In Intercourse, she intertwines paragraphs about what she views society to view things as, with paragraphs of her own voice. The tone of the chapter seems to be that the physical realities of intercourse put women at a disadvantage in terms of how society ends up viewing her, and explores various ways to try to salvage that situation, but takes a somewhat pessimistic tone that any of those ways are successful. It's not that she proposes biological determinism, but rather that she points out that, especially through male eyes, the physical way it works has led so much of society to view women as inferior, but keeps a fairly pessimistic tone about how to fix it.
She starts off in Chapter 7 by painting that view of how society views intercourse. She first describes intercourse in a very negative way, but then presents some of what she calls kinder societal explanations of sex that are not so negative, but kind of dismisses them.
Then she points out facts, where she seems to be her own voice, and most appear to be true. Facts such as: many women do not report orgasm from intercourse, that women must take ownership of their orgasm and stimulation for liberation, that women want a more complete body sexual intimacy than intercourse alone provides, that intercourse often expresses domination by men.
She then talks about how women have tried to make it work, for love of the man. She then quotes Ellen Key and Shere Hite, in their attempts to re-define intercourse using more equal terminology. Dworkin had previously touched on this in Chapter 5, where she pointed out examples of how intercourse is viewed by men as being controlled by the man even though it could be said that she surrounds him, and other language that would phrase her in the more dominant position. Dworkin takes a sympathetic look at these views by Key and Hite, holds them up as reasonable, but then says they don't amount to much in real life with real men.
She continues with similar points, repeating and solidifying much of the same, using her words and also using sarcasm, saying that men think they know all there is to know about sex, describes things from a common male point of view of not thinking about the woman too much, etc.
Dworkin then goes onto describe female-supremecist models for intercourse, quoting Victoria Woodhull in particular. Dworkin seems to take a mixed view, saying that they seem to evade some fundamental questions but acknowledge others. Dworkin reiterates that intercourse is a very vulnerable act for the woman, and describes Woodhull's view which Dworkin seems to support- that not only should intercourse only occur when the woman gives consent, but that intercourse should only occur women the woman initiates it. Dworkin praises this model for a bit, about how it takes the somewhat imbalanced act and balances it more, but then becomes critical again.
She states that male-dominant gender hierarchy seems immune to reform based on changes in sexual styles, like Woodhull's model. And she says it may be because the physical act of intercourse is itself immune to reform, being a physical act. (In other words, the physical act itself is described as somewhat fundamentally unbalanced, ripe for abuse, and that social models to try to balance it out, while maybe okay in theory, just aren't as reliable or robust as the consistency of the physical act itself). That's when she talks about how, in practice, women tend to eroticize powerlessness. Then, interestingly, she describes new reproductive technologies, which might otherwise be argued to give power to women, to reduce the dangers of intercourse, to instead be more ways for men to scrutinize and control women.
Then she asks all these open-ended questions. Can intercourse exist without objectification? What would it look like if it did? Questions like that. She goes once more into the description where intercourse is objectification, where women turn themselves into an object for men. She describes how women often collaborate with men to oppress women, out of love for them. She then says that women take the burden of objectifying and submitting themselves, and calling it freedom. She says, "When those who dominate you get you to take the initiative in your own human destruction, you have lost more than any oppressed people yet has ever gotten back. Whatever intercourse is, it is not freedom; and if it cannot exist without objectification, it never will be. Instead occupied women will be collaborators, more base in their collaboration than other collaborators have ever been: experiencing pleasure in their own inferiority; calling intercourse freedom. It is a tragedy beyond the power of language to convey when what has been imposed on women by force becomes a standard of freedom for women: and all the women say it is so."
In the final part of the chapter, she states that if intercourse is going to be about equality, it'll have to exist in some way that has not yet been seen. She says that intercourse under the current oppressive society is damaging to freedom, and warns against taking pleasure in submission because the cost is too great.
So overall, in that chapter, she takes a pretty negative view of intercourse due the physical nature of it, explores multiple ways to try to salvage it and make it more equitable but is critical of their success in the real world, and then leaves the chapter somewhat open-ended but not exactly optimistic.
Do you think that's a fair description of the chapter?
Throughout the rest of the book, which I've not read as closely, she talks more about various views in literature and religion towards women and sex and less about intercourse itself, like she did in this chapter. Even by the end of the book, I don't see where she has given thorough examples or descriptions of how to improve intercourse, how it can exist positively, though she doesn't go so far as to assert that it can't exist in a positive way. It's mostly a negative view towards it, with only speculative positions that maybe in a less patriarchal world, it can work in a way that hasn't been seen. Would you describe that as accurate, or does she indeed provide more positive examples somewhere in the book?
I think much of the work is good, but that there is a pessimism about intercourse (and less so about sexuality in general) that isn't resolved in any positive or uplifting way. I can see how a legitimate response would want to provide a different and more positive view of men, sexuality, and intercourse in particular.
