Sex shouldn’t put women in a subordinate position.
It must be reciprocal and not an act of aggression
from a man looking only to satisfy himself.
Pornography and erotic literature in patriarchal societies
consistently eroticises women’s sexual subordination to men,
and often overt acts of exploitation or violence.
Sexual subordination was central to men’s and women’s
experiences of sexual intercourse in a male supremacist
society, and reinforced throughout mainstream culture,
including not only pornography but also in classic
works of male-centric literature.
Depictions of intercourse in mainstream art and culture
consistently emphasized heterosexual intercourse as the
only or the most genuine form of “real” sex;
– that they portrayed intercourse in violent or invasive terms;
– that they portrayed the violence or invasion as central to its eroticism;
– and that they often united it with male contempt for,
revulsion towards, or even murder of, the “carnal” woman.
This kind of depiction enforced a male-centric
and coercive view of sexuality.
When the cultural attitudes combine with
the material conditions of women’s lives
in a sexist society, the experience of
heterosexual intercourse itself becomes
a central part of men’s subordination of women.
It’s experienced as a form of “occupation”
that is nevertheless expected to be pleasurable
for women and to define their very status as women.
This is nihilism, or this is truth. He has to push
in past boundaries. There is the outline of a body,
distinct, separate, its integrity an illusion,
a tragic deception, because unseen there is a slit
between the legs, and he has to push into it.
There is never a real privacy of the body that can
coexist with intercourse: with being entered.
The vagina itself is muscled and the muscles have
to be pushed apart.
The thrusting is persistent invasion. She is opened up,
split down the center. She is occupied–physically,
internally, in her privacy.
