General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Andrea Dworkin NEVER said "all sex is rape" [View all]zazen
(2,978 posts)In her introductory chapter she's describing sexuality in general as a potentially fierce power in which human individuation is temporarily lost . . . so there's that . . very vivid, transporting imagery of what sexuality is and can be.
And then by contrast she's describing intercourse as practiced under male dominance as having inherent properties. I quote:
"The normal fuck by a normal man is taken to be an act of invasion and ownership undertaken in a mode of predation: colonializing, forecful (manly) or nearly violent; the sexual act that by its nature makes her his. God made it so, or nature did, according to the faith of the explainer of events and values. Both conceptual systems--the theological and the biological--are loyal to the creed of male dominance and maintain that intercourse is the elemental (not socialized) expression of male and female, which in turn are the elemental (not socialized) essences of men and women. . . "
"In other words, men possess women when men fuck women because both experience the man being male. This is the stunning logic of male supremacy. In this view, which is the predominant one, maleness is aggressive and violent; and so 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." PP. 63-64
I believe her precise argument is that the latter description violates the potential of human sexuality and is instead a product of constructed male supremacy.