Intercourse, by: Andrea Dworkin - Feminish

self-involvement that pass for feeling, especially sexual feeling, inmen in civilization. It forces the person to live wholly in the body,in the present, without mental evasion or self-preoccupied introspectionor free-floating anxiety. At first, close to civilizationand its ways, the man’s sexuality is in looking: “A sand-coveredwoman was perhaps attractive to look at but hardly to touch. ” 17But the pure physicality of the sand slowly makes him concretizehis own responses; the body is real in the sand;abstraction is useless. What he feels, he feels physically. Thesand is so extreme, so intense, so much itself, so absolute, thatit determines the quality and boundaries of his consciousness,which changes from being vaguely, dully mental to beingacutely, if painfully, alive in physical labor, physical feeling,physical survival. This is not pleasant or nice; it cannot bejudged from a comfortable mental distance as physical experiencein civilization is in fact judged; there is no escape intoequivocation or effete human arrogance:And then his feet began to sink into the sand. Before he knewwhether he was making progress or not, he was buried up tohis knees and seemed to have lost all power o f movement.Then he attempted frantically to scramble up on all fours. Theburning sand scorched his palms. Sweat poured from hiswhole body. Sand and sweat blinded him. Soon he had crampsin his legs and was unable to move them at all. 18The sand causes physical response, even erection: “A littleflow of sand, along with his trousers, slid over the base of hismember and fell along his thighs.. . . Slowly, but surely, with apumping like that of a water pipe in which the water has beenturned off, his member began to fill again. ” 19The sand causes