Intercourse (book)

01Dworkin argued that the physical act of penetration occupied women's bodies in a way that mirrored property law — the woman becomes territory.
02She cited Tolstoy, Kobo Abe, Tennessee Williams, and Isaac Bashevis Singer as literary witnesses to the same argument.
03Dworkin explicitly denied in interviews that she called all sex rape — but the book never made that denial; readers inferred it anyway.

A typical crossbow

Illustrated Jonah from the 15th-century Kennicott Bible

Andrea Dworkin's 1987 book 'Intercourse' argued that penetrative sex was, structurally, an act of ownership — not metaphorically but legally and physically. She spent 200 pages refusing to soften it.