Intercourse, by: Andrea Dworkin - Feminish

desire not gratified by anything social or conventional or conforming.The stigma is not imposed from outside. Instead, it ispart of the charge of the sexuality: an arrogant and aggressivepride (in the sense of hubris) that has a downfall built into it; apride that leads by its nature—by virtue of its isolating extremity—to self-punishment and self-destruction, to a wearingdown of mind and heart, both numb from the indignity of compulsion.In the electricity of the stigma there is a mixture ofsexual shamelessness, personal guilt, and a defiance that is unprincipled,not socially meaningful in consequence or intention,determined only by need or desire. Isolation and intensity,panic, restlessness, despair, unbreachable loneliness even,propel the person; the price paid for the obsessed passion is anerosion of innocence: innocence being, in the end, only hope.The pleasure too is part of being marked; having a capacity forwhat Serafina delle Rose calls “the love which is glory. ”2In TheRose Tattoo by Tennessee Williams, Serafina sees her husband’srose tattoo, which is on his chest, on her own breast afterfucking, and she knows that she is pregnant, “ that in mybody another rose was growing. ”3The rose, in Christian symbolisma sign of carnality, is the brand the husband’s lovemakingleaves on the women he fucks, who are obsessed with him,who live for the sex they have with him. His mistress gets a rosetattooed on her breast, in fevered commemoration of his touch.His wife has a vision of a rose tattoo on her breast, his rosetattoo, but the vision is not ethereal:That night I woke up with a burning pain on me, here, on myleft breast! A pain like a needle, quick, quick, hot little stitches.I turned on the light, I uncovered my breast! — O n it I saw therose tattoo o f my husband. 4