Intercourse

this book is not an easy read. it is full of information that provokes and ravages "comfort levels" that allow us to mindlessly tolerate the deep cruelty that goes on will not be ideas most people will want to entertain, but allowing oneself to entertain the idea that this sort of cruelty exploitation and violence can and does exist, if not in your day to day experience, somewhere in the world, should be enough to cause any person who still retains a morself of humanity outrage. As humans we have the ability to transcend survival of the fittest and exploiting the "weaker" for the needs of the stronger in our own human family, and this book removes the gauze from any eyes that may be confused about just how brutal life can be in the body of a woman in times and places where being such is not genuinely honored. This book IS like a slap to the face, and upon first reading it can cause discomfort, but like a slap to someone in a daze, it's also sobering in it's unabashed straightforward call-it-as-it-is style. It makes you realize how often communication especially by women is modified to be innocuous and palatable to the reader. At the very least this book is refreshing in that it is as far from that as it gets, but it's much more. It is important to the evolution of a society to name the subtle and flagrant violence and humiliation that is inflicted on some to keep others in power. This book does that. To call things as they are and point to how society is structured around a certain segment [namely males] at the expense of another is NOT doing so to demonize that segment but to name what goes on and point out that what society has allowed to be comfortable for men to believe is complicit and fine for women is not actually so. Only through truly knowing women in their own right and authenticity is it possible to have healthy relations between the sexes.

Holy gawd, a male who loved this book! And I did. It's sad how most people can only see the sophomoric caricatures their biases craft in this book, rather than the real story: which is not hatred for males, nor an indictment of all heterosexuality as rape. Though it will be read that way if a person can *only* concieve of sex which contains an element of domination: take away the domination aspect, and for them, sex is abolished. The men and women (such as the odious Camille Paglia) who fear this book have minds too entrenched in patriarchal pseudoscientific essentialist nonsense to get over that. As for me, I love sex. I think it's beautiful -- and that's also why I love this book. It suggests to me that intercourse can retain that beauty, and that it doesn't have to be debased by being used as a weapon and a tool of oppression. Dworkin is a brilliant mind whose works have altered my life.

This is one of those books that "changed my life". She pulls no punches, but is neither extremist nor militant. She does not hate men, only exposes the brutality behind much of what is called fantasy. Women are a class in this society, and any analysis of our condition as a class must include intercourse. We get quite enough go-go cheerleading sugar-coating of what sex is and what role it plays in society (Like the vapid Suzie Bright). This book provides a needed exposure of the dark side, which festers and thrives in seclusion. If we seek equality and liberation in every aspect of our lives except for sex we will never reach our goal. I do not harbor resentments toward men, as some other women reviewers here seem to. But I would be ignorant if I denied that much woman-hating finds its expression in sex and pornography. I always had a queezy feeling about certain manifestations of sex in our culture, and Andrea Dworkin helped to articulate the problem for me. GO ANDREA!