EFFORTPOST The views and opinions of Andrea Dworkin

What's s*x? I wouldn't know. But I've read a lot of opinions about it. Today I'd like to go through the opinions of Andrea Dworkin, a feminist who argued for a rather s*x negative view on the topic. Was she correct or was she hysterical? Let's find out.

Who is Andrea Dworkin?

Andrea Dworkin is most known for her iconic text Intercourse. She's also fat. In her lifetime, Dworkin remained a controversial feminist figure due to her views which were sometimes regarded as ‘s*x-negative'. However, regardless of whether you agree with her overall conclusions, many of her critiques concerning the problematic aspects of society prove to be quite valuable. Her text is notable for its coarse and direct language, as well as the liberal use of literature to illustrate certain points.

Andrea Dworkin and s*x

Dworkin views heterosexual s*x as an act of subordination on the part of the woman who is the one getting "fricked". Popular conceptions of intercourse often normalize forms of hostile sexism which subordinate women and remove their agency. Typically, women are viewed as sexual prey that is to be conquered by the dominant male who, in doing so, achieves possession of the woman. Dworkin expresses this slightly more crudely when she writes that intercourse is commonly conceptualized as:

“a form of possession or an act of possession in which, during which, because of which, a man inhabits a woman, physically covering her and overwhelming her and at the same time penetrating her; and this physical relation to her—over her and inside her—is his possession of her. He has her, or, when he is done, he has had her. By thrusting into her, he takes her over. His thrusting into her is taken to be her capitulation to him as a conqueror; it is a physical surrender of herself to him; he occupies and rules her, expresses his elemental dominance over her, by his possession of her in the” act.

Dworkin adds that often the act is “taken to be an act of invasion and ownership undertaken in a mode of predation”. Essentially, all heterosexual s*x is r*pe. How does Dworkin explain this? I'll let her speak:

"A human being has a body that is inviolate; and when it is violated, it is abused. A woman has a body that is penetrated in intercourse: permeable, its corporeal solidness a lie. The discourse of male truth—literature, science, philosophy, pornography— calls that penetration violation. This it does with some consistency and some confidence. Violation is a synonym for intercourse. At the same time, the penetration is taken to be a use, not an abuse; a normal use; it is appropriate to enter her, to push into (“violate”) the boundaries of her body. She is human, of course, but by a standard that does not include physical privacy. She is, in fact, human by a standard that precludes physical privacy, since to keep a man out altogether and for a lifetime is deviant in the extreme, a psychopathology, a repudiation of the way in which she is expected to manifest her humanity. There is a deep recognition in culture and in experience that intercourse is both the normal use of a woman, her human potentiality affirmed by it, and a violative abuse, her privacy irredeemably compromised, her selfhood changed in a way that is irrevocable, unrecoverable. And it is recognized that the use and abuse are not distinct phenomena but somehow a synthesized reality: both are true at the same time as if they were one harmonious truth instead of mutually exclusive contradictions. Intercourse in reality is a use and an abuse simultaneously, experienced and described as such, the act parlayed into the illuminated heights of religious duty and the dark recesses of morbid and dirty brutality. She, a human being, is supposed to have a privacy that is absolute; except that she, a woman, has a hole between her legs that men can, must, do enter. This hole, her hole, is synonymous with entry."

Do you agree with her? Maybe a video will elucidate her points better.

Andrea Dworkin and FGM

Dworkin also discusses female genital mutilation at length. According to Dworkin, FGM has been used on women around the world to “take away sexual drive and behavioural nonconformity”. At its worst, FGM/C takes the form of infibulation which Dworkin regards as a violation of a civilly inferior group. Infibulation is a procedure whereby the birth canal is stitched closed enough to prevent intercourse and thus, as Dworkin explains, infibulated women “are partially cut open at marriage, and must be fully opened at childbirth - after which they are sewn up again”. For these reasons, Dworkin regards FGM/C as another form of sexual suppression which aims to limit women's autonomy, in some cases through irreversible body modification.

This view has been hotly challenged and remains controversial within the feminist realm. Scholars such as Obioma Nnaemeka claim that the word mutilation conjures imagery of knives and blades which may not necessarily be accurate as in some communities hot water is used instead. Furthermore, the term mutilation may result in negative perceptions of certain groups of people and their cultures. Okorafor, on the other hand, argues that the word mutilation is fitting. On her blog she justifies this by claiming that the word female circumcision falsely “implies that it is the equivalent of male circumcision”. I disagree with Okorafor because I do think it is equivalent and male peepees shouldn't be cut.

Conclusion

What do you think about the nature of penetration? Is it okay because it feels good? Can incels use this theory to indignify normies? I believe this is all true and more. Men who have s*x are male feminists, and I am a good person because I don't.