Status Updates From Coïts

The dirt she is buried alive in is real because the power that devalues her is real. The ways in which she is devalued are concrete, material, real: sexual, economic, physical, social. They happen to her: not as a disembodied spirit but as a corporeal being, flesh and blood. Inferiority is done to her: it is real and she is real. Attitudes do not establish her lower status; institutions and practices do.

... intercourse is political dominance; power as power or power as pleasure.

the illegal fuck, for instance, keeps the prostitute incarcerated in a ghetto hellhole of sexual subservience while the legal fuck keeps the wife used, controlled, sexually subservient, in the home.

"Alone together, a man fucks a woman; he possesses her; the act is an act of possession in and of itself; the man and the woman experience such."

*heavy sign*

I don't know, I think Dworkin is an excellent critical analyst, but critical theory is just not my cup of tea. To the extent that intercourse is defined by social meaning, I agree that it can be all the things that Dworkin says it is. On the other hand, it feels like she's rambling a lot about her personal interpretation of sex, which is fine, but I don't know if it's widely applicable as a social remedy to misogyny

I had a hard time understanding this previous chapter, maybe because I'm listening to it as an audiobook. But this is also one of the main criticisms that I have of critical theorists in general--Their analysis often borders on solipsism to the point where it's hard to determine what they're even talking about

This book is (in)famous for suggesting that most, if not all, heterosexual intercourse in our patriarchal society amounts to rape. As a gay man, I'm sympathetic to this view, even though I personally know straight men who do not fit into Andrew Dworkin's maxim. Those men are few and far between--In our Trumpist society, Dworkin's work is a scathing criticism of the status quo

im about to be insufferable