Andrea Dworkin RIP

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.

The whole issue of intercourse as this culture's penultimate expression of male dominance became more and more interesting to me. In Intercourse I decided to approach the subject as a social practice, material reality. This may be my history, but I think the social explanation of the "all sex is rape" slander is different and probably simple. Most men and a good number of women experience sexual pleasure in inequality. Since the paradigm for sex has been one of conquest, possession, and violation, I think many men believe they need an unfair advantage, which at its extreme would be called rape. I don't think they need it. I think both intercourse and sexual pleasure can and will survive equality.

It's important to say, too, that the pornographers, especially Playboy, have published the "all sex is rape" slander repeatedly over the years, and it's been taken up by others like Time who, when challenged, cannot cite a source in my work.

The entire interview can be found here: http://www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/dworkin/MoorcockInterview.html

Again, I don't agree with everything she said, but I think some of her arguments have been vastly oversimplified.

I would if I was genetically programmed to do so... biological imperatives run pretty deep.

"ferlin/foucault otm: there's a kind of anxious conformist bullying at the root of it, courtesy ppl apparently made nervous that not everyone shares their tastes and drives"

this has nothing to do with my tastes and drives - I was just pointing up the fact that since the reproductive act is so deeply rooted in the human animal, arguing that it should be completely done away with is inherently marginalizing. This is not a "good"/"bad" value judgment thing on my part - its an observation of statistical reality. Whatever segment of society there is that's willing to/desires to abstain from sex for political reasons is gonna be really, really, REALLY tiny.

(as a follow-up to my SF suggestion)

This was long before she was raped and victimized as a prostitute. Sounds like she had an anti-social streak a mile wide. If she'd been born a generation later, she could've shot up a highschool Columbine-style. And that line quoted earlier, "woman need guns and land," echoed vintage Black Panther rhetoric. Another boomer generational voice still trapped in the 60s.

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i wasn't accusin you of doin this shakey

(millie tant has uber-kewl shoes!) (in fact she is v.stylish all over!!)

i mean one said, all right--thats the case, lets be all transgressive and hott about it and one said, well we need to stop--but there is something almost creepy, and v. obv. violently powerful about the cock in cunt fucking---something in that phallocentrism that keeps women in place.

(has anyone been following the exuses and the lack of discourse, and the forgiving of the soliders and the blaming of the victims that has occured wrt to the ca 150 rapes in colorado--that should be on the cover of the new york times.)

buh?

"v. obv. violently powerful about the cock in cunt fucking---something in that phallocentrism that keeps women in place. "

this is baloney. a physical act developed long before the advent of consciousness (much less ideology) doesnt have any inherent political meaning. get one biology book.

eg i'm not exactly sure what events calum's charge of exploitation (re linda lovelace) refers to, but one possible way in which AD "exploited" LL is by ventriloquising her, by converting LL's story into grist for AD's mill, into fuel for her movement and nothing more (instead of giving LL a voice, she silences her) (i've no idea if this represents the facts in the case)

anyway, this ventriloquising/silencing as a power strong writers have - and whatever else she is, dworkin was a very strong writer (hence the intensity of reactions against her)

but i don't think she ever really addressed that

Kinda depends on position and style, no? Man tied up on a bed, woman straddling him: This does not preserve that role for the cock.

That's an interpretive framework, a way of reading the movement of the cock, one that is interesting but does not nec. have any "real" quality to it. It's like associating "green" with "money" and noting how nature displays a lot of green when it thrives and how this indicates that it is natural to accumulate money and wealth.

Needing guns and land is a theme that resonates through the whole of American history. It fits with so many American tropes and tragedies: radical individualism, right wing libertarianism, the gun lobby, "the security state", litigation culture, Waco, the Unabomber, sexual prudishness, even suburban sprawl and the sprawling American body shape... It's all about post-protestant non-conformity, the rhetorical passion of an extreme (and finally fatal) form of individualism.

Maybe Dworkin was more typically American than even people like Twain and Whitman. This idea that you have to fight all the time, that society is your enemy, that you have to split off and form a radical-puritan-utopian community somewhere because normal folks doing normal things are evil and persecute you. She's there on the Mayflower, speeding away from sex and society, she's there at Salem witch-hunting, victimising and then claiming, in turn, to be the ultimate victim. And there's even a bit of Oprah in her strategic compassion.

"a physical act developed long before the advent of consciousness (much less ideology) doesnt have any inherent political meaning"

get one logic book!!

(which is like the most insanely complicated question, but still needed to be addressed)

I think it's pointless to argue about which came first: sex, politics, or consciousness. Just because a sexual act has a biological basis doesn't mean that it can't also be political.

Kinda depends on position and style, no? Man tied up on a bed, woman straddling him: This does not preserve that role for the cock.

Yes, but how many people have sex that way? Not many. But even in the less extreme case of the woman on top, certainly the woman has a lot more agency/initiative than Dworkin is giving her credit for.

implication of the first sentence: that human society will be therefore stratified by the degree to which reproductive sex is deemed present, acceptably contained, in control, out of control etc etc, by those with the ability to deem

the sentences aren't opposites exactly, but they do step on each other's toes

"inherent political meaning" - obv not, if this implies republican vs democrat or whatever - but anthony's point that you were objecting to wz that cock-and-cunt fucking has a deep cultural power to it, and if THAT'S what yr calling an "inherent political meaning", then i think the sentences clash

most of what yr describin just IS protestantism!! (i'm too tired to look it up but tom paulin says somewhere that autobiography is the exemplary form of the protestant political text)

I"m just using "post-protestant" to mean "has now or ever been protestant". But you're right, the US is not very post its protestantism. My use follows Geert Hofstede's in his cultural dimensions studies, but actually he restricts the term to places like Germany and Sweden, which are culturally protestant without being very religiously so these days.

Whitman and Twain are seen as the essence of America, but they lack that protestant extremism we see in Dworkin, the Mayflower, Salem, etc. Whitman's sensuality, in particular, seems particularly un-American, don't you think?

"inherent biological inequalities in heterosexual vaginal sex "

there is no inherent "inequality" here - the perception of inequality comes later with the development of a specific point of view. matriarchal societies still managed to exist and reinforce themselves and still "relied" (as much as any political system relies on perpetuation of the species) on ye olde in-n-out. the sexual act can certainly have political connotations, has been used to reinforce power structures, etc., but the sexual act developed as it did for practical biological reasons that are quite separate from any ideology (ie, it is the most efficient way for the human organism to transfer DNA).

if i have time tomorrow (= mum's illness and work nightmares permitting) and if this thread has not gone all ghastly, i shall and say it more clearly

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Do you see Dworkin as an American writer?

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As American as violence and apple pie. And I think you're absolutely right about the Janus face of American culture: Whitman greeting the dawn naked and Ashcroft covering up nude statues in the capitol.

Protestant is an awfully lazy term here, but there is something very pre-industrial and Jeffersonian in their desire for connection to the land, manageable local democracy, and for homespun simplicity which has always made me think that part of the hippy impulse is rather nostalgic and reactionary.

see i think the specific cultural expression of the 60s in anti-atomised forms (eg rock bands, rock audiences, rock culture)

This desire for community at the cost of individuality has always scared me at concerts. There is oftimes the echo there of fascist rallies or mobs.

I think the first impulse won out more often in the 60s convulsions, despite mucho lip service paid to the latter.

ie it is anti-hierarchical, and expressive rather than submissive