Feminist Andrea Dworkin Dies at 58

[KarenAM]

Feminist Andrea Dworkin Dies at 58

Even though she opposed so many of the freedoms that I believe in, and actively campaigned to limit my right to freely express myself, I still find myself somewhat sad to read this news. 58 is too young.

 

[minsue]

 

[rgraham666]

What's the female version of mysoginist?

What ever it is, Ms. Dworkin was one, in my opinion.

I don't feel good that she's gone, but I'm not going to waste tears on her either.

Sorry Karen. That's how I feel.

 

[LadyJeanne]

58 is definitely too young.

I remember Katherine McKinnon speaking at my college in favor of censorship of pornography. At the time, I had no views on porn at all (except that the films I'd seen were pretty boring). I'd like to think that all the women who write fantastic erotica on Lit might have made them both see how porn can also be empowering.

In any case, a for Andrea for speaking out for what she believed.

 

[Pure]

I remember seeing her and Catherine McKinnon; she in overalls, CM in a tailored suit (Yale law prof). They were a powerful pair of speakers, and almost had me convinced that their 'anti porn' ordinance was a good thing.

Andrea was quite a talented writer, full of brilliance and venom, as in her book, 'intercourse,' which likened it to a colonial 'planting of the flag'.

She and CM influenced courts and legislation, including the Supreme Ct. of Canada, which ruled against 'degrading' porn, and then gradually the whole thing came unraveled. Attempts were made to list 'degradations', and then it was found some lesbians were into it. Writers like Califia. Some gay males.

For several years, censors tried eliminating 'degrading' segments of films in Ontario: one type involved any semen hitting a woman's face, even a drop. The censors had to watch very carefully. All those scenes were cut.

But the whole thing really didn't make sense. Some women and men apparently consented to 'degradation', so Dworkin had to say that consent was meaningless, that many women and all men were brainwashed.

The other problem was that AD and DM were strengthening the government they allegedly distrusted as patriarchal.

White feminism had found its authoritarian streak, just as the right wing Christians are finding it, now. Indeed Dworkin and friends allied with the Christian Right in efforts to ban porn. Things got stranger and stranger.

A whole strand of white feminism imploded.

All in all, a gifted person, who had many hard knocks, and who pioneered in a certain way, and made all males *very* uncomfortable (she had given up on them, CM had not.) A fine intellect and writer, but filled with rage--in the end turning to the much maligned 'system' to try to enforce her version white feminist morals.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Andrea was quite a talented writer, full of brilliance and venom, as in her book 'intercourse' which likened it to a colonial 'planting of the flag'.

One of the dreariest holdovers of the 60's/70's was the insistence on seeing everything in political terms. It's led to a lot of folly.

 

[Poussin]

.....

 

[Huckleman2000]

I remember seeing her and Catherine McKinnon; she in overalls, CM in a tailored suit (Yale law prof). They were a powerful pair of speakers, and almost had me convinced that their 'anti porn' ordinance was a good thing...

...All in all, a gifted person, who had many hard knocks, and who pioneered in a certain way, and made all males *very* uncomfortable (she had given up on them, CM had not.) A fine intellect and writer, but filled with rage--in the end turning to the much maligned 'system' to try to enforce white feminist morals.

I remember the two of them holding forth in Minneapolis in the early 80's. It was very controversial, and as a "sensitive male", I felt like I had to at least see what it was they were about. In retrospect, they were oppressively anti-male, but it's mainly the years that have proved that out. At the time, it led to a wussification of a lot of decent men, and needless harassment of people that were, ultimately, supporters of civil equality. I remember being turned away from a coffee-house concert that a lesbian friend wanted me to see with her, because no men were allowed. This was still in the pre-AIDs heydey of gay-chic. I don't know which of us was more embarrassed.

In the end, Andrea Dworkin was a pathological bull-dyke with a gift for the soap-box. Like all extremists, her impact was greater than her ideas.

There are probably several instances in my life where I didn't get laid, and neither did the "she" at the time, due to hesitation and an uncalled for earnestness on my part. As if, being male, there was something more I needed to do to make it seem like it wasn't just good old MF Lust that I was interested in. Lust was, for sure, all the "shes" were interested in...

Tonight when I masturbate, I'll try to picture painting Dworkin's mustached upper lip when I come, but I won't be able to. I just don't have that much anger linked to sexual tension and imagery, as she assumed I should by my chromosomes.

 

[Kassiana]

Too bad she never got the therapy she needed, or the writing classes she also desperately needed. Just try reading a page or two of "Letters from a War Zone" sometime. I've rarely seen such incoherent tosh.

At any rate, I hope she's at peace now, not trying to kill off all the Gods and/or castrate them or telling the Goddesses they're evil for enjoying sex with male Gods.

 

[NoJo]

One of the dreariest holdovers of the 60's/70's was the insistence on seeing everything in political terms. It's led to a lot of folly.

Worse, it's led to a Reactionary backlash. But don't blame Andrea.

 

[Seattle Zack]

"misandrist" was the term you were searching for, rg.

For those who don't know about this dumbass bitch ... Dworkin, together with the feminist lawyer Catharine MacKinnon, drafted a proposal for a law that defined pornography as a civil rights violation against women, and allowed women to sue the producers and distributors of pornography in a civil court for damages. In 1983 the law was passed in Indianapolis, but was subsequently overturned as unconstitutional by the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in 1985. The Supreme Court of the United States later upheld the lower court's ruling in American Booksellers Association, Inc. v. Hudnut.

A brief she and MacKinnon had previously written for the Women's Legal Education and Action Fund (LEAF) was submitted in the Canadian court case R. v. Butler, which found that the free speech provisions of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms did not cover pornography. Some of the most severely affected businesses have been gay and lesbian bookstores, whose merchandise Canada Customs has been empowered to seize at the border based on the arbitrary decision of customs employees. Even gay male pornography and pornography created by lesbians for lesbians has been adjudged to be degrading to women and prohibited, despite the lack of clear criteria for what exactly is degrading to women. Once bookstores such as Little Sister's in Vancouver and Glad Day in Toronto began to file legal challenges, Dworkin stated that she does not believe in obscenity laws, that she had opposed LEAF's action in this case in submitting the brief she had helped write, and that she believed the seizures in those cases were based on homophobia and sexism.

Well, let's see what she had to say about what we do:

A commitment to sexual equality with males is a commitment to becoming the rich instead of the poor, the rapist instead of the raped, the murderer instead of the murdered.
--Andrea Dworkin

By the time we are women, fear is as familiar to us as air. It is our element. We live in it, we inhale it, we exhale it, and most of the time we do not even notice it. Instead of "I am afraid," we say, "I don't want to," or "I don't know how," or "I can't."
--Andrea Dworkin

Erotica is simply high-class pornography; better produced, better conceived, better executed, better packaged, designed for a better class of consumer.
--Andrea Dworkin

Marriage as an institution developed from rape as a practice. Rape, originally defined as abduction, became marriage by capture. Marriage meant the taking was to extend in time, to be not only use of but possession of, or ownership.
--Andrea Dworkin

Men have defined the parameters of every subject. All feminist arguments, however radical in intent or consequence, are with or against assertions or premises implicit in the male system, which is made credible or authentic by the power of men to name.
--Andrea Dworkin

Men know everything - all of them - all the time - no matter how stupid or inexperienced or arrogant or ignorant they are.
--Andrea Dworkin

Money speaks, but it speaks with a male voice.
--Andrea Dworkin

Only when manhood is dead - and it will perish when ravaged femininity no longer sustains it - only then will we know what it is to be free.
--Andrea Dworkin

Sexism is the foundation on which all tyranny is built. Every social form of hierarchy and abuse is modeled on male-over-female domination.
--Andrea Dworkin

The fact that we are all trained to be mothers from infancy on means that we are all trained to devote our lives to men, whether they are our sons or not; that we are all trained to force other women to exemplify the lack of qualities which characterizes the cultural construct of femininity.
--Andrea Dworkin

While gossip among women is universally ridiculed as low and trivial, gossip among men, especially if it is about women, is called theory, or idea, or fact.
--Andrea Dworkin

Wild intelligence abhors any narrow world; and the world of women must stay narrow, or the woman is an outlaw. No woman could be Nietzsche or Rimbaud without ending up in a whorehouse or lobotomized.
--Andrea Dworkin

Women, for centuries not having access to pornography and now unable to bear looking at the muck on the supermarket shelves, are astonished. Women do not believe that men believe what pornography says about women. But they do. From the worst to the best of them, they do.
--Andrea Dworkin

"Women's fashion" is a euphemism for fashion created by men for women.
--Andrea Dworkin

Now there's a femininst voice for ya. Right on sister! What a moron. Good fucking riddance.

--Zack

 

[NoJo]

Every civil rights movement needs its Malcolm X's as well as its Martin Luther Kings.

 

[elsol]

I'm always surprised when a 'minority' gets into bed with the tactics of the most extreme right.

It's the dumbest fucking political move possible... as the right will happily let you give them a new toy to shut you the fuck up too.

It's a corrollary to the 'First they came for... and then they came for...'

First, they let me shoot X... then they let me shoot Y... and when there was no one left they shot me.

Sincerely,
ElSol

 

[Seattle Zack]

I'm always surprised when a 'minority' gets into bed with the tactics of the most extreme right.

I am surprised too, snp, when you know as well as I do that women are not a minority.

hehe
--Zack

 

[NoJo]

"misandrist" was the term you were searching for, rg.

For those who don't know about this dumbass bitch ... Dworkin, together with the feminist lawyer Catharine MacKinnon, drafted a proposal for a law that defined pornography as a civil rights violation against women, and allowed women to sue the producers and distributors of pornography in a civil court for damages. In 1983 the law was passed in Indianapolis, but was subsequently overturned as unconstitutional by the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in 1985. The Supreme Court of the United States later upheld the lower court's ruling in American Booksellers Association, Inc. v. Hudnut.

A brief she and MacKinnon had previously written for the Women's Legal Education and Action Fund (LEAF) was submitted in the Canadian court case R. v. Butler, which found that the free speech provisions of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms did not cover pornography. Some of the most severely affected businesses have been gay and lesbian bookstores, whose merchandise Canada Customs has been empowered to seize at the border based on the arbitrary decision of customs employees. Even gay male pornography and pornography created by lesbians for lesbians has been adjudged to be degrading to women and prohibited, despite the lack of clear criteria for what exactly is degrading to women. Once bookstores such as Little Sister's in Vancouver and Glad Day in Toronto began to file legal challenges, Dworkin stated that she does not believe in obscenity laws, that she had opposed LEAF's action in this case in submitting the brief she had helped write, and that she believed the seizures in those cases were based on homophobia and sexism.

Well, let's see what she had to say about what we do:

A commitment to sexual equality with males is a commitment to becoming the rich instead of the poor, the rapist instead of the raped, the murderer instead of the murdered.
--Andrea Dworkin

By the time we are women, fear is as familiar to us as air. It is our element. We live in it, we inhale it, we exhale it, and most of the time we do not even notice it. Instead of "I am afraid," we say, "I don't want to," or "I don't know how," or "I can't."
--Andrea Dworkin

Erotica is simply high-class pornography; better produced, better conceived, better executed, better packaged, designed for a better class of consumer.
--Andrea Dworkin

Marriage as an institution developed from rape as a practice. Rape, originally defined as abduction, became marriage by capture. Marriage meant the taking was to extend in time, to be not only use of but possession of, or ownership.
--Andrea Dworkin

Men have defined the parameters of every subject. All feminist arguments, however radical in intent or consequence, are with or against assertions or premises implicit in the male system, which is made credible or authentic by the power of men to name.
--Andrea Dworkin

Men know everything - all of them - all the time - no matter how stupid or inexperienced or arrogant or ignorant they are.
--Andrea Dworkin

Money speaks, but it speaks with a male voice.
--Andrea Dworkin

Only when manhood is dead - and it will perish when ravaged femininity no longer sustains it - only then will we know what it is to be free.
--Andrea Dworkin

Sexism is the foundation on which all tyranny is built. Every social form of hierarchy and abuse is modeled on male-over-female domination.
--Andrea Dworkin

The fact that we are all trained to be mothers from infancy on means that we are all trained to devote our lives to men, whether they are our sons or not; that we are all trained to force other women to exemplify the lack of qualities which characterizes the cultural construct of femininity.
--Andrea Dworkin

While gossip among women is universally ridiculed as low and trivial, gossip among men, especially if it is about women, is called theory, or idea, or fact.
--Andrea Dworkin

Wild intelligence abhors any narrow world; and the world of women must stay narrow, or the woman is an outlaw. No woman could be Nietzsche or Rimbaud without ending up in a whorehouse or lobotomized.
--Andrea Dworkin

Women, for centuries not having access to pornography and now unable to bear looking at the muck on the supermarket shelves, are astonished. Women do not believe that men believe what pornography says about women. But they do. From the worst to the best of them, they do.
--Andrea Dworkin

"Women's fashion" is a euphemism for fashion created by men for women.
--Andrea Dworkin

Now there's a femininst voice for ya. Right on sister! What a moron. Good fucking riddance.

--Zack

Thanks for those quotes. Actually some them seem dated more than anything else, which is possibly a tribute to feminism.

 

[Le Jacquelope]

"misandrist" was the term you were searching for, rg.

For those who don't know about this dumbass bitch ... Dworkin, together with the feminist lawyer Catharine MacKinnon, drafted a proposal for a law that defined pornography as a civil rights violation against women, and allowed women to sue the producers and distributors of pornography in a civil court for damages. In 1983 the law was passed in Indianapolis, but was subsequently overturned as unconstitutional by the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in 1985. The Supreme Court of the United States later upheld the lower court's ruling in American Booksellers Association, Inc. v. Hudnut.

A brief she and MacKinnon had previously written for the Women's Legal Education and Action Fund (LEAF) was submitted in the Canadian court case R. v. Butler, which found that the free speech provisions of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms did not cover pornography. Some of the most severely affected businesses have been gay and lesbian bookstores, whose merchandise Canada Customs has been empowered to seize at the border based on the arbitrary decision of customs employees. Even gay male pornography and pornography created by lesbians for lesbians has been adjudged to be degrading to women and prohibited, despite the lack of clear criteria for what exactly is degrading to women. Once bookstores such as Little Sister's in Vancouver and Glad Day in Toronto began to file legal challenges, Dworkin stated that she does not believe in obscenity laws, that she had opposed LEAF's action in this case in submitting the brief she had helped write, and that she believed the seizures in those cases were based on homophobia and sexism.

Well, let's see what she had to say about what we do:

A commitment to sexual equality with males is a commitment to becoming the rich instead of the poor, the rapist instead of the raped, the murderer instead of the murdered.
--Andrea Dworkin

By the time we are women, fear is as familiar to us as air. It is our element. We live in it, we inhale it, we exhale it, and most of the time we do not even notice it. Instead of "I am afraid," we say, "I don't want to," or "I don't know how," or "I can't."
--Andrea Dworkin

Erotica is simply high-class pornography; better produced, better conceived, better executed, better packaged, designed for a better class of consumer.
--Andrea Dworkin

Marriage as an institution developed from rape as a practice. Rape, originally defined as abduction, became marriage by capture. Marriage meant the taking was to extend in time, to be not only use of but possession of, or ownership.
--Andrea Dworkin

Men have defined the parameters of every subject. All feminist arguments, however radical in intent or consequence, are with or against assertions or premises implicit in the male system, which is made credible or authentic by the power of men to name.
--Andrea Dworkin

Men know everything - all of them - all the time - no matter how stupid or inexperienced or arrogant or ignorant they are.
--Andrea Dworkin

Money speaks, but it speaks with a male voice.
--Andrea Dworkin

Only when manhood is dead - and it will perish when ravaged femininity no longer sustains it - only then will we know what it is to be free.
--Andrea Dworkin

Sexism is the foundation on which all tyranny is built. Every social form of hierarchy and abuse is modeled on male-over-female domination.
--Andrea Dworkin

The fact that we are all trained to be mothers from infancy on means that we are all trained to devote our lives to men, whether they are our sons or not; that we are all trained to force other women to exemplify the lack of qualities which characterizes the cultural construct of femininity.
--Andrea Dworkin

While gossip among women is universally ridiculed as low and trivial, gossip among men, especially if it is about women, is called theory, or idea, or fact.
--Andrea Dworkin

Wild intelligence abhors any narrow world; and the world of women must stay narrow, or the woman is an outlaw. No woman could be Nietzsche or Rimbaud without ending up in a whorehouse or lobotomized.
--Andrea Dworkin

Women, for centuries not having access to pornography and now unable to bear looking at the muck on the supermarket shelves, are astonished. Women do not believe that men believe what pornography says about women. But they do. From the worst to the best of them, they do.
--Andrea Dworkin

"Women's fashion" is a euphemism for fashion created by men for women.
--Andrea Dworkin

Now there's a femininst voice for ya. Right on sister! What a moron. Good fucking riddance.

--Zack

I hope there's a theme park for her in the darkest regions of hell where Ron Jeremy-lookalike demons are going to town on her fascist ass in ways even the Hedgehog himself couldn't imagine.

Even that's nicer than what I'd have 'em do to her.

I don't care who hates how I feel about her... may Andrea Dworkin burn in hell.

 

[Liar]

I am surprised too, snp, when you know as well as I do that women are not a minority.

hehe
--Zack

Um. I don't think that was the demographic factor in play here.

"Woman" does not equal "extreme militant feminist".

 

[minsue]

Thanks for those quotes. Actually some them seem dated more than anything else, which is possibly a tribute to feminism.

One can only hope.

 

[shereads]

Feminist is a thankless job. The "F" word, like the "L" word, is used as an insult by people too young to know how much worse their own lives would be if not for the efforts of feminists and liberals. RIP.

 

[Liar]

Feminist is a thankless job. The "F" word, like the "L" word, is used as an insult by people too young to know how much worse their own lives would be if not for the efforts of feminists and liberals. RIP.

The "F" word and the "L" word I like. Short of lacking a "C" word, I do more active "F" word promotion in society than most "W" word I know.

It's the "H" word people that are and will continue to bug me. Haters will never be in favor in my book.

 

[NoJo]

The "F" word and the "L" word I like. Short of lacking a "C" word, I do more active "F" word promotion in society than most "W" word I know.

It's the "H" word people that are and will continue to bug me. Haters will never be in favor in my book.

That post was just, but only just, easier than the Times crossword.

 

[Pure]

shereads, thanks.

 

[Pure]

Dworkin, Speech, Pornography

The radical approach of Dworkin and MacKinnon should be understood because of its relevance today.
In a word, porn (meaning images [or words]) was defined as NOT being speech, hence NOT falling under the First Amendment.

This is going to be a technique used in regulating the internet, for instance. It makes, as it were, an end run around the First Amendment, by saying that distributing certain pictures [or written works] *is a physical attack on women making them less than human.* In the phrasing below, "the graphic, sexually explicit subordination of women."

Further, supposing abortion becomes criminal, again, under the above approach, writing about it, describing it, picturing it etc. would not be *writing,* it would be *doing* something to take aways someone's rights, i.e. like murdering the 'preborn' or telling someone to do so.

While one admires the ingenuity, even genius, of the approach, one trembles at a government who cannot just ban shouting 'fire' in a crowded theatre, or provoking a riot, but can say, "your story or image is not 'speech', it's action that does terrible things to xxx."

This perpetrates the basic fallacy of much antiporn legislation, confusing depiction and reality. It holds that to depict a murder is something akin to committing a murder. To show enslavement is to enslave, etc. To describe a rape, esp. in any way that would make it sexually stimulating, is akin to committing a rape, or at very least telling men 'go out an rape, for your enjoyment.'

There is further confusion of the issue of violence: Some have held that violent porn should be restricted, at least in pictures. (Note the horror section at literotica; formerly 'extreme.) Dworkin et al. would make all sexually explicit 'subordination'-- i.e., all porn-- be treated like violent porn, since, by showing women in a degrading way, one encourages their being raped.




http://www.communitydefense.org/cdcdocs/ObscenityMan/CH12.pdf

[Pornography as a civil rights violation, Ch 12]


The definition of pornography contained in the Indianapolis
ordinance differs substantially from the legal definition
of obscenity.

This difference comes about because the ordinance is aimed only at
pornography that degrades, subordinates, or urges violence against
women. The ordinance did not attempt to deal with all materials
which current law deems obscene, although some
of the works it would have affected would be obscene. And more importantly, the ordinance would have reached some works which are not obscene.

That was one reason the ordinance was ultimately ruled constitution-
ally infirm.

The Indianapolis ordinance, similar to the recommendation of the
Attorney General's Commission on Pornography, made trafficking in
"pornography," coercing another into a "pornographic" perform-
ance, forcing "pornography" on a person, or assaulting or physically
attacking another due to specific "pornography," unlawful discrimi-
natory practices.6 The ordinance gave any person claiming to be {{main text resumes after insert}}
4

{{inserted excerpt from the Indianapolis ordinance, that appeared as a footnote in the above text}}
"Pornography shall mean the graphic sexual explicit subordination of women, whether
in pictures or in words, that also includes one or more of the following:

1) Women are presented as sexual objects who enjoy pain or humiliation; or

2) Woman are presented as sexual objects who experience sexual pleasure in being

3) Women are presented as sexual objects tied up or cut up or mutilated or raped; or bruised or physically hurt, or as dismembered or truncated or fragmented or severed into body parts; or

4) Women are presented being penetrated by objects or animals; or

5) Women are presented in scenarios of degradation, injury, abasement, torture, shown as filthy or inferior, bleeding, bruised, or hurt in a context that makes these conditions sexual;

exploitation, possession, or use, or through postures or positions of servility or submission or display."

6) Women are presented as sexual objects for domination, conquest, violation, Indianapolis Ordinance 35, Sec. 2 § 16-3(q).
{{end inserted excerpt from footnote}}

{{main text resumes}}
aggrieved under the ordinance a cause of action against the person
engaging in discriminatory practice. (E.g., ”against the
perpetrator(s), maker(s), seller(s), exhibitor(s), or distributor(s).”) In
the case of trafficking in pornography, any woman could file a
complaint as a woman (representing the ”class”
of women generally) acting against the subordination of women.7

In American Booksellers Ass’n v. Hudnut, 598 F.Supp. 1316 (S.D. Ind.
1984), the District Court declared the ordinance unconstitutional and
permanently enjoined its application. The 7th Circuit affirmed, ruling
the ordinance unconstitutional as regulating speech, not conduct.

American Booksellers Ass’n v. Hudnut,
771 F.2d 323 (7th Cir. 1986).

The Supreme Court summarily affirmed, with three justices voting to set
the case for oral argument. 475 U.S. 1001 (1986).

The U.S. District Court, in a case of first impression, ruled that the
speech at issue did not fall within established categories
of expression (i.e., libel, fighting words, or obscenity) that can be prohibited outright without abridging First Amendment rights. Importantly, the court refused to carve out a new exception to First Amendment protection, holding that the ”state interest [in protecting women from degrading depictions that may contribute to discrimination],
...
though important and valid
...
in other contexts, is not so fundamental an interest as
to warrant a broad intrusion into otherwise free expression.” 598
F.Supp. at 1336. The court also held that the ordinance, even if
construed to proscribe only unprotected speech, was unconstitution-
ally vague and imposed an unconstitutional prior restraint.

The 7th Circuit agreed with the District Court’s judgment, but did
not reach the issues of vagueness and prior restraint. The court
reasoned that the ordinance discriminated on the basis
of the content of speech, thus provoking the greatest degree of scrutiny.

Under the proposed ordinance, wrote the court, ”peech that ’subordinates’ women and also, for example, presents women as enjoying pain, humiliation, or rape, or even simply presents women in positions of servility or submission or display is forbidden, no matter how great the literary or political value of the work taken as a whole.

Speech that portrays women in positions of equality is lawful, no matter how graphic the sexual content. This is thought control. It establishes an ’approved’ view of women ...[t]hose who espouse the approved view may use sexual images; those who do not, may not.”
771 F.2d at 328.

 

[neonlyte]

One of the dreariest holdovers of the 60's/70's was the insistence on seeing everything in political terms. It's led to a lot of folly.

I agree. She made her name almost before she was old enough to think it all through, what do you do with the rest of your life when that happens and you are feted by 'the powers' for expressing an opinion. More of the same. Fame is a strong drug as anyone who's published a story on Lit can attest.

 

[KarenAM]

I had a few thoughts about Andrea that I thought I might share:

The Failure of Rage

Death has been big in the news lately. First and most publicized has been the passing of pope John Paul II, and tucked neatly in the same few days Prince Rainier of Monaco. And on April 9, 2005, the well known radical feminist and anti-porn crusader Andrea Dworkin died at the age of 58. Now, I never met Dworkin, and so far as I know she was never aware of my work, but I think it is safe to say the two of us wouldn't have gotten along.

The reasons for my guess are multiple. First, I reject many of the basic assumptions Dworkin made about both the human condition and the nature of human beings. I reject her argument that human relations are strictly political and power-based, and I reject the Marxist idea that human beings are defined by which groups they belong to (in the case of radical feminist ideology, male and female, particularly), which I believe has crippled modern feminism. But it must be said in Dworkin's favor that she cast enough of a shadow that her death and probable legacy have brought out in me a few introspective moments, which I will attempt to elaborate on here.

As is usually the case with controversial lives, the details of Dworkin's feelings and opinions can sometimes be hard to pin down, and doubtless they changed as she aged, as they do for all of us. Some accused her of arguing that all heterosexual intercourse was rape, for example, though she denied having said this. She also denied that the Canadian ban on pornography commonly thought to be influenced by her and fellow anti-porn crusader Catharine MacKinnon wound up banning her own works. To be fair, I won't dwell on such specifics, since I have not researched them adequately, and since the details of them are not really relevant to my thoughts here.

Beyond her politics and reputation, though, I think it is safe to say after reading even a sampling of her work that Andrea Dworkin was defined by her rage. It permeates her writings, just as it permeates radical feminism. She was angry, and despite a reputation for shyness, seldom hesitated to tell us how she felt.

To be sure, Dworkin had a lot to be angry about. The history of humanity is filled with brutality against women, and one of the most prominent features of today's world is that on many parts of our planet, it actually seems to be getting worse, though this may well simply be a feature of the fact that the general methods of oppression have become so sophisticated. Nonetheless, the simultaneous efforts among a wide variety of religious groups worldwide to eliminate the rights of women should provoke us into rage, as should the modern growth of slavery, including sexual slavery that preys on the most vulnerable. We should be enraged by the tolerance of extremes of poverty and social decay that strike women and children hardest, even as the governments of the developed world freely sell weapons that frequently contribute to and even cause genocides like the one being largely ignored in Darfur, where rape is simply another weapon.

But since it was her defining feature, we should now ask ourselves: what did Dworkin's rage accomplish? Can we point to her work and her life and say they were successful? This is not merely a question we should ask of Andrea Dworkin, of course-- it is a question we should all regularly ask of ourselves. In Dworkin's case, I think her legacy is likely to be seen as a mixed bag, something Susie Bright seemed to indicate in her own comments on Dworkin's death. To be sure, Dworkin's attitudes about pornography, sex and the erotic were defined by her rage, but as Bright notes, she did at least talk about the subject before others did, giving it some level of intellectual attention that it had never had before.

But here her contributions ended. Rage had brought Dworkin to porn, but it got her stuck there too. Again and again she said the same thing, making the same assertions, using the same flawed, simplistic assumptions about men and women and sexuality. She really did seem to believe that pornography does only one thing (encourage rape), that it exists for only one reason (encourage rape), and all men are alike in their sexuality, all working together in a social construct designed to rape, humiliate, and control women. Actual research into sex crimes and sexuality was only useful to Dworkin when it supported her rage, regardless of its quality as science, and this led her, in circumstances both tragic and ironic, to reject modernity itself and ally herself with social conservatives who saw and continue to see all sex as sin and pornography as a foot in the door for their desires to restrict freedom generally, and the freedom of women in particular. In the end, Dworkin's efforts alienated far more feminists than they attracted, even as many of her legal efforts against porn were rebuffed as unconstitutional.

Here, I think we can learn from Dworkin and her life. As an example of distilled and unrepentant rage, she can teach us about anger and its effects. In the early days of modern feminism, rage was commonplace, and I think it had its place in that context. Women were actively discriminated against, and that discrimination was so pervasive and so institutionalized that very public rage was needed to jar society out of its complacency and to point out that by the standards of freedom and equality America had fought to protect in the Second World War, women were being cheated. As the comfortable post-war society of the 1950's aged, and as the birth control pill found its way into American life, the sudden appearance of protesters in large numbers, yelling in their anger and frustration, could and did effect some very real changes. Dworkin's early work came in this environment, and as Bright noted, it did cause discussion about pornography in a new way. Rage, then, has its place; to feel it is natural, as natural as our sex drives and our need for love. There are few more effective calls to action, few more effective ways to get people to pay attention. For this very reason, in fact, much (but not by any means all) of my upcoming novel Portent was written in a state of advanced rage.

But in the end, rage does not build anything; in the long run it is destructive, not constructive. We can see this in Dworkin's efforts against porn, which were mostly just thinly veiled efforts to harm men by branding all of them as rapists or their accomplices, which naturally led most men to reject her ideas as nonsense. She did not seek a compromise with men, the overwhelming majority of whom are not rapists and who seek, as most women do, the love of a good partner; rather, reading Dworkin's work leaves the impression that she felt all things male need to be destroyed, and the notion that women might enjoy and appreciate men and many aspects of their sexuality was seen as treason in her war. And so her message became only the rage, never building anything, never offering us a better world, never offering us meaning or hope.

This is the tragedy of Andrea Dworkin. It seems to me likely that Mackinnon and others will carry on her campaign, and that they, like her, will do so fueled by rage. For the rest of us, however, and certainly for me, there is a different and more positive lesson Dworkin can teach us. Rage has its place, and it must be given its due. But just as there is a time for rage, there must as well be a time to step back from it. I know that rage will come for me again, as it does for us all, but it need not consume us as it seems to have consumed Andrea Dworkin. Others, like for example John Walsh, deal with a rage no less intense than Dworkin's, but they manage to turn it into something positive, something that adds to the quality of the human condition rather than detracts from it. As I face my own life and my own rage, I can only hope to do the same.