Andrea Dworkin
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Andrea Dworkin (September 26, 1946 – April 9, 2005) was an American radical feminist and writer. She was best known for her criticism of pornography, which she argued led to rape and other forms of violence against women.
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Her life and work
Dworkin was born in Camden, New Jersey. Her father was a schoolteacher and dedicated socialist whom she credited with inspiring her passion for social justice. Though she described her Jewish household as being in many ways dominated by the memory of the Holocaust, she had a generally happy and normal childhood until the age of 9, when she was molested in a movie theater. In 1965, while a student at Bennington College, she was arrested during an anti-Vietnam War protest at the United States Mission to the United Nations, and sent to the New York Women's House of Detention, where she was sexually assaulted by two male doctors. Her testimony of the experience was reported internationally and led to the prison's closure.
After graduating, she moved to Amsterdam and married a Dutch anarchist, who physically abused her during the course of a five-year marriage. After she left him, she survived in the city as a prostitute, living in near-destitute circumstances. At age 27, she produced her first book, Woman Hating.
Over the course of her life, Dworkin authored numerous books, articles and speeches, in which she was highly critical of pornography and prostitution. However, she also used the explicit language and imagery of pornography in many of her works. American publisher Adam Parfrey, of Feral House Books stated in his article, "The Devil and Andrea Dworkin" that her novel, Mercy, "remains the hardest porn [he had] ever been exposed to." She married John Stoltenberg in 1998; both spouses identified as gay. Stoltenberg is founder of Men Against Pornography and the author of Refusing to be a Man.
Dworkin died the morning of April 9, 2005, in her home in Washington, D.C. She was 58. The cause of death has not been disclosed. She had been suffering from bone disease for several years. [1] (http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,6109,1468336,00.html)
Ideas and controversy
Dworkin was notable in general for linking sexual issues to the larger structures in society. According to her, coercive sexual behavior is a cause of inequality between men and women. However, she also wrote about the class perspective on feminism, in books such as Right-Wing Women. She commonly denounced the tendency of middle-class and affluent "liberal feminists" to make deals with the establishment that advanced their own situation but left less fortunate women out in the cold. Most controversially, she believed that most human culture was built on rape and the domination of women, comparing women to Jews and urging that they fight back, possibly even forming a separate nation-state. She is most famously attributed the notion that all heterosexual sex is equivalent to rape (a statement that has also been falsely attributed to fellow feminist Catharine MacKinnon) and any woman who subjects herself to the sexual intercourse is actually submitting to a violent possession of her entire being. Dworkin herself has denied saying that "all sex is rape" or "all men are rapists", and has offered this explanation: "Penetrative intercourse is, by its nature, violent. But I'm not saying that sex must be rape. What I think is that sex must not put women in a subordinate position. It must be reciprocal and not an act of aggression from a man looking only to satisfy himself. That's my point." (Source: [2] (http://www.snopes.com/quotes/mackinno.htm))
Her works were highly controversial and she was heavily criticized from both sides of the political spectrum. Her ideas were perceived as a threat to family values by the right. At the other end of the spectrum, some saw her as a proponent of censorship and as exceedingly hostile toward free expression of sex. Many count her among the most misandrist political activists ever.
Dworkin was often attacked on a personal basis, e.g. for her appearance and for being lesbian. She was also attacked for extreme views which were widely attributed to her but to which she did not actually subscribe, such as hating all men and/or sex, supporting censorship, or claiming that all heterosexual intercourse was equivalent to rape. She believed that pornography was based in male hatred of women, that it was a significant cause (though certainly not the sole cause) of rape and other sexual violence, and that women to whom sexual violence was done had every right to fight back. Despite her supposed misandry, she had numerous close male friends, including the writer Michael Moorcock, and her personal relationship with Stoltenberg was long term. Her criticism of the concept of gender, and her belief that it would have to be eliminated for society to achieve full equality, has also been adduced as a defense against charges of "hating men". Even within the context of her works, she does not call out for an abolition of men, unlike the radical feminist and author of the SCUM Manifesto, Valerie Solanas.
Legal influence
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.
Bibliography
Nonfiction
- Heartbreak: The Political Memoir of a Feminist Militant (2002)
- Scapegoat: The Jews, Israel, and Women's Liberation (2000)
- Life and Death: Unapologetic Writings on the Continuing War Against Women (1997)
- Right-Wing Women: The Politics of Domesticated Females (1991)
- Letters from a War Zone: Writings, 1976-1987 (1988)
- Intercourse (1988)
- Pornography and Civil Rights: A New Day for Women's Equality (1988)
- Pornography—Men Possessing Women (1981)
- The New Womans Broken Heart (1980)
- Our Blood: Prophesies and Discourses on Sexual Politics (1976)
- Woman Hating (1974)
Fiction
- Mercy (1990)
- Ice and Fire (1986)
- The New Woman's Broken Heart: Short Stories (1980)
Books and essays about Andrea Dworkin
- Califia, Pat, ed. Forbidden Passages: writings banned in Canada. Pittsburgh: Cleis, 1995.
- Defending Pornography: Free Speech, Sex, and the Fight for Women's Rights (Paperback) by Nadine Strossen
- "The Devil and Andrea Dworkin". Parfrey, Adam. in Cult Rapture. Feral House Books. Portland, OR: 1995. Ppg. 53-62.
See also
External links
- Andrea Dworkin Online Library (http://www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/dworkin/OnlineLibrary.html)
- Andrea Dworkin Memorial Page (http://www.andreadworkin.net/)
- Andrea Dworkin Memorial Messages (http://www.andreadworkin.net/messages/)
- The Rape Relief Files: Take Back The Night - Vancouver Herstory (http://www.rapereliefshelter.bc.ca/herstory/rr_files85.html)
- Guardian obituary of Andrea Dworkin (http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,6109,1457408,00.html?gusrc=rss)
- BBC News story: Anti-porn crusader Dworkin dies (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4435193.stm)
- Salon.com editorial: [3] (http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2005/04/12/dworkin/)
- Editorial: Dworkin’s Death Highlights Feminism’s Mainstream Demise (http://beyondchron.org/default.asp?sourceid=&smenu=110&twindow=&mad=&sdetail=1761&wpage=1&skeyword=&sidate=&ccat=&ccatm=&restate=&restatus=&reoption=&retype=&repmin=&repmax=&rebed=&rebath=&subname=)
- This strong feminist voice was hardly a man-hater (http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/editorial/outlook/3140949)
- Susie Bright's Journal: Andrea Dworkin Has Died (http://susiebright.blogs.com/susie_brights_journal_/2005/04/andrea_dworkin_.html)de:Andrea_Dworkin