Andrea Dworkin - Right-wing Women

retaught without letup; that the woman left to herself would repudiate the male use of her body, simply not accept it. The propaganda for femininity teaches women over and over, endlessly, that they must like intercourse; and the lesson must be taught over and

over, endlessly, because intercourse does not express their own

sexuality in general and the male use of women rarely has anything

to do with the woman as an individual. The sexuality they are

supposed to like does not recognize, let alone honor, their individuality in any meaningful way. The sexuality they must learn to like is not concerned with desire toward them as distinct personalities—at best they are “types”; nor is it concerned with their own desire toward others.

Despite the propaganda, the mountains of it, intercourse requires force; force is still essential to make women have intercourse—at least in a systematic, sustained way. Despite every single platitude about love, women and men, passion, femininity,

intercourse as health or pleasure or biological necessity, it is forced

sex that keeps intercourse central and it is forced sex that keeps

women in sexual relation to men. If the force were not essential,

the force would not be endemic. If the force were not essential, the

law would not sanction it. If the force were not essential, the force

itself would not be defined as intrinsically “sexy, ” as if in practicing force sex itself is perpetuated.

The first kind of force is physical violence: endemic in rape, battery, assault.

The second kind of force is the power differential between male

and female that intrinsically makes any sex act an act of force: for

instance, the sexual abuse of girls in families.

The third kind of force is economic: keeping women poor to

keep women sexually accessible and sexually compliant.

The fourth kind of force is cultural on a broad scale: woman-

hating propaganda that makes women legitimate and desirable sexual targets; woman-hating laws that either sanction or in their actual application permit sexual abuse of women; woman-hating

practices of verbal harassment backed by the threat of physical violence on the streets or in the workplace; woman-hating textbooks used to teach doctors, lawyers, and other professionals misogyny

as a central element of the practice of their profession; woman-

hating art that romanticizes sexual assault, stylizes and celebrates

sexual violence; woman-hating entertainment that makes women as

a class ridiculous, stupid, despicable, and the sexual property of

all men.

Because women are exploited as a sex class for sex, it is impossible to talk about women’s sexuality outside the context of forced sex or, at the least, without reference to forced sex; and yet, to

keep forced sex going and invisible simultaneously, it is discussed

every other w ay, all the time.

The force itself is intrinsically “sexy, ” romanticized, described as

a measure of the desire of an individual man for an individual

woman. Force, duress, subterfuge, threat—all add “sex” to the sex

act by intensifying the femininity of the woman, her status as a

creature of forced sex.

It is through intercourse in particular that men express and

maintain their power and dominance over women. The right of

men to women’s bodies for the purpose of intercourse remains the

heart, soul, and balls of male supremacy: this is true whatever style

of advocacy is used, Right or Left, to justify coital access.

Every woman— no matter what her sexual orientation, personal

sexual likes or dislikes, personal history, political ideology— lives

inside this system of forced sex. This is true even if she has never

personally experienced any sexual coercion, or if she personally

likes intercourse as a form of intim acy, or if she as an individual

has experiences of intercourse that transcend, in her opinion, the

dicta of gender and the institutions of force. This is true even if—

for her— the force is eroticized, essential, central, sacred, meaningful, sublime. This is true even if—for her— she repudiates intercourse and forbids it: if she subjectively lives outside the

laws of gravity, obviously the laws of gravity will intrude. Every

woman is surrounded by this system of forced sex and is encapsulated by it. It acts on her, shapes her, defines her boundaries and her possibilities, tames her, domesticates her, determines the

quality and nature of her privacy: it modifies her. She functions

within it and with constant reference to it. This same system that

she is inside is inside her—metaphorically and literally delivered

into her by intercourse, especially forced intercourse, especially

deep thrusting. Intercourse violates the boundaries of her body,

which is why intercourse is so often referred to as violation. Intercourse as a sex act does not correlate with anything but male power: its frequency and centrality have nothing to do with reproduction, which does not require that intercourse be the central sexual act either in society at large or in any given sexual relationship or encounter; its frequency and centrality have nothing to do with

sexual pleasure for the female or the male, in that pleasure does not

prohibit intercourse but neither does pleasure demand it. Intercourse is synonymous with sex because intercourse is the most systematic expression of male power over women’s bodies, both concrete and emblematic, and as such it is upheld as a male right

by law (divine and secular), custom, practice, culture, and force.

Because intercourse so consistently expresses illegitimate power,

unjust power, wrongful power, it is intrinsically an expression of

the female’s subordinate status, sometimes a celebration of that status. The shame that women feel on being fucked and simultaneously experiencing pleasure in being possessed is the shame of having acknowledged, physically and emotionally, the extent to

which one has internalized and eroticized the subordination. It is a

shame that has in it the kernel of resistance. The woman who says

no to her husband, whatever her reasons, also says no to the state,

no to God, no to the power of men over her, that power being both

personal and institutional. Intercourse is forced on the woman by a

man, his state, his God, and through intercourse an individual is

made into a woman: a woman is made. Whether a woman likes or

does not like, desires or does not desire, to be made a woman does