Free Mercy by Andrea Dworkin

Eventually the pacifists would tell the c. o. ’s the right
    w ay to answer the question. It was a lofty answer about never
    using violence under any circumstance however tragic or
    painful but it was a lie because none o f them ever thought it
    was anything to have their girlfriend raped or their mother.
    They always thought it was funny and they always laughed; so
    it wasn’t violence because they never laughed at violence. So
    I’m not sure i f rape even really existed because these pacifists
    really cared about violence and they never would turn their
    backs on violence. They cared about social justice. They cared
    about peace. They cared about racism. They cared about
    poverty. They cared about everything bad that happened to
    people. It was confusing that they didn’t care about rape, or
    thought it was a joke, but then I wasn’t so sure what rape was
    exactly. I knew it was horrible. I always had a picture in my
    mind o f a woman with her clothes torn, near dead, on the floor,
    unable to move because she was beaten up so bad and hurt so
    much, especially between her legs. I always thought the Nazis
    had done it. The draft board always asked about the Nazis:
    would you have fought against the Nazis, suppose the Nazis
    tried to rape your sister. They would rehearse how to answer the

    draft board and then, when it came to the rape part, they always
    laughed and madejokes. I would be typing because I never got
    to talk or they would act irritated if I did or they would just
    keep talking to each other anyway over me and I felt upset and
    I would interrupt and say, well, I mean, rape is. . . . but I
    could never finish the sentence, and if I’d managed to get their
    attention, sometimes by nearly crying, they’d all just stare and
    I’d go blank. It was a terrifying thing and you would be so
    hurt; how could they laugh? And you wouldn’t want a Nazi to
    come anywhere near you, it would just be foul. The Nazis , I
    would say, trying to find a way to say— bad, very bad. Rape is
    very bad, I wanted to say, but I could only say Nazis are very
    bad. What’s bad about fucking my sister, someone would say;
    always; every time. Then they’d all laugh. So I wasn’t even
    sure if there was rape. So I don’t think I could have been raped
    even though I think I was raped but I know I wasn’t because it
    barely existed or it didn’t exist at all and if it did it was only
    with Nazis; it had to be as bad as Nazis. I didn’t want the man
    to be fucking me but, I mean, that doesn’t really matter; it’s
    just that I really tried to stop him, I really tried not to have him
    near me, I really didn’t want him to and he really hurt me so
    much so I thought maybe it was rape because he hurt me so
    bad and I didn’t want to so much but I guess it wasn’t or it
    doesn’t matter. I had this boyfriend named Arthur, a sweet
    man. He was older; he had dignity. He wasn’t soft, he knew
    the streets; but he didn’t need to show anything or prove
    anything. He just lived as far as I could see. He was a waiter in a
    bar deep in the Lower East Side, so deep down under a dark
    sky, wretched to get there but okay inside. I was sleeping on a
    floor near there, in the collective. Someone told me you could
    get real cheap chicken at the bar. I would go there every night
    for m y one meal, fried chicken in a basket with hot thick
    french fried potatoes and ketchup for ninety-nine cents and it
    was real good, real chicken, not rat meat, cooked good. He

    brought me a beer but I had to tell him to take it back because J
    didn’t have the money for it but he was buying it for me. Then
    I went with him one night. The bar was filled and noisy and
    had sawdust on the floors and barrels o f peanuts so you could
    eat them without money and there were low life and artists
    there. He smiled and seemed happy and also had a sadness, in
    his eyes, on the edges o f his mouth. He lived in a small
    apartment with two other men, one a painter,