Andrea Dworkin RIP

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

(ps i didn't mean sad in the "loser" sense, which i hate: i mean genuinely struck-to-its-depth w.something sorrowful - that everything shared is tainted amd corrupting)

rock culture's dream of itself wz that this wz a vast joyful unity taken on as an active choice: rockbands as little marriages, band-and-audience as a two-way lovematch etc etc

Meat eating = objectification = pornography and women = cattle

It's as if she's saying "It's much worse than you think. Women are even more abject than anybody imagined. Cattle. Offal. Hamburgers." I mean, who does that analysis help? Where does that metaphor lead? It makes the image of a leggy hamburger on her book jacket look positively chivalric in comparison.

but the bondage scenario above is queer sex--or at least sex informed by knowledge of power dialectics.

WTMFF?

but i realize i cant be seduced.

Dworkin just never got any. That was her problem - who would go down on THAT?

Blah blah blah 'hatred of women' blah blah blah. Never met a woman who hated me as a person funnily enough and have plenty of them as friends and, shockingly, was brought up by them too. Blah blah blah - this is nonsense. Dworkin was a pig ugly obese nutcase and if someone only laid her back and gave her some fine oral she'd probably have revised her views a long time ago. As it is she was no worse than a KKK member telling us all blacks are the spawn of satan - only her enemy had a penis.

What makes SF great is just how sexually liberated it is. The Castro district is - like - now one of my fave places ever.

oddly, I still find yr sub-literate masturbatory fantasies really really REALLY boring.

A) Noticed you on this board the whole time I've been here

And/ Or

B) Could tell you one post you've made.

So you're clearly a very memorable guy.