Andrea Dworkin, once called Feminism’s Malcolm X, has been worshipped, reviled, criticized, and analyzed—but never ignored. The power of her writing, the passion of her ideals, and the ferocity of her intellect have spurred the arguments and activism of two generations of feminists.

Intercourse is the book she is best known for, in which she provoked the argument that ultimately split apart the feminist movement. It enraged as many readers as it inspired when it was first published in 1987. In it, Dworkin argues that in a male supremacist society, sex between men and women constitutes a central part of women’s subordination to men.

In her introduction to this twentieth-anniversary edition of Intercourse, Ariel Levy, the author of Female Chauvinist Pigs, discusses the enormous impact of Dworkin’s life and work. Dworkin’s argument is the stickiest question of feminism: Can a woman fight the power when he shares her bed?