Intercourse, by: Andrea Dworkin - Feminish

aped her: twice now. He sniffed and raped, more doglike thanhuman.Georges Bataille, a philosopher of the erotic and therefore aclassy guy, likens what he calls “ eroticism” — classy sex— todissolution or death: “ The passive, female side is essentiallythe one that is dissolved as a separate entity. ” 67 The wholeessence of this classy sex “ is assenting to life up to the point ofdeath. ”68There have been two kinds of rebellion against this conflationof sex and death, this convergence of sadism and sex onthe woman’s body. In the realm of philosophy and politics,feminists have rebelled, often in a humane language that seeksto rescue sex and love from what Danish feminist SuzanneBrogger called “ the traditional sadomasochistic humiliationritual” ; “only in death have European lovers ever been able tounite in any satisfactory manner. . . This is truly the damnationof the flesh! ”69In the realm of real life, under conditions ofatrocity or despair, some women have refused to surrender tothe callous sex-and-death motifs of behavior and belief that saturateso-called civilization. As Primo Levi described in Survivalin Auschwitz:All took leave from life in the manner which most suited them.Some praying, some deliberately drunk, others lustfully intoxicatedfor the last time. But the mothers stayed up to preparethe food for the journey with tender care, and washed theirchildren and packed the luggage; and at dawn the barbed wirewas full o f children’s washing hung out in the wind to dry. N ordid they forget the diapers, the toys, the cushions and the hundredother small things which mothers remember and whichchildren always need. W ould you not do the same? If you and