Status Updates From Intercourse

I feel compelled to say again: Dworkin is not coming up with any of these statements out out of nowhere! She is not creating stories about brutalization of women at the hands of men, nor exaggerating the degree of abuse and degradation suffered by those women. She’s simply describing the plot and situation, social implications, oppressive intentions, etc.. of existing narratives. Like… HE wrote that. HE did

She really isn’t *that* radical in her appraisal of our sexist culture, it’s her call to action for true (radical) feminism and the actions necessary for its implementation people skitter away from. (Probably because women don’t want to lose the power of leveraging sexuality, and men don’t want women to stop performing sexuality for their benefit. Or something like that…..)

in a world of male power—penile power—fucking is the essential sexual experience of power and potency and possession (...)

the normal fuck by a normal man is taken to be an act of invasion and ownership undertaken in a mode of predation: colo-nializing, forceful (manly) or nearly violent; the sexual act that by its nature makes her his.

the tenderness is the inner violence transformed by love and self-knowledge into complex and compassionate passion; and the passion is gentle in that it does not destroy.

being “dead folks,” in baldwin’s world, is nothing so simple as being white. being dead is being ignorant, refusing to know the truth, especially about oneself. remaining ignorant about oneself through a life of inevitable experience is hard; it requires that one refuse to know anything about the world around one, especially who is dying there and why and when and how.