Andrea Dworkin: On rape and battery

In the United States, we have an epidemic of battery. And in the context of battery, I don't even understand how sex can be consensual if consent were a standard that we were willing to accept. And I think it's a bad standard. I mean, under the law, a woman can be dead and she's consented because she hasn't resisted.

So consent doesn't really work for us if we're talking about our human rights. Now I know that I'm talking from a Western perspective, but I feel very strongly that the legal change in making marital rape a real crime of rape is significant for women all over the world. I think this is something that must happen everywhere.

In the context of marriage, and in particular in the context of battery, a woman often initiates sex in order not to be beaten. Any woman in a situation in which she's being tortured who wants to stay alive does something to placate the man who is hurting her. Doesn't matter what it is. It doesn't matter if it's little.

It doesn't matter if it's big. That's why women feel so responsible for battery. It's the very desire to live, to survive, that does actually keep women alive, but makes women feel implicated in the abuse that's happening to them. This is very deep, and it's very terrible, and it's very real. And the only way we're going to deal with it is if we find a way to break down that isolation.

We're a political movement. That's what we're supposed to do. We're supposed to find a way to stop the batterer, and protect the dignity of the woman's life. We may not accept the social situation the way that it is. We cannot accept the legal system the way that it is. And so we need to understand the reality for women on the ground, in the world, in real life.

And our advocacy of social policy and legal reform has to be based on the experiences of real women. Which is why the research that's been done here is so very, very important.