Intercourse, by: Andrea Dworkin - Feminish

Repulsion 7state censor for permission to publish them (she pled with theCzar for permission to publish The Kreutzer Sonata). It wasnot until July 3, 1897, that she moved out of the marital bedroom,not wanting to have intercourse anymore, but Tolstoycontinued to fuck her when he wanted and to ignore her therest of the time. She hated “ his coldness, his terrible coldness”11— his indifference to her after intercourse, whichchanged only when he wanted intercourse again.This coldness afflicts her marriage from its beginning untilhis death. After four months of marriage, she wants work likehis “ so that I could turn to it whenever he is cold to me. Suchmoments, ” she writes, “are bound to come more and more frequently;but in reality it has been like this all the time. ” 12“ I have changed immensely. . . , ” she writes in 1865, “ andLyova’s coldness has stopped affecting me, for I know that Ideserve it. ” 13In 1867, “ [ejverything seems so cold and unfriendly, and Ifeel I have lost all his love. . . ” 14In 1891, she fears that the time will come when he will nolonger want her, “ and then he will cast me out of his life—cynically, cruelly, and coldly. ” 15After his death, she wrote that physical love never “meantan emotional game to me, but always something very muchakin to suffering. ” 16While he lived, she wanted, as she wrotein her 1891 diary, “warm, gentle affection” but instead endured“ these outbursts of passion always followed by long periods ofcoldness. ” 17For her, this coldness was the context in which intercoursetook place. For him, intercourse was the context in which sheexisted; his heat, her existence; his coldness toward her experiencedby him only as his real life, unambiguously chosen and