Intercourse, by: Andrea Dworkin - Feminish

For the past decade, the penis has been getting a lot o f badpress. One feminist wrote derisively: “ We can stimulate ourselvesor be stimulated by other women as well as men canstimulate us, because that unique male offering, the phallus, iso f peripheral importance, or may even be irrelevant to oursexual satisfaction. ” Well, sit on my face, bitch. 53A man, despite the trauma and difficulty, immerses himself—for love, for sex, for children— in this mixture of secretion,urine, blood, and shit; he does it not just for himself but alsofor her—out of the most desperate sexual love, e. g., Swinburne:“ He would have given his life for leave to touch her, hissoul for a chance of dying crushed down under her feet. . .Deeply he desired to die by her, if that could be; and moredeeply, if this could be, to destroy her” ; 54or because she needsit, e. g., Van De Velde: “It is significant that the clitoris, in commonwith the rest of the female genital apparatus, only attainsits full development and dimensions with regular and constantsexual intercourse. ”55The styles of love and health change butnever their imperatives: submit; do it. The dirty women aresupposed to keep doing it; and the brave men, attracted to thefilth, will keep going in, risking castration and death or riskingthe simple paralysis of masculinity that can result from just seeingthe mutilated genitals that are the woman. He has pride inhis penis to pull him through; his semen is “ the strength of thebody and its life, and the light in the eyes, ”56according to Maimonides.He can use semen to make her dirty but it ennobleshim (being the source of life, cf. Aeschylus to Mailer). “Youmay be holding back, ” the Playboy Advisor says, “because yousubconsciously think that coming in a woman’s mouth issomehow dirty or wrong. (You are absolutely right. That’s