Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Intercourse

by Andrea Dworkin, Ariel Levy (Foreword by)

3.58 of 5 stars 3.58 · rating details · 549 ratings · 47 reviews

Andrea Dworkin, once called �Feminism’s Malcolm X,” has been worshipped, reviled, criticized, and analyzed-but never ignored. The power of her writing, the passion of her ideals, and the ferocity of her intellect have spurred the arguments and activism of two generations of feminists. Now the book that she’s best known for-in which she provoked the argument that ultimately...more

Paperback, 352 pages

Published November 7th 2006 by Basic Books (first published January 1st 1988)

more details... edit details

Get a copy:

More…

Friend Reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

Lists with This Book

Best Feminist Books

113th out of 580 books — 753 voters

The Ms. Blog's Best Feminist Non-Fiction Reads: Reader's Choice

71st out of 383 books — 264 voters

More lists with this book...

Community Reviews

(showing 1-30 of 1,324)

filter | sort: default (?) | rating details

Sep 21, 2007 Sarah Canavan added it Recommends it for: the strong-stomached

I finally found a copy of this tonight. Unfortunately it smells really, really odd. I think it might be ...(sniffing it)..mothballs and cigarettes. Gross. I'm pretty interested in skimming through this, I've read a few excerpts and it's markedly extremist so I don't think I can viably get involved in it, but it's the versing in the extremes that makes me feel more grounded in my own version of middle-ground. Even with her eccentricism, Dworkin seems to have led a moving, impassioned and enlighte...more

5 likes · like · see review

Jan 16, 2011 C. rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2011, feminism, non-fiction

So, I guess this is the origin of the "all sex is rape" fallacy. Naturally, that's not what she's saying. But apart from the subject matter, which I think I might stay away from, what a strange, rambling book this is! I'm entirely unclear about why it began with five chapters of literary criticism, and whether this was supposed to illustrate the way the world was/is, or the way the world is perceived by men. At least she didn't try to draw sweeping conclusions based on the content of novels. But...more

3 likes · like · see review

Apr 07, 2008 Richard rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction, sexuality, feminism

This book was an eye opener for me, not so much because I agree with the prescriptive aspects of what Dworkin has to say, but because her descriptions of traditional male heterosexuality are, I think, spot on. This book really made me take a careful look not only at what I thought about sex, but about how I had sex; and it changed me.

11 likes · like · see review

Dec 08, 2012 Chantay rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: People that use porn as a sexual format

Shelves: feminist-literature

Some would have you believe that Dworkin's book was all about the one quote she wrote "all rape is sex." Fully missing out on what exactly she meant or simply ignoring all the reasons she pointed out it every chapter. All sex is rape when you believe the person beneath, above or around you is nothing more then a inferior object to get you to an end goal and to be discard/picked up later at your whim. Refusing to see the person that you are entering as an equal to you. Someone that has needs, tha...more Some would have you believe that Dworkin's book was all about the one quote she wrote "all rape is sex." Fully missing out on what exactly she meant or simply ignoring all the reasons she pointed out it every chapter. All sex is rape when you believe the person beneath, above or around you is nothing more then a inferior object to get you to an end goal and to be discard/picked up later at your whim. Refusing to see the person that you are entering as an equal to you. Someone that has needs, that are on a greater plane then your own. Does turn sex into a form of rape.

Sex for women and men will forever be a complicated business. It is especially hard now. When women are not only expected to be the bearers of life. We also then expected to be sexual objects along with it (gossip magazines always picking at an actress weight after she gives birth)with no real sexuality beneath the veneer. Men are expected still as ever to be just the domineering type and pillage whatever is around them.

The words that Andrea has picked reminded me of what we view today. Instead of literary porn, we rely on visual porn. Porn is ever more prevalent today. It has wiggled it's way from the den's and back alley's into the mainstream. It is sold to us as a product and the lives of the women are not intricately viewed as being an actress playing apart. People watching it like to believe the actress thoroughly enjoys her job or why else would she consistently still be doing it; Compartmentalization at will... Elements of porn are now perfectly acceptable on prime time television.

We have now used the works of others as a guidebook for sex and our own sexuality. Completely losing the human factor. we have detached ourselves from people entirely. We tells ourselves to put the onus on the domineering factor of pleasure. To accept the other's submission, to revel it, even if it it debases or humiliates us altogether. Nothing about what is taught to this generation or the next is about harnessing and commanding to be pliable and understanding to the physical and emotional needs of the person they are with. Which is a frightening aspect. (less)

3 likes · like · see review

Jun 14, 2008 Brian rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: sex-and-or-death, fem-studies

"...fucking, in which both the man & the woman experience maleness, essentially demands the disappearance of the woman as an individual; thus, in being fucked, she is possessed: ceases to exist as a discrete individual: is taken over.
The man is not possessed in fucking even though he is terrified of castration...even though he is terrified of never getting his cock back because she has engulfed it inside her, and it is small compared with the vagina around it...he is not possessed even thou...more

2 likes · like · see review

Mar 01, 2010 Ben rated it 5 of 5 stars

Given its reputation, I was expecting (hoping for) something angrier and even more radical. This is mostly a very reasonable book.

Liberals refuse categorically to inquire into even a possibility that there is a relationship between intercourse per se and the low status of women.... What intercourse is for women and what it does to women's identity, privacy, self-respect, self-determination, and integrity are forbidden questions; and yet how can a radical or any woman who wanats freedom not ask...more

8 likes · like · see review

Jul 12, 2011 Donna rated it 3 of 5 stars

It's not just a town in Pennsylvania.

1 like · like · see review

Jan 12, 2012 Rididill rated it 4 of 5 stars

Fascinating to finally read the famous 'all sex is rape' book. A claim which really belongs to Tolstoy, as she documents in her first chapter.

The book is basically literary criticism - which is interesting, but I don't think a claim to state in a wholesale manner: ALL SOCIETY IS LIKE THIS AND THIS IS EVERY WOMAN'S EXPERIENCE as her critics seem to suggest.

I must confess I did not understand all of it - some of the chapters were a little weird and confusing, 'Skinless' for example. But some of...more

like · see review

Dec 16, 2011 Holly rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: sex positive feminists

Anyone who hates Dworkin should at least give this book a chance before forming an intractable opinion.

Merging feminist literary criticism with political polemic, Intercourse lays out a psycho-social-political analysis of heterosexual fucking, with chapters on Possession, Dirt, Law, Stigma, Virginity, Repulsion and Communion. Dworkin uses historical and literary texts to explore the meanings intercourse has for women and men, the ways in which women internalise male dominance through sex, the us...more Anyone who hates Dworkin should at least give this book a chance before forming an intractable opinion.

Merging feminist literary criticism with political polemic, Intercourse lays out a psycho-social-political analysis of heterosexual fucking, with chapters on Possession, Dirt, Law, Stigma, Virginity, Repulsion and Communion. Dworkin uses historical and literary texts to explore the meanings intercourse has for women and men, the ways in which women internalise male dominance through sex, the use of rape and racial-sexualisation as a political weapon, and sex as redemption. The chapter on Virginity stands out as a loving ode to Joan of Arc’s militant defiance of traditional femininity: Dworkin contrasts Joan’s notorious virginity, a rebellion against women’s sexual servitude, with the descent into adultery which destroys Madame Bovary. Another notable chapter is Communion, in which she uses James Baldwin’s Another Country and Giovanni’s Room to explore emotionally powerful sex: “With this grace, fucking can be a communion, a sharing, mutual possession of an enormous mystery; it has the intensity and magnificence of violent feeling transformed into tenderness” (page 76).

Dworkin’s arguments in this book are often summarized as “all sex is rape,” a sloppy truncation of her complex, historical analysis of the ways gender constructs intercourse, and intercourse constructs gender. Dworkin never once claims that all sex is rape: she emphasizes the fact that heterosexual intercourse always takes place within a social context of male dominance. For example, “Most women are not distinct, private individuals to most men; and so the fuck tends towards the class assertion of dominance. Women live inside this reality of being owned and being fucked: are sensate inside it; the body learning to respond to what male dominance offers as touch, as sex, as love,” (p.83). Dworkin describes fucking as an social institution which perpetuates and protects patriarchy through asserting male ownership over women (male virility and female inferiority), and by regulating through punishment who can fuck who and how (the chapter on Law has a detailed explication of sodomy laws and prohibitions of homosexuality).

To characterize Dworkin as ‘anti-sex’ is grossly simplistic; rather, she locates her politics in an embodied critique of sexual power dynamics and constructions of gender, arguing that in a patriarchal society, female self-determination is always already shaped by male dominance. Therefore, what heterosexual sex means for and feels like to women must be understood as a product of centuries of patriarchal rule. Though marred as a biological essentialist by some critics, Dworkin’s actual analysis is more along the lines of poetic marxism: she writes lyrically about women’s experiences of fucking, grounded in the particular historical, social, political context of Western patriarchy. When Dworkin says, “There is never a real privacy of the body that can coexist with intercourse: with being entered…The thrusting is persistent invasion,” she is not describing what she sees as an essential, objective condition of being a woman, but rather she depicts the socially-inscribed ontology of femininity which has arisen from the context of male domination. Patriarchy needs to construct women as fundamentally different from men, so it emphasizes the penetrability of the vagina, and the female body’s lack of privacy, because men do not have vaginas and women do. Patriarchy also brutally demonizes the penetration of men, sodomy, because for men to be fucked the way women are fucked challenges this sexual power structure, the rigid dichotomy of gender.

Queer readers may find Dworkin’s focus on heterosexual sex rather narrowly normative, and indeed she fails to consider lesbian eroticism, or the subversion of queer identities, despite some discussion of gay sexuality. Her analysis relies on making a lot of generalizations about women and men’s interactions, mostly void of cultural specificity, which basically amounts to her universalising a white subject position. The only chapter which really acknowledges race and cultural difference is Dirt/Death, which connects narratives of feminine sordidness with constructions of racial inferiority used to condone violence against African-Americans and Jews. These narratives, perpetuated by dominant whites, portray all women, but particularly women of colour as inherently degraded and therefore rapable: “Racially motivated rape is considerably protected by the misogyny that finds the rape of women as such no atrocity at all” (pg.224) The fact that discussion of racial difference is limited to one chapter is problematic in a book which is supposed to consider intercourse ‘in general’; separating and containing her discussion of race this way reveals that the rest of her analysis is centered on white heterosexuality.

Stylistically, Dworkin has a tendency to repeat herself, belabour a point, and use a startling number of semi-colons. But while this book is limited in scope and subject position, it is still an important contribution to feminist theory as an analysis of heterosexuality, even if only to illuminate the historical development of radical feminist thought.

Here’s an essay critiquing the new foreword by Ariel Levy, arguing that her portrayal of Dworkin is anti-feminist: http://www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/dwork...
(less)

4 likes · like · see review

Feb 09, 2011 JenniferRuth rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: feminism

This book has a serious reputation. It has been both derided and lauded. It's touted as the pinnacle of man-hating radical feminism. It is claimed that within the book, Dworkin says that all heterosexual intercourse is rape. With a reputation such as that, how could I resist reading it?

First things first. Dworkin never says that all heterosexual intercourse is rape. She just asks the question - how does our culture, our politics, our society, our feminism intersect with the act of intercourse? C...more This book has a serious reputation. It has been both derided and lauded. It's touted as the pinnacle of man-hating radical feminism. It is claimed that within the book, Dworkin says that all heterosexual intercourse is rape. With a reputation such as that, how could I resist reading it?

First things first. Dworkin never says that all heterosexual intercourse is rape. She just asks the question - how does our culture, our politics, our society, our feminism intersect with the act of intercourse? Can intercourse ever be removed and set free from misogyny and patriarchy? A lot of people - don't like the fact that Dworkin dared to ask that question. But Dworkin does dare. Further than that, she refuses to mince her words or hide her anger. She does not make the journey into critically examining the act of intercourse easy and she will not take "just because" as an answer. The result is not pretty - sometimes it is horrendously upsetting. But it talks about the act of intercourse with a truth that you will not find anywhere else encompassing many, many topics and deep analysis.

This book will not, however, give you answers. Dworkin lays it out bare but she does not make it easy on her reader and tell you how it is. She gives you the information, the reasoning, the situation but she offers no conclusion. This is because the conclusion should be yours - especially with such an intimate act as intercourse. This is not a lecture, the book is an opportunity for you to look at the act of intercourse in a different way; for you to question the world and yourself. You can take that opportunity or you can reject it and learn nothing. I found that I did not agree with all of Dworkin's analysis but other parts of the book were moving, enlightening and powerful.

Overall though there is one part of Intercourse that is hardly ever mentioned by it's detractors (and I do wonder if these people have ever read it). Underlying all the anger is a pleading, a passion for what the physical intimacy of intercourse has the potential to be and a sadness for how often we fall short. If anything, the book is pro-sex. It's just anti-violence, -oppression and -bitterness. It calls for both men and women to have the freedom to be fully human. I think that is a message we all still need to hear.(less)

2 likes · like · see review

Jun 09, 2013 Zach rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: anyone willing to consider the ideological consequences of what they do in the bedroom

Shelves: read-for-class, feminism

Yes, I'm a heterosexual man who read Andrea Dworkin, and I not only survived, but I also actually enjoyed it. The fact of the matter is that very little of what has been said about Dworkin and this book in the mainstream media is strictly true; she does not, for example, actually claim that all heterosexual intercourse is rape. In fact, that widely-reported reading in many ways just proves Dworkin's point. What she is arguing is that in our present society, the notion of heterosexual intercourse...more Yes, I'm a heterosexual man who read Andrea Dworkin, and I not only survived, but I also actually enjoyed it. The fact of the matter is that very little of what has been said about Dworkin and this book in the mainstream media is strictly true; she does not, for example, actually claim that all heterosexual intercourse is rape. In fact, that widely-reported reading in many ways just proves Dworkin's point. What she is arguing is that in our present society, the notion of heterosexual intercourse is so fully intertwined with patriarchal fantasies of domination, invasion, and conquest that we can scarcely imagine sex between men and women without it; if it seems like she's saying all sex is rape, that's only because she's asking us to imagine a different kind of sex entirely (something this book's fiercest critics seem to be incapable, or unwilling, of doing). "Intercourse," then, is about how sex has been imagined in (patriarchal) culture, primarily through literature, and the scope of texts she marshals is impressive in its scope and eclecticism: everything from Tolstoy's "Kreutzer Sonata" to Abe Kobo's "The Woman in the Dunes." Her conclusions are devastating enough to live up to their notoriety, but that doesn't invalidate them. This book is a challenge to rethink our relationships between sex and power, and as such, I think it deserves a lot more consideration than it's gotten. Dworkin would probably roll her eyes at the comparison, but to me it almost feels like a distant cousin of Foucault's History of Sexuality from an explicitly female and American perspective.

It's not a perfect book, of course. Dworkin's eclecticism is bound to be frustrating for those who (justifiably) would like a less sweeping analysis of patriarchal ideology: the fact that she's conflating European, American, and even Japanese literature from the 19th and 20th centuries certainly says something about the universality of misogyny, but it also threatens to dehistoricize it. Also, like many of her fellow second-wavers, Dworkin's more strident moments threaten to alienate the very women she's trying to uplift: I can imagine reading this as a woman who takes pleasure in being sexually submissive, for example, and being (again, justifiably!) insulted by Dworkin's unwavering characterization of such women as "collaborators." But hey, some stereotypes are stereotypes for a reason, and Dworkin wouldn't be Dworkin if she wasn't making sweeping claims or employing incisive, confrontational rhetoric. What's more important, for me at least, is that this book asks--indeed, demands answers to--questions that surprisingly few other thinkers, feminist or not, have been willing to ask; if we're going to talk about violence and inequality in the relations between men and women, then we need to consider the most intimate of those relations as well. Read this with an open mind and I guarantee, at the very least, that it will make you think.(less)

like · see review

Mar 12, 2012 Heather rated it 1 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Honestly, reading this book reminded me of looking at modern art or eating at one of those restaurants that puts half a grape and a squirt of ketchup on a giant plate, calling it cuisine. Everyone knows it's splattered paint and half a grape, but everyone pretends it's fine art and cuisine in order to show society they are smarter and more cultured than the average Joe.

This book is, quite frankly, drivel. I was expecting social commentary. Instead, I found mostly literary criticism. But, not ev...more Honestly, reading this book reminded me of looking at modern art or eating at one of those restaurants that puts half a grape and a squirt of ketchup on a giant plate, calling it cuisine. Everyone knows it's splattered paint and half a grape, but everyone pretends it's fine art and cuisine in order to show society they are smarter and more cultured than the average Joe.

This book is, quite frankly, drivel. I was expecting social commentary. Instead, I found mostly literary criticism. But, not even good literary criticism. Her writing is disjointed, flowery, and her ideas are poorly developed. I often found myself thinking (and saying out loud from time to time), "what the hell does that sentence even mean?" I wouldn't be surprised if Dworkin herself couldn't answer the question. She was riffing... ranting... splattering paint on canvas.

I was so excited to read this book.... the same sort of excited I become when I'm about to read a conservative Christian book about women pandering to and submitting to men. (See: "Fascinating Womanhood" by Helen Andelin & "Liberated Through Submission" by Bunny Wilson) These books are such great fodder for dinner discussions with my husband. It's fun to be shocked by inanity and dissect it with someone who sees the world the same way I do. But, alas, this book was more of a chore than a conversation starter.

Phew. I feel much better getting that out of my system.

I found much of what Dworkin said to be offensive and ridiculous. Especially ridiculous was her assertion that women have become collaborators in their own oppression. She asserts that women who enjoy men and sex have been brainwashed into accepting the male perspective on sex and sexuality. This is a perfect example of why I oppose feminist ideals. I do not see women as pathetic victims of their circumstance. Instead of seeing people who simply disagree, Dworkin sees captives. I often find that feminists have worse opinions of women than they claim men do... as is evident in Dworkin's work... not only in her assessment of women who disagree with her, but also her acceptance and appreciation for what Joan of Arc supposedly said of other women. If Dworkin believed what she claimed in the book, what does it say of her that she stands by someone who insulted the gender she is supposedly trying to shine the light of liberation upon? The portrait of women painted by every piece of this book is one of weakness and victim-hood. I would say Dworkin is as much a woman-hater as the men she takes to task in these pages.

The most offensive part of this book was Dworkin's comparison of the holocaust and sexual politics.

There is no analogue anywhere among subordinate groups to this experience of being made for intercourse: for penetration, entry, occupation. There is no analog in occupied countries or in dominated races or imprisoned dissidents or in colonized cultures or in the submission of children to adults or in the atrocities that have marked the twentieth century ranging from Auschwitz to the Gulag. There is nothing exactly the same, and this is not because the political invasion and significance of intercourse is banal up against these other hierarchies and brutalities. Intercourse is a particular reality for women as an inferior class; and it has in it, as part of it, violation of boundaries, taking over, occupation, destruction of privacy, all of which are construed to be normal and also fundamental to continuing human existence.

This is only one of many references Dworkin makes to the holocaust, including quotes from Hitler. One might try to assert that Dworkin was referring to only rape. But I believe that assertion would be a disingenuous one. Anyone who has read the book knows Dworkin makes no distinction between rape, prostitution and sex. Quite the contrary. Dworkin asserts that people who do make distinctions between those are collaborators to their oppression. In any case, Dworkin's choice to invoke the holocaust is offensive and should discredit anything she has to say.

Dworkin does have one thing in common with the authors I mentioned above (Wilson & Andelin). She took tiny nuggets of truth and wrapped them in layers of bullshit to justify her ignorant assertions. Yes, women have been mistreated in the past. Yes, there are many places in the world today where women continue to be mistreated. Yes, some men in "the developed world" hate women. Yes, some men in "the developed world" find women dirty and inherently inferior. Yes, some men misuse women sexually. But those things do not make truth of the drivel Dworkin offered up in "Intercourse." (less)

3 likes · like · see review

Mar 16, 2009 Milo rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: general-gender

After all of the hype I've heard about Dworkin, I found her book terribly mild to what I was expecting. I loved her style, though; blatant, angry, and poetic all at the same time.

I'm completely befuddled now about her supposed "man-hating" approach. This is what I usually heard from others who claimed to have properly read her, but I never saw the typographical proof. Perhaps I'm reading the wrong book?

As far as I can tell, Dworkin doesn't hate masculinity; she hates patriarchy. She doesn't hate...more

7 likes · like · see review

Dec 07, 2007 danielle rated it 2 of 5 stars

This is a book about how other books have portrayed heterosexual sex. It is not a book about intercourse in general. She has cherry-picked texts such as Madame Bovary and Dracula to prove her point.

Her major thesis is that within the texts and the oppressive patriarchal societies that produced them men viewed sex as an act whereby the woman is owned, subjugated, and violently violated by the man. In all these texts any "carnal" woman who enjoys sex is deemed repulsive by the man and ends up bei...more

like · see review

Oct 14, 2008 Dinah rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: memoir, nonfiction, gender-business

Intercourse happens to be one of those books that everyone in the academic world feels comfortable deriding without going through the trouble of reading it. To be sure, Dworkin is a difficult lady. She is not polite. She is not one to mince words or hide her anger. She is not kind to the dominant paradigm, and she will not take "because it is easy and convenient" as an answer for any sin.

Her critics would have you believe that Intercourse is a diatribe about the evil of heterosexual contact, and...more

like · see review

Jan 22, 2009 Rowan rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2008

Far more even-handed than I would have been led to believe. Its elliptical style can be a little difficult to access, and much of the information is rather cherry-picked to make points. However, this aside, the points are important and extremely valid in today's society.

Clearly grossly misinterpreted by would-be followers on a level unlike anything that comes to mind other than the Bible.

1 like · like · see review

May 07, 2010 Esmoi marked it as put-aside-for-now

I read one book by Dworkin (Ice and Fire) and was so excited by it that I checked a few more out from the library (including this one). When I started to read them, I found myself so emotionally drained by the writing, by thinking about these ideas, I just had to stop. I got my introduction to real feminism just a few months ago after 27.5 years of life living in a patriarchy and I've found that viewing my life through this new lens is a painful transition. At first I plunged in greedily, but no...more

like · see review

Dec 11, 2007 Kirk rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: sentimental-faves

I've been trying to read/reread this book since 1989. It took me seventeen years to really get through it and appreciate it---although, I've always wanted to appreciate it. It took me that long to understand it---or at least to feel confident enough to say I understood it. I think it's a great lesson for men to submit (!) to an argument like this, which, despite Dworkin's detractors, ISN'T easy to summarize. Just to be clear: Dworkin isn't saying that any heterosexual sex is de facto rape. That'...more

like · see review

Apr 08, 2009 Adrian Colesberry rated it 3 of 5 stars

Honestly had a very bad affect on my life. Her dire view of heterosexual sex and how male insertion and the penetration of the female doomed humanity an intractable sexual inequality was profoundly depressing and, now many years later, I think untrue.

like · see review

Apr 21, 2012 Rus Funk rated it 4 of 5 stars

This was an amazing examination of the heterosexual models of intercourse and how male privilege and male entitlement gets interwoven into it. Not the "anti-sex" book that it has been made out to be, but a careful, thoughtful, and awesome critique

like · see review

Dec 29, 2010 Emily Cohen rated it 3 of 5 stars

well, beautifully written piece of theory. but i'm not sure what to do w/it except pick up this amazing, deeply creative writers whose masculinity she critiques.

like · see review

Jun 13, 2013 Dave rated it 4 of 5 stars

This book opened my eyes and introduced me to the idea of literary criticism. It's safe to say it was one of the most influential books I have ever read.

1 like · like · see review

Jan 28, 2009 Mary marked it as to-read

We read the first chapter of this for Gender Theory. I must now read the whole thing. Stupid addictive excerpts.

like · see review

Feb 10, 2011 Jill rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: men, relationships, sex, society, women

I read a lot of Dworkin back in my undergrad Women's Studies days and took her with a grain of salt. I remember being intrigued by her ideas but found great gaping holes in her arguments. One of these days I'll give this a re-read.

like · see review

Mar 31, 2009 Scott Neigh added it

Reviewed here.

like · see review

Oct 03, 2012 Luisa rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: disappointing

Given how Dworkin is deified in my segment of feminism, I expected more from her most famous work.

like · see review

May 05, 2012 Varina rated it 5 of 5 stars

This was probably one of the most challenging and inspiring books I have read in awhile, and while I did not necessarily agree with everything in it, every argument did give me something to think about and wrestle with. The writing is also incredible; Dworkin's writing cuts to the bone of every issue and is savagely beautiful. I would recommend it to anyone who really wants to think deeply about patriarchy and violence against women (with the proviso that she uses pretty rough language)

1 like · like · see review

Mar 07, 2012 Zoe rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: feminist, theory, z

I have a complicated relationship with this book.

like · see review

Sep 12, 2012 Kim rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: own, zzzzz, for-trade

This book consists of the author quoting a lot of other books and then explaining the quotes. Not much more. I already knew that most of the authors whose books I enjoy reading were, in reality, just drunken, sexist, twisted fools and the only thing new I learned is that Tolstoy was apparently a psychopathic freak who probably should have been institutionalized.

I thought this was going to be some sort of insight or discussion into the power dynamic that occurs between men and women during sex....more

like · see review

Feb 04, 2013 Adam added it

A good way to make any male who has been involved in heteronormative sexual acts hate himself for a bit, and then laugh and toss this to the side. In all actuality, the book is a really great read for a basis in radical feminist thought, and offers an awesome scope of literary interactions with the topic of hetero-sex.

like · see review

« previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 … 44 45 next »

new topic
Discuss This Book

There are no discussion topics on this book yet. Be the first to start one »

Recommend it | Stats | Recent status updates

combine
Other Editions (6)

More editions...

Genres

Feminism

74 users

Non Fiction

26 users

Gender

11 users

Sexuality

11 users

Womens

6 users

Womens Studies > Feminist Theory

4 users

Philosophy

4 users

Politics

4 users

Psychology

3 users

Philosophy > Theory

3 users

See top shelves...

Readers also enjoyed similar books

About Andrea Dworkin

Andrea Rita Dworkin was an American radical feminist and writer best known for her criticism of pornography, which she argued was linked to rape and other forms of violence against women.

An anti-war activist and anarchist in the late 1960s, Dworkin wrote 10 books on radical feminist theory and practice. During the late 1970s and the 1980s, she gained national fame as a spokeswoman for the feminist...more Andrea Rita Dworkin was an American radical feminist and writer best known for her criticism of pornography, which she argued was linked to rape and other forms of violence against women.

An anti-war activist and anarchist in the late 1960s, Dworkin wrote 10 books on radical feminist theory and practice. During the late 1970s and the 1980s, she gained national fame as a spokeswoman for the feminist anti-pornography movement, and for her writing on pornography and sexuality, particularly in Pornography: Men Possessing Women (1981) and Intercourse (1987), which remain her two most widely known books.

Dworkin was born to Harry Dworkin and Sylvia Spiegel. She had one younger brother, Mark. Her father was a schoolteacher and dedicated socialist, whom she credited with inspiring her passion for social justice. Her relationship with her mother was strained, but Dworkin later wrote about how her mother's belief in legal birth control and legal abortion, "long before these were respectable beliefs," inspired her later activism.

Though she described her Jewish household as being in many ways dominated by the memory of the Holocaust, it nonetheless provided a happy childhood until the age of nine when an unknown man molested her in a movie theater.

When Dworkin was 10, her family moved from the city to the suburbs of Cherry Hill Township, New Jersey (then known as Delaware Township), which she later wrote she "experienced as being kidnapped by aliens and taken to a penal colony". In sixth grade, the administration at her new school punished her for refusing to sing "Silent Night" (as a Jew, she objected to being forced to sing Christian religious songs at school).

Dworkin began writing poetry and fiction in the sixth grade. Throughout high school, she read avidly, with encouragement from her parents.

In 1965, while a student at Bennington College, Dworkin was arrested during an anti-Vietnam War protest at the United States Mission to the United Nations and sent to the New York Women's House of Detention. Dworkin testified that the doctors in the House of Detention gave her an internal examination which was so rough that she bled for days afterwards. She spoke in public and testified before a grand jury about her experience, and the media coverage of her testimony made national and international news. The grand jury declined to make an indictment in the case, but Dworkin's testimony contributed to public outrage over the mistreatment of inmates. The prison was closed seven years later.

Soon after testifying before the grand jury, Dworkin left Bennington to live in Greece and to pursue her writing. She traveled from Paris to Athens on the Orient Express, and went to live and write in Crete. While in Crete, she wrote a series of poems titled (Vietnam) Variations, a collection of poems and prose poems that she printed on the island in a book called Child, and a novel in a style resembling magical realism called Notes on Burning Boyfriend -- a reference to the pacifist Norman Morrison, who had burned himself to death in protest of the Vietnam War. She also wrote several poems and dialogues which she hand-printed after returning to the United States in a book called Morning Hair.

After graduation, she moved to Amsterdam to interview Dutch anarchists in the Provo counter cultural movement. While there, she became involved with, then married, one of the anarchists she met. Soon after they were married, he began to abuse her severely, punching and kicking her, burning her with cigarettes, beating her on her legs with a wooden beam, and banging her head against the floor until he knocked her unconscious.

After she left her husband late in 1971, Dworkin says her ex-husband a(less)

More about Andrea Dworkin...

Books by Andrea Dworkin

Heartbreak: The Political Memoir of a Feminist Militant

More…

Share This Book

Facebook Twitter Your website

Trivia About Intercourse

No trivia or quizzes yet. Add some now »

Quotes from Intercourse

“Being female in this world means having been robbed of the potential for human choice by men who love to hate us. One does does not make choices in freedom. Instead, one conforms in body type and behavior and values to become an object of male sexual desire, which requires an abandonment of a wide-ranging capacity for choice...

Men too make choices. When will they choose not to despise us?” — 6 people liked it

“How can anyone love someone who is less than a full person, unless love itself is domination per se?” — 5 people liked it

More quotes…

title link	preview: Intercourse
avg rating	preview: Intercourse Goodreads rating: 3.58 (549 ratings)
small image	preview: click here [close]
med image	preview: click here [close]
BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/163265.Intercourse?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1346437078l/163265.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/163265.Intercourse?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]Intercourse by Andrea Dworkin[/url]

Intercourse

Friend Reviews

Community Reviews

Share This Book

Share This Book on Your Website