You think intercourse is a private act; it's not, it's a social

The words of Andrea Dworkin, “You think intercourse is a private act; it’s not, it’s a social act. Men are sexually predatory in life; and women are sexually manipulative. When two individuals come together and leave their gender outside the bedroom door, then they make love,” resound with the voice of one who sought to unmask illusions. She speaks not only of intimacy, but of the weight of history and the struggle for equality that presses even into the most private chambers of human life.

In her vision, intercourse is never wholly private, for every embrace carries the imprint of culture, custom, and power. Men and women do not come to each other as untouched beings; they bring with them the burdens of expectation, the scars of inequality, and the habits of a society that often casts one as hunter and the other as prey. Thus, what should be an act of tenderness can become a mirror of domination, unless both cast aside these masks of gender.

Consider the age of Victorian England, when women were told they were “pure” and men were ruled by “desire.” Marriage, cloaked as sacred, often reduced the woman to a vessel and the man to a possessor. Yet from this age rose rebels like Mary Wollstonecraft, who dared to cry out that women were not ornaments or pawns, but beings of equal soul. Her struggle, like Dworkin’s, was to show that true love cannot exist until both stand not as roles, but as equals.

Dworkin’s words are a challenge, even a provocation. She unmasks the predatory and the manipulative—not to condemn forever, but to show what must be shed. Only when two step into the sacred space beyond society’s chains can they discover what it means to truly make love: a union not of domination and survival, but of freedom and recognition.

So let this truth be handed down: intimacy is not only of the body, but of the spirit. To meet another soul without masks, without weapons, without chains of gender, is to touch the divine. For in that moment, man and woman are no longer roles in society’s play, but eternal beings, making love not as predator and prey, but as equals—free, whole, and unafraid.