suffering, enraged;
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Page 259 and 260: contact with her inferiority, her d
Page 261 and 262: what makes it so much fun. )”57 I
Page 263 and 264: scabbard or sheath. The penetration
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Page 269 and 270: far from asserting aggressive viril
Page 271 and 272: two parts on the bed. ” 78This to
Page 273 and 274: NOTESC H A P T E R 1R E P U L SIO N
Page 275 and 276: 60. L. Tolstoy, Kreutzer Sonata, p.
Page 277 and 278: 14. Williams, Summer and Smoke, p.
Page 279 and 280: 2. Isaac Bashevis Singer, Satan in
Page 281 and 282: 31. Trial of Joan of Arc, p. 127.32
Page 283 and 284: 106. Bram Stoker, Dracula (New York
Page 285 and 286: 21. Augustine, Confessions, p. 181.
Page 287 and 288: 39. Raphael Patai, Sex and Family i
Page 289 and 290: BIBLIOGRAPHYAbbey, Edward. Down the
Page 291 and 292: _____ . Sweet William. New York: Ge
Page 293 and 294:
_____ . Looking on Darkness. London
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_____ . Oh What a Paradise It Seems
Page 297 and 298:
Donahue Transcript No. 01310: Phil
Page 299 and 300:
Frame, Donald M. Montaigne. San Fra
Page 301 and 302:
Gertler, T. Elbowing the Seducer. N
Page 303 and 304:
Harrison, Barbara Grizzuti. Visions
Page 305 and 306:
Johnson, Joyce. Minor Characters. N
Page 307 and 308:
_____ . Women in Love. New York: Pe
Page 309 and 310:
Marcus, Maria. A Taste for Pain. Tr
Page 311 and 312:
_____ . Runaway Horses. Translated
Page 313 and 314:
_____ . Guerrillas. New York: Vinta
Page 315 and 316:
_____ . Voices. New York: Farrar, S
Page 317 and 318:
Said, Edward W. Covering Islam. New
Page 319 and 320:
_____ . Mon (“ The Gate”). Tran
Page 321 and 322:
_____ . Seven Japanese Tales. Trans
Page 323 and 324:
Walker, Alan. Franz Liszt: The Virt
Page 325 and 326:
Yallop, David A. Deliver Us from Ev
Page 327 and 328:
Castration, 220Catholic Church, and
Page 329 and 330:
A Few Small Nips (Kahlo), 240-241Fl
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Kafka, Franz, 1, 163Kahlo, Frida, 2
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Physical privacyargument used to sa
Page 335 and 336:
Singer, Isaac Bashevis, 85Skin, 25-
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