Andrea Dworkin RIP

now we're into a "showbiz = american" meme, i see.

to clarify: i *do* think the correspondence between dworkin's radical views and certain puritan/radical individualist ideas that form a big part of american history is interesting (and it's been noted by a lot of people!). i wouldn't posit those ideas as *the* american ideas nor would i posit dworkin or her ideas as "typically american."

please allow america to be as confused and conflicted as, say, france, with its petains and cocteaus.

For instance, Katharine Viner's piece in the Guardian, which says that, in a world where getting Botox treatment passes as a feminist gesture, Dworkin was a "bedrock": "even when you disagreed with her, her arguments were infuriating, fascinating, hard to forget. Feminism needs those who won't compromise..."

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:( :( :(

26,000 for British prude

13,000 for Scottish stingy

5,120 for Etats Unis puritaine

blount, i think to give dworkin even credit as something to "move beyond" is insulting to the much more interesting and thoughtful feminists that came before and after her!

ok, now this thread = grudge match between two diehard sophists = i'll back out quietly

It's amazing how she both served as a convenient strawman for right-wing talk show hosts and made common cause with them.

I wouldn't have touched her with yours.

Some misogynist does a drawing of a woman as meat. The drawing gets out into the world with its message that "women are just meat". Andrea Dworkin sees the image and decides to use it for her book, whose thesis is "in this rotten scummy world women are just meat". Meanwhile, apart from the misogynist and Andrea Dworkin, the great majority of people don't for a minute believe that women are just meat. What a strange alliance between the misogynists and the misogyprojectionists!

I recently bought Deep Throat - curiousity got the better of me and I'd wanted to see it for a while. Watched it in the company of a female and another guy. We had a good chuckle at it, as it is kinda funny - though such a shame about Linda Lovelace. I told me gfriend I picked it up and she couldn't care.

The real misogyny, in my opinion, comes from certain people on this forum whose attitude seems to be that women should never be lusted over or spoken about in a sexual content and that - in doing so - the person is somehow a mad woman hater. I really long for the day when we are all as liberated as somewhere like San Francisco. Having spent a few days in the city's gay district and bars and seen how no one gives a shit about sexual orientation, heavy petting on the streets etc I really wish we could all take that lead. I swear that one day I'm moving there.

Upon what information have you based this? Why do think this matters? Why do you think I'd care?

Actually, I'm prepared to concede that you may have more. Who knows? Pure egotism on my part inclines me to believe that my friends, though putatively less numerous, are far superior in quality.

TEARS OF LAUGHTER

Dworkin always struck me as someone brilliant who wasn't aware enough of how her own particular experiences affected/skewed her insights. Then again, judging from her popularity among women at the time, she obviously touched a nerve, so perhaps many women felt their experiences were similar.

from

Is it even expected today that a woman should just be okay with pornography? Like we've 'progressed' to the point where no one should get upset by it? Was Ariel Levy RIGHT???

-- Abbott, Monday, February 4, 2008 12:57 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Link

It's not my obsession with porn, babe, it's your reaction to it!

-- wanko ergo sum, Monday, February 4, 2008 12:59 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Link

I totally do get this vibe from modren non-'square/straight' society (can't think of any terms that would work outside West Side Story) that a chick's just supposed to accept men jerk it to .mpegs and such, her man jerks it, so it goes. Her opinion doesn't matter, unless she's for it.
1. Is this true and
2. how did it happen and
3. is this a good or bad thing?

I was gonna respond to your questions regarding this on the eharmony thread where you invoked Ariel Levy. Anyhow, my impressions:
1. True: Yes, I think this has become increasingly the case over the past several years, esp. in the eyes of many younger i.e., early-20's/late-teens dudes
2. The Hows: Internet presumably removing the "shame factor" previously associated with pornography; plus the media push towards "porn chic", "hey porn's gone mainstream"; plus an x factor (pun not intended) of sorts of women going along with it for whatever reasons...like kinda what Levy talks about in her writings
3. Good or bad? Hmmm. Well, I don't wanna live in a society in which porn is illegal, but I can find enough objectionable things about the contemporary porn biz such that the added factor of women feeling like they are uptight or something if they are not cool with their boyfriends/husbands gettin' down w/the porn is pretty sad...actually, I think it's a sad situation for both women and men.

Part of me thinks that porn will eventually "mellow out" from what it's become, and return largely to the comparatively "innocent" Playboy/Penthouse-type sutff of decades past...I'm not sure why I think that, other then that it seems like things have swung to such an extreme that it's hard for me not to imagine it as part of a cyclical thing that must eventually revert back to something more balanced and sane.

So for whatever reasons, my attempt at answering this question is informed in no small part by me personally being skeeved out by what porn has become in the past few years. But more to the point of your inquiry, it's something that obv. needs to be worked out by individuals/couples... and the fact that societal pressures exist to such a degree that people would feel like there is something wrong with them if they are not down with the current climate, well, again that seems sad to me.
3.

looks like she won, ultimately

Really good overview of her thought and writings: https://www.bookforum.com/inprint/025_05/20623

yeah great piece. always found her relationship w Moorcock very interesting.