Andrea Dworkin 1946-2005
Talk about ass and kick ass, one of feminism's fiercest moms has died. A serious, unwavering polemicist, Dworkin was a hard ass with a hard line — sometimes too hard for this '70s baby — but one that's always been sorely needed and will be sorely missed.
Here's to you, crazy lady.
Here's to you, crazy lady.
posted by Lisa Rosman at 10:03 PM
5 Comments:
For those of us who believe our libidos and our fantasy lives are of political importance and are worth defending, to say nothing of our feelings about free speech and our unvarnished recognition that the American political economy doesn't make "decent" jobs available to everyone, Dworkin (and her psychic sidekick MacKinnon) are the worst, most visible figures of 2nd Wave Feminism. It's unfortunate because so much of the "feminazi" tag could be rightfully attributed to either of these women - I once wrote an op-ed for the student newspaper under MacKinnon's influence and looking back it was humorless censorship that I was advocating.
Best of luck to Andrea in the next life!
i'm actually with you overall, blackmail, but i'm also torn because I'm torn about the bigger question of the usefulness of a polemicist. dworkin's injection (oy to the pun, i know) of ideology into the bedroom was mostly harmful; everyone knows you can't fake the funk. whatever you most demonize will loom as most sexually appealing when you're trying to cum. but having extremists like her out there at least meant that everyone had to consider the problematics of the sex industry. which need/ed to be done. when you have a pat roberts, the less extreme conservatives are rendered more palatable--dangerous for the rest of us. Dworkin made life more difficult for misogynists and conservatives (even if she inadvertently intersercted with them too often) because she made the rest of us, people who would have been more easily dismissed otherwise as feminazis, seem relatively softcore.
that said, i guess i like that girlfriend was out there, bold as love. i hope too she finds a little more happiness next time round.
to be honest, i've only posted about this here, because i fear that too many folks who've posted obituaries don't quite get "it" - "it" being that many women, like dworkin herself, turn to pornography and prostitution to get by. if prostitution were any more criminal, can you imagine the impact on families headed by single women just trying to get by.
for my money, enter labor politics here, all sex work should be unionized (lusty lady) and better regulated. it would make things safer for sex workers, male/female/tranny, etc., as well as their clients. dworkin and mackinnon's initial insistence on Victorian standards, which Mackinnon took next level, go way too far.
well, yr right of course. not to quote myself, but see my diatribe on pretty much the same topic here. the irony is that both dworkin and miss macK had at heart a paternalistic, classist attitude about these issues. there's a reason why they intersected so much with the far right --and it wasn't pretty.
but when all's said and done, the lady thought she was looking out for us, and she gave a lot of women who felt displaced by pornography a voice about it, even if i didn't agree with the sentiments nor how she expressed them. my branch of feminism at the end of the day allows for a lot of different voices even if some of those voices weren't comfortable with my own.
i do get 100% your points, however, and I feel honored that you felt comfortable for whatever reason articulating them here. keep on fighting the good fight, Blackmail.
finally got around to writing something over at Blackmail.
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