Intercourse, by: Andrea Dworkin - Feminish

Animal joy in his being is implicit in all his movements andattitudes. Since earliest manhood the center of his life has beenpleasure with women, the giving and taking o f it, not withweak indulgence, dependently, but with the power and pride ofa richly feathered male bird among hens. Branching out fromthis complete and satisfying center are all the auxiliary channelsof his life, such as his heartiness with men, his appreciationo f rough humor, his love o f good drink and food andgames, his car, his radio, everything that is his, that bears hisemblem of the gaudy seed-bearer. 15He is the prototypical male animal, without remorse. Each actof sex or act of animal exhibition of virility is nature, not art; inthe realm of the inevitable, brute force, an ego that functions aspart of the body’s appetites.Having been beaten by him, his wife Stella waits for him,wanting him. She defends her willingness to accept the beatingto her sister, Blanche Du Bois, who wants her to rebel:“ ‘But there are things that happen between a man and awoman in the dark— that sort of make everything else seem—unimportant. ’” 16The wife, raised to be refined, wants the animalpassion of her husband, not anything else that she has hador could be. All her past of sensibility and taste means nothingto her against the way her husband uses her in the dark.Blanche argues against the lowness of Stanley’s character andcalling and for aspirations of her own, closer to tenderness:He acts like an animal, has an animal’s habits! Eats like one,moves like one, talks like one! There’s even something— subhuman—something not quite to the stage o f humanity yet!. . .Thousands and thousands o f years have passed him right by,