A review by hedgefundhogmanager
Intercourse by Andrea Dworkin

5.0

One of the most powerful books I have read, using art, law, and culture as mirrors. Looking into Dworkin's mirrors, I simultaneously felt ashamed, liberated, wrongly aroused, validated. To be sure, having the lived experience of being a woman helps with accepting the premise here, that sexist oppression is rooted in intercourse, a somewhat radical premise because it was thought that oppression was rooted in e.g. lack of voting rights, or lack of representation in the workforce. (Her critics who dismiss this work as "all sex is rape" only prove her point about what people entrenched in patriarchy think about women, and what women are for, as she writes.)

I was moved to tears several times by her incisive prose, and her power to discriminate BS from the reality of being a woman, both of which touched me deeply. I am touched that she was writing for women like me; me, someone who was still sleepwalking in a patriarchy until very recently. Her death in 2003 deeply saddens me, because I am now indebted to her, with no way to pay back the debt.