Cathy Young has an excellent post on Reason's Hit and Run about the fawning obituaries given in the last week for Andrea Dworkin, the anti-sex feminist. She writes:
It's sadly obvious that this supposedly bold and visionary prophet was, in actuality, insane. (Among other things, she described the Caesarian section as "a surgical fuck" by "the new rapist, the surgeon.") So why the praise? Is this really little more than slightly over-the-top rhetoric in defense of the oppressed? Is challenging the very existence of sexual intercourse really a wonderfully bold and provocative idea, as even pro-sex feminist and frequent Dworkin target Susie Bright seems to think? Why the lack of stigma against anti-male bigotry?In her Times op-ed, MacKinnon complains that Dworkin's brilliant ideas have been "marginalized." Clearly, they haven't been marginalized enough; and that's bad news for women, men, and feminism.
Quite so. Dworkin's ideas were not merely a bit too strident, they were downright insane. Insane enough to be picked up by the religious right, who are every bit as devoted to the demonization and elimination of human sexual freedom as Dworkin was. One of the commenters in that thread brilliantly observed, "Crazy rhetoric couched as some sort of genius vision. Insane hyperbole. Sycophantic followers declaring this lunacy to be some sort of rare and insightful genius. Dare I say it? Was Andrea Dworkin the Ann Coulter of feminism?" As much as I loathe Ann Coulter, I dare say Dworkin was far worse.
- Log in to post comments
One of the most interesting moments in my college career was being assigned writings by Dworkin and Phyllis Schlafly, high priestess of the social conservative movement, in a course on changing gender roles for men and women in society. Dworkin's writing was arguing that marriage was nothing but legalized prostitution, where the man got sex in return for housing, feeding and clothing the woman. Clearly she was against the practice.
Then we read the Schlafly piece, in which she was arguing that women hold the real power in a "traditional" marriage, because they can withold sex from their husbands. Whatever the woman wants, better house, nicer clothes, etc., Schlafly recommended using sex to get it from her husband.
It was scary how similar the two writings were in their interpretation of the basic dynamics in a relationship. I am happy to say, at least for my hetero friends and family, both were totally wrong.
Having read a bit of Dworkin's stuff, it always struck me that she must have been going after the "shock" value. Her worldview was consumed by an absolute conviction that society (meaning men) sees and uses women as nothing more than sexual objects for the satisfaction of primitive and debased sexual desires. Had she been capable of using, rather than abusing, her extreme rhetoric, it might have done more to advance a meaningful discourse. As it was, after the first time or two I read her stuff, it just became "OK, more of the same shocking hyperbole. Been there, done that."
Happily, here in the real world, we find men who actually are not the depraved creatures Dworkin spent so much time obsessing about. For example, I enjoy talking to my wife more than any person I know, because she's one of the most intelligent, witty, and charming people I've ever come across. I value these characteristics in her because I value her as a person, not as an object. And I can't say that Dworkin's work had any influence on me in that regard. Indeed, all I was able to conclude, after reading Dworkin's work, was how sad and pathetic it must be to live in a world as haunted as Dworkin's must have been.
Dan wrote:
Oh sure, you say that...but then you "invade" her and "occupy" her by engaging in sex, which is the "pure, sterile, formal expression of men's contempt for women." And for those who claim that Dworkin never really said such things, I offer the following quotes from her book Intercourse:
Such patent absurdity. She speaks as though men created women this way on purpose, as though biology, rather than being something beyond the control of either men or women, was the direct result of an ideological choice by men. And does she not realize that without that "violation" of her own mother, she wouldn't be here? This isn't mere hyperbole, this is outright insanity.
Most of Dworkin's arguments can be summed up in the following (attempted) syllogism: P1. Men treat women badly; P2. Men are pigs; therefore, C. Men are pigs.
And the world yawned.
Insane enough to be picked up by the religious right? I have to agree with Ed here, in that Dworkin's "legacy," if we can even suggest such a relational concept, has been to imbue some of the most shrill and hysterical voices of the reckless religious right with confidence. Coulter, Savage, Malkin, et al say some things that are horrendously vile, invectives of evil incarnate. And like these people, Dworkin too had a following, a readership, a large amorphous blog of fans who rallied around the most ludicrous points. At its heights, the Dworkin/McKinnon realm was much like a fungus growing and sporing, infecting young women with strange non-sensical ideas that involved turkey basters and bulb syringes, pretending that penetration was not occuring.
Um. OK. The Boston Globe carries Cathy Young's columns, and I've found most of them rather vacuous. Dumb. Stupid. Silly. Do you want another derogatory adjective?
That said, ok, Dworkin could also be vacuous, dumb, stupid and silly. But she didn't have a weekley op-ed column in a major news outlet to express her vacuousness, dumbness, stupidity and silliness. A bit of a difference.
I have not read Dwokins, but I suspect most of what is said about her is simply difamation. At least that is what Charles Jhonson has shown in his blog (I do not know if you remember him, StHeathen on Dalnet) concerning the myth of Dwokings saying all heterosexual sex is rape.
http://www.radgeek.com/gt/2005/01/10/andrea_dworkin
I have not read Dwokins, but I suspect most of what is said about her is simply difamation. At least that is what Charles Jhonson has shown in his blog (I do not know if you remember him, StHeathen on Dalnet) concerning the myth of Dwokings saying all heterosexual sex is rape.
Okay, but I didn't make that claim. I said that she views all penetration as violation and she does. And the very passage that he cites proves my point. Despite his pretense that she is merely referring to the political conditions in which intercourse takes place, her very words say otherwise, focusing obsessively on the actual physical act itself and how it makes women an "occupied people".
She also makes the absurd point that since the law does not allow married women to refuse sex (and on that I agree with her, the law should be done away with and in many places it now has been, as the laws have recognized marital rape as a real thing), therefore there is no such thing as actual consent on the part of any married woman. She says:
That's ridiculous, but typical of the extreme oversimplification that goes on in such polemics. In order to be a reasonable statement, it would have to be true that every time a woman has sex with her husband, she does so against her will. And that's idiotic.
From what I've heard, Dworkin herself might've been heavily molested as a child by some male relatives so that could consitute for her hatrid towards men.
I've read one of her early articles on porn and how it oppresses women. While it was written in the 70's, it's interesting how she overlooks the concepts of gay male porn and female porn directors. I agree that she is a hateful woman, but I see her as a different kind of crazy than Ann Coulter. Dworkin's is a bitter sex-phobic while Coulter seems like a spoiled rich-bitch who probably almost never got punished in her life so she' free to act like a raging nutjob. (Have you ever noticed how a lot of neo-con pundits are these WASPy upper-class types? Not that there's anything wrong with upper class people.)
And finally Mrs. Schlafly. She's definately on my female fundy hate list along with Wendy Schalit (though she's dumb instead of evil) and Susie from Brio magazine. Her view female enpowerment is nothing more than manipulation (kinda like Mama Gena's goddess philosphy). It's funny how in certian ways left-wing and right-wing wackos/hatemogers aren't that different.
I could defiantely see the fundies adopting some of Dworkin's beliefs, but not without some alterations so the average person wouldn't suspect them of taking ideas from a feminist and to suit their own agenda. Probably something along the line of comparing pre-martial sex to rape since the lovers are not in a legal marriage. Brio magazine already has something similar with Susie's theory that when you engage in pre-marital kissing you're "giving part of yourself away" and thus slightly ruining yourself for your future husband.
Sorry about the long post.
I have to admit, I have found some of the criticisms of Andrea's work a little unfair at times. Although I disagree with a lot of her work, I also believe that she was misquoted often and unfairly. I found this interesting URL and I think that it might possibly challenge some of the ideas surrounding her opinions and ideas.
http://www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/dworkin/MoorcockInterview.html
Michael Moorcock: After "Right-Wing Women" and "Ice and Fire" you wrote "Intercourse". Another book which helped me clarify confusions about my own sexual relationships. You argue that attitudes to conventional sexual intercourse enshrine and perpetuate sexual inequality. Several reviewers accused you of saying that all intercourse was rape. I haven't found a hint of that anywhere in the book. Is that what you are saying?
Andrea Dworkin: No, I wasn't saying that and I didn't say that, then or ever. There is a long section in Right-Wing Women on intercourse in marriage. My point was that as long as the law allows statutory exemption for a husband from rape charges, no married woman has legal protection from rape. I also argued, based on a reading of our laws, that marriage mandated intercourse--it was compulsory, part of the marriage contract. Under the circumstances, I said, it was impossible to view sexual intercourse in marriage as the free act of a free woman. I said that when we look at sexual liberation and the law, we need to look not only at which sexual acts are forbidden, but which are compelled.
Obviously more of the interview can be read on the website.
I think her biggest problem was not that she was misquoted but that she was quoted accurately. I've read that interview, and quoted it msyelf above, and it strikes me as the way a politician denies having said what they said, saying they were quoted "out of context". Even under her slightly revised version, her conclusion is completely unwarranted. When she says that as long as there is a marital exception to rape (something I oppose along with her, by the way) "it was impossible to view sexual intercourse in marriage as the free act of a free woman", that is just so much hyperbole. There are reasonable conclusions one could draw from the marital rape exception, but it's not reasonable to conclude that no woman who has ever had sex while married did so because she wanted to, and that is exactly what her conclusion requires to be true. And this strikes at the core of my primary problem with her views - she reduces all human intimacy to the acting out of political domination and submission. In her world, sex is not an expression of love it's an ideological act to be viewed solely in a political context.
And as I said above, regardless of whether she actually uttered the phrase "all sex is rape", she does focus almost obsessively on the notion of penetration as a "violation" and an "occupation" of a woman, as though men designed women in a lab for that very purpose. She says that the act of intercourse itself, not the act within a political context but the act itself, turns women into an "occupied people" whose freedom has been taken away. I just don't see how anyone can defend this kind of hyperbolic and ridiculous rhetoric as anything but insane.
What irks me even more is how her followers fanatically denounce anyone who objects to her extremist rhetoric as an "anti-feminist". I don't think they realize how much they chase good people away from feminism by doing so. I am a feminist, have been my whole adult life. One of my intellectual mentors in college was a feminist professor for whom I was a research assistant. I've organized fund raisers for women's shelters and I've marched for women's rights. They act exactly like those fundamentalist Christians who denounce anyone who doesn't accept every shred of their ideology as not being a "real" Christian. I don't like that kind of fanatical behavior from people I disagree with and I don't like it in those I agree with either.