Intercourse

by Andrea Dworkin

It is not knowledge of someone else that makes passion personal; it is knowledge of oneself. Self-knowledge creates the potential for knowing a lover in sex.

women feel the fuck—when it works, when it overwhelms—as possession; and feel possession as deeply erotic; and value annihilation of the self in sex as proof of the man’s desire or love,

while at first the woman is fierce with the pride of possession—he wants her enough to empty her out—her insides are worn away over time, and she, possessed, becomes weak, depleted, usurped in all her physical and mental energies