Intercourse [Deluxe Edition] [Paperback]

Andrea Dworkin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 7, 2006

Andrea Dworkin, once called “Feminism’s Malcolm X,” has been worshipped, reviled, criticized, and analyzed-but never ignored. The power of her writing, the passion of her ideals, and the ferocity of her intellect have spurred the arguments and activism of two generations of feminists. Now the book that she’s best known for-in which she provoked the argument that ultimately split apart the feminist movement-is being reissued for the young women and men of the twenty-first century. Intercourse enraged as many readers as it inspired when it was first published in 1987. In it, Dworkin argues that in a male supremacist society, sex between men and women constitutes a central part of women’s subordination to men. (This argument was quickly-and falsely-simplified to “all sex is rape” in the public arena, adding fire to Dworkin’s already radical persona.) In her introduction to this twentieth-anniversary edition of Intercourse, Ariel Levy, the author of Female Chauvinist Pigs, discusses the circumstances of Dworkin’s untimely death in the spring of 2005, and the enormous impact of her life and work. Dworkin’s argument, she points out, is the stickiest question of feminism: Can a woman fight the power when he shares her bed?

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Dworkin argues that in a society where men oppress women, they will use sex for that purpose as well, and that men's sexual dominion over women underpins the whole system of oppression codified in law. Her most provocative point is that sexual intercourse itself intrinsically creates problems for women's self-esteem. She bases this argument on the premise that human beings need to protect their physical boundaries to feel safe. Since women's boundaries are breached in even the most welcome and humane forms of sexual intercourse, they must therefore experience themselves, as part of their normal existence, as more vulnerable than men experience themselves and less able to assert their humanity. Dworkin's argument is obviously one-sided, disregarding benefits women may derive from these intimate connections. Nor does she spend much time on a solution for the problem of boundaries she has identified. Still, this fascinating book deserves a wide readership. Cynthia Harrison, American Historical Assn., Washington, D.C.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"The most shocking book any feminist has yet written." Germaine Greer"

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Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books; 20 Anv edition (November 7, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0465017525
• ISBN-13: 978-0465017522
• Product Dimensions: 1 x 5.2 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (39 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #197,820 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

64 of 89 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing! August 31, 2000

By Jeremy Koch

Format:Paperback

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.

16 of 22 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Intercourse June 6, 2007

By R. Swaney

Format:Paperback

After Betty Friedan, Andrea Dworkin seems to top the list as one of the most referenced feminists. Her popularity did not prepare me in the least for what exactly her book de jour is. That is, Intercourse, the book coined as "saying" "all sex is rape," is actually an intriguing literary criticism with a brief peppering of art history. Any quotes I previously listed by Dworkin were taken out of context in that it would only make sense that after Dworkin is read a conversation must occur on art's ability (and lack of) to reflect and represent life.

Dworkin's book begins at Tolstoy and moves through biographies of he and his wife and his literary work The Kreutzer Sonata. The book provides a feminist and specific sexual critique on how sexuality is represented throughout classical, fictional pieces ranging from Tennessee Williams to James Baldwin to Bram Stoker to the Bible and how these works reflect the reality of the culture they were produced in. This bundle of information is presented to the reader and then weaved together in a luxurious manner to critique present views on sexuality. (Absolutely fascinating to me as this is what I did for my late modern art assignment last semester.)

Similar to Reading Lolita in Tehran, it is not necessary that you've actually read any of these works. However, as with any literary criticism it's a bit difficult to rebut or disagree with it without reading the actual texts the critique is based on. Overall, it's a brilliant piece of feminist literature that is blunt and honest and thought provoking. Whether or not you agree with everything (or anything) that Dworkin says, it's a thought stimulating book that consistently questions the reader.

31 of 44 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars A poorly developed and defended premise. June 16, 1999

By [e-mail]

Format:Paperback

Dworkin does offer some compelling discourse. It was good to read the full context of what she's saying rather than just a quote, even if I don't agree with her conclusion or how she got there. Nadine Strossen's a good role model, I'm trying to keep an open mind.

Her mechanism is to take literature (Tolstoy, Tennessee Williams, the Bible, etc.) and draw conclusions about human nature from her selections. Her selections tend to be extreme and from a different historical context. I'm willing to bet that someone with a command of the literary "canon" could find as many examples that would show an optimistic view of inter-gender experience.

That having been said, what made it compelling to me was that I agree with many of the points she makes. The inquisition was a horrible experience and is still, to some degree, happening. The basis for the current state of affairs is in men (Judeo-Christian) understanding that statutory and religious laws and their attendant brutality were necessary to control wealth and power. Women do fundamentally control men's accessibility to sex, and so those same laws and attendant brutality offer(ed) a convenient way to assure accessibility.

Where I diverge, is in the assumption that there is no hope for egalitarian inter-gender experience and the presumption that she speaks with authority on the male perspective. She see's her distorted view of the human nature of intercourse, "the f***" as the root of all evil. I tend to see the problem as one of the political expediency of one group of unenlightened people oppressing another. All of the bad examples of "the f***" seem to me more a symptom than the root cause.

I think that what Dworkin most advances is institutionalization of hatred for men.... I don't understand how it can be assumed that that can advance society when we can agree that misogyny has been such a huge impediment. I'm sure that Dworkin feels she has developed and defended a premise in "Intercourse". In the end, I think that it is all just discourse. Not to diminish discourse, it being the only hope we have for understanding, but nothing can be proved. No conclusions reached. No solutions. In this sense I'm afraid that my little effort to understand is of little value. Read more ›

103 of 149 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars A Pronounced Inability to Evaluate Sources July 2, 1999

By A Customer

Format:Paperback

I had read so much of Dworkin second-hand that I decided to seek out this wildly-praised "feminist classic" and see her in her own context.

Oh, Brother (sister?) This is an EXECRABLE work. It's bile and hatefulness towards people who happen to be born with a Y chromosome seems "heroic" to some readers, but what struck me more than this rather obvious fact is that the book is quite poorly written, one long screaming screed. Any pretense toward logical argument, careful evaluation of sources or the traditional processes of reasoned scholarship are thrown out, like the proverbial baby with the bath water.

Many will claim that such claims for 'linear' argumentation are part of the 'male hegemonic power structure'. Ho hum. All I'm asking for is coherence. The book will primarily appeal to people who find hatemongering illogic compelling when deployed against men and appalling in other contexts.

I went into this book thinking that Camille Paglia had done Dworkin a horrible disservice, and now I think she was being kind. Evidence not of insight or courage but, I'm afraid, of a warped consciousness and deep-seated biases. What makes this especially sad is that so many of Dworkin's *conclusions* deserve a hearing, but they are seated next to absurd ones that -- I'm not making this up, as Dave Barry might put it -- 'boldly' assert that heterosexual relations are at base a structure of domination, and that women who 'want it' are somehow psychologically mutilated. Sorry for the flippancy here; you don't come across something so achingly bad, and so wildly overpraised, every day.