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Because women are exploited as a sex class for sex, it is impossible to talk about women’s sexuality outside the context of forced sex or, at the least, without reference to forced sex; and yet, to

keep forced sex going and invisible simultaneously, it is discussed

every other w ay, all the time.

The force itself is intrinsically “sexy, ” romanticized, described as

a measure of the desire of an individual man for an individual

woman. Force, duress, subterfuge, threat—all add “sex” to the sex

act by intensifying the femininity of the woman, her status as a

creature of forced sex.

It is through intercourse in particular that men express and

maintain their power and dominance over women. The right of

men to women’s bodies for the purpose of intercourse remains the

heart, soul, and balls of male supremacy: this is true whatever style

of advocacy is used, Right or Left, to justify coital access.

Every woman— no matter what her sexual orientation, personal

sexual likes or dislikes, personal history, political ideology— lives

inside this system of forced sex. This is true even if she has never

personally experienced any sexual coercion, or if she personally

likes intercourse as a form of intim acy, or if she as an individual

has experiences of intercourse that transcend, in her opinion, the

dicta of gender and the institutions of force. This is true even if—

for her— the force is eroticized, essential, central, sacred, meaningful, sublime. This is true even if—for her— she repudiates intercourse and forbids it: if she subjectively lives outside the

laws of gravity, obviously the laws of gravity will intrude. Every

woman is surrounded by this system of forced sex and is encapsulated by it. It acts on her, shapes her, defines her boundaries and her possibilities, tames her, domesticates her, determines the

quality and nature of her privacy: it modifies her. She functions

within it and with constant reference to it. This same system that

she is inside is inside her—metaphorically and literally delivered

into her by intercourse, especially forced intercourse, especially

deep thrusting. Intercourse violates the boundaries of her body,

which is why intercourse is so often referred to as violation. Intercourse as a sex act does not correlate with anything but male power: its frequency and centrality have nothing to do with reproduction, which does not require that intercourse be the central sexual act either in society at large or in any given sexual relationship or encounter; its frequency and centrality have nothing to do with

sexual pleasure for the female or the male, in that pleasure does not

prohibit intercourse but neither does pleasure demand it. Intercourse is synonymous with sex because intercourse is the most systematic expression of male power over women’s bodies, both concrete and emblematic, and as such it is upheld as a male right

by law (divine and secular), custom, practice, culture, and force.

Because intercourse so consistently expresses illegitimate power,

unjust power, wrongful power, it is intrinsically an expression of

the female’s subordinate status, sometimes a celebration of that status. The shame that women feel on being fucked and simultaneously experiencing pleasure in being possessed is the shame of having acknowledged, physically and emotionally, the extent to

which one has internalized and eroticized the subordination. It is a

shame that has in it the kernel of resistance. The woman who says

no to her husband, whatever her reasons, also says no to the state,

no to God, no to the power of men over her, that power being both

personal and institutional. Intercourse is forced on the woman by a

man, his state, his God, and through intercourse an individual is

made into a woman: a woman is made. Whether a woman likes or

does not like, desires or does not desire, to be made a woman does

not change the meaning of the act. “There are many scarcely

nubile girls, ” wrote Colette, “who dream of becoming the show,

the plaything, the licentious masterpiece of some middle-aged man.

It is an ugly dream that is punished by its fulfilment, a morbid

thing, akin to the neuroses of puberty, the habit of eating chalk and

coal, of drinking mouthwash, of reading dirty books and sticking

pins into the palm of the hand. ”4

Forced intercourse in marriage— that is, the right to intercourse