Intercourse, by: Andrea Dworkin - Feminish

excitement (displaced to the mind), puts the physical reality oftheir own nakedness into a dimension of numbed abstraction.The nakedness of the women experienced in the minds of themen is almost a diversion from the experience of being nakedas such; naked and, as the box man says, “aware of my own ugliness.I am not so shameless as to expose my nakedness nonchalantlybefore others. ”37 Men’s bodies are ugly (“unsightly,”“ the unsightliness of [generic man’s] naked body, ” “ ninetyninepercent of mankind is deformed” ); 38it is this ugliness ofmen that makes the box man think that[t]he reason men somehow go on living, enduring the gaze o fothers, is that they bargain on the hallucinations and the inexactitudeo f human eyes. 39For men, the meaning of a woman’s naked body is life itself. Asan old box man says, “ Her naked body should have been anabsolute bargaining point for extending my life, for as long as Isee her I will not commit suicide. ” 40Men’s nakedness is unbearableto them without the nakedness of a woman; men needwomen to survive their own nakedness, which is repellent tothem, “ terribly piteous. ”41 The box man cuts off the electricitywhen the woman dresses because then “ the effect of herclothes too will end. If she cannot be seen, that will be the sameas her being naked. ”42Any means to have her naked is justifiedbecause having her naked is life. In the dark, “ [s]he will againbecome gentle. ”43 He did not want to kill her— “ to gouge outher eyes or anything like that” 44— so he made a prison ratherthan let her go, locked her in a barricaded building in the dark;and now he waits for her to find him. In the dark she will seemnaked, if he looks but does not touch.