Andrea Dworkin: Mercy

to hurt them , if only to obliterate them from consciousness,

submerge them finally in the deeper recesses o f a more muted

discourse in which they are neither subjects nor objects. One

would exile them to the margins, beyond seeing or sound, but

strangely they are sexualized in the common culture as if they are

the potent women. Everyone pays attention to them and I and

others like me are ignored, except o f course when the publishers

o f the sex magazines ask one or the other o f us to write essays

denouncing them. But then, o f course, one must think about

them. When I’m having sex I find that more and more I have one

o f them under me in my fantasy, I hear her voice, accusing, I

muffle the sound o f her voice with my fist, I push it into my

lover’s mouth, slowly, purposefully, easy now. M y lover thinks

m y intensity is for her. I can’t stand the voice saying I’m wrong. I

really would wipe it out if I could. It makes for angry, passionate

sex, a kind o f playful fury. The Jacobin despises me. I have more

in common with the so-called rapist, the man who makes love

by orchestrating pain, the subtle so-called rapist, the knowing

so-called rapist, the educated so-called rapist, the one who

seduces, at least a little, and uses force because it’s sexy; it is sexy;

I like doing it and the men I know know I like doing it, to a

woman; they are pro-gay. I’m an ally and I will get tenure. I’m

their frontline defense. If I can do it, they can do it. The so-called

rapists in my university are educated men. We like sex and to

each his own. In my mind I have the Jacobin under me, and in

m y nuanced world she likes it. I am not simple-minded. Rape

so-called is her problem, not mine. I have been hurt but it was

a long time ago. I’m not the same girl.

Author’s Note

In a study o f 930 randomly selected adult women in San

Francisco in 1978 funded by the National Institute for Mental

Health, Diana Russell found that forty-four percent o f the

wom en had experienced rape or attempted rape as defined by

California state law at least once. The legal definition o f rape in

California and most other states was: forced intercourse (i. e.

penile-vaginal penetration), intercourse obtained by threat o f

force, or intercourse completed when the woman was

drugged, unconscious, asleep, or otherwise totally helpless

and hence unable to consent. N o other form o f sexual assault

was included in the definition; therefore, no other form o f

sexual assault was included in the statistic. O f the forty-four

percent, fully half had experienced more than one such attack,

the number o f attacks ranging from two to nine. Pair and

group rapes, regardless o f the number o f assailants, were

counted as one attack. Multiple attacks by the same person

were counted as one attack. See Diana E. H. Russell, Sexual

Exploitation: Rape, Child Sexual Abuse, and Workplace

Harassment , Sage Publications, 1984; see also Russell, Rape In

Marriage , Macmillan Publishing C o ., Inc., 1982 and The Secret

Trauma: Incest in the Lives of Girls and Women , Basic Books,

Inc., Publishers, 1986.

Linda Marchiano, slave name Linda Lovelace, “ star” o f the

pornographic film Deep Throat , was first hypnotized, then

taught self-hypnosis by the man who pimped her, to suppress

the gag response in her throat. She taught herself to relax all

her throat muscles in order to minimize the pain o f deep

thrusting to the bottom o f her throat. She was brought into

prostitution and pornography through seduction and gang

rape, a not uncommon combination. Her lover turned her

over without warning to five men in a motel room to whom

he had sold her without her knowledge. Neither her screams

nor her begging stopped them. She was beaten on an almost

daily basis, humiliated, threatened, including with guns, kept

captive and sleep-deprived, and forced to do sex acts ranging

from “ deep throat” oral sex to intercourse and sodom y to

being penetrated by objects both vaginally and anally to

bestiality. Her escape from sexual slavery and her subsequent

life as a mother, school teacher, and antipornography activist

is a triumph o f the human spirit— part o f an unambiguous

discourse o f triumph. See Linda Lovelace with Mike

M cGrady, Ordeal , Citadel Press, 1980; see also Lovelace with

M cGrady, Out of Bondage, Lyle Stuart Inc., 1986.