as inert and stupid; nor could it be exploited by another without diminishing in vigor; and being
sold on the marketplace as a commodity would necessarily be
anathema to it, a direct affront to its intrinsic need to confront the
world in self-defined and self-determining terms. Sexual intelligence would probably be more like moral intelligence than like
anything else: a point that women for centuries have been trying to
make. But since no intelligence in a woman is respected, and since
she is condemned to moralism because she is defined as being incapable of moral intelligence, and since she is defined as a sexual thing to be used, the meaning of women in likening moral and
sexual intelligence is not understood. Sexual intelligence asserts itself through sexual integrity, a dimension of values and action forbidden to women. Sexual intelligence would have to be rooted first and foremost in the honest possession of one’s own body, and
women exist to be possessed by others, namely men. The possession of one’s own body would have to be absolute and entirely realized for the intelligence to thrive in the world of action. Sexual
intelligence, like moral intelligence, would have to confront the
great issues of cruelty and tenderness; but where moral intelligence
must tangle with questions of right and wrong, sexual intelligence
would have to tangle with questions of dominance and submission.
One preordained to be fucked has no need to exercise sexual intelligence, no opportunity to exercise it, no argument that justifies exercising it. To keep the woman sexually acquiescent, the capacity for sexual intelligence must be prohibited to her; and it is. Her clitoris is denied; her capacity for pleasure is distorted and defamed; her erotic values are slandered and insulted; her desire to value her body as her own is paralyzed and maimed. She is turned
into an occasion for male pleasure, an object of male desire, a thing
to be used; and any willful expression of her sexuality in the world
unmediated by men or male values is punished. She is used as a
slut or as a lady; but sexual intelligence cannot manifest in a human
being whose predestined purpose is to be exploited through sex, by
sex, in sex, as sex. Sexual intelligence constructs its own use: it
begins with a whole body, not one that has already been cut into
parts and fetishized; it begins with a self-respecting body, not one
that is characterized by class as dirty, wanton, and slavish; it acts
in the world, a world it enters on its own, with freedom as well as
with passion. Sexual intelligence cannot live behind locked doors,
any more than any other kind of intelligence can. Sexual intelligence cannot exist defensively, keeping out rape. Sexual intelligence cannot be decorative or pretty or coy or timid, nor can it live on a diet of contempt and abuse and hatred of its human form.
Sexual intelligence is not animal, it is human; it has values; it sets
limits that are meaningful to the whole person and personality,
which must live in history and in the world. Women have found
the development and exercise of sexual intelligence more difficult
than any other kind: women have learned to read; women have
acquired intellect; women have had so much creative intelligence
that even despisal and isolation and punishment have not been able
to squeeze it out of them; women have struggled for a moral intelligence that by its very existence repudiates moralism; but sexual intelligence is cut off at its roots, because the woman’s body is not
her own. The incestuous use of a girl murders it. The sexual intimidation or violation of a girl murders it. The enforced chastity of a girl murders it. The separation of girl from girl murders it. The
turning over of a girl to a man as wife murders it. The selling of a
girl into prostitution murders it. The use of a woman as a wife
murders it. The use of a woman as a sexual thing murders it. The
selling of a woman as a sexual commodity, not just on the street
