Intercourse, by: Andrea Dworkin - Feminish

contact with her inferiority, her dirt in relation to his worth;as the oppressor, he expresses his need for her inferioritythrough rape.One endearing aspect of male supremacy is that while menare persistently traumatized by the filth of women, thewounded and dirty genitals, the dirty menstrual blood that“must be counted as excrement, ” women are supposed to havea good attitude: accepting, even rejoicing in, these vile anatomicalinevitabilities that are herself. As Bruno Bettelheim wrote,typical of those who will make women accept these physicaldevaluations of self:T h e ambivalence o f the girl’s feelings about her sex organs andabout the lack o f a penis has been repeatedly pointed out.H ope that a penis may be acquired in and through menstruationis an example o f the positive aspect o f this ambivalence.Many emotionally disturbed girls express its negative side byconsidering the penis horrible and ugly. 52It is fair to say that men are not ambivalent about “her sex organs.” There is, therefore, for them no “negative side” ; they donot consider the penis “horrible and ugly” ; they are not “ emotionallydisturbed, ” no. The men are prick-proud, having nogash-envy, no filth-envy; a lust for immersion in dirt, but noenvy, no mental illness, no maladjustment that particularlysticks out. Women who are so emotionally disturbed that theyhave a political analysis of the ways in which the penis is used,ways often horrible and ugly, are not beaten back into line bythe psychiatrists but by the pornographers, as in this elegantrejoinder from Playboy: