Intercourse, by: Andrea Dworkin - Feminish

that this symbol depicting two interlocked figures acts as apowerful stimulus on deep layers of the organism, a stimulusthat proves to be that much more powerful, the more dissatisfied,the more burning with sexual desire, a person is. ” 16Thesexual meaning of the swastika can be traced back to ancientIndo-European cultures, a fact used by contemporary sadomasochistswhen trying to dissociate their use of the swastikafrom its Nazi meaning even when the point of the sex they arehaving is to inflict pain on a Jew.The humiliation rituals of racism are overtly sexual evenwhen not genital. In the concentration camps, the disintegrationof a human identity was accomplished by a harrowingassault on every aspect of the body’s dignity; as Fania Fenelonwrote in Playing for Time: “I see us now, under the icy shower,arms pressed to our sides, then back in the room again, demoralized,shivering, tattooed, and hairless. It was odd, but thatwas the real humiliation: having no hair. ” 17 The immersion infilth, including death by filth, an immersion in the scatological,an assault on any self-conception of human cleanliness and anypossibility of being clean, was an integral part of the punishmentfor being inferior, for being filth:W ho could have dreamed up such a place as the latrine hut? Itwas an enormous hole dug out o f the earth, about forty feetdeep, surrounded by an irregular border o f large stones, plankwalls, and a roof. T h is enormous, funnel-shaped sewer wasringed with wooden bars. No sooner was the door open than,breaking ranks, the girls rushed forward to sit on these bars,buttocks exposed. Some, with dysentery, didn’t make it and relievedthemselves where they stood, under the blows and insultso f the latrine blockowa.