Andrea Dworkin, Conservative?
There's something in the image of a self-identified celibate lesbian lecturing the world that "heterosexual intercourse is the pure, formalized expression of contempt for women's bodies" that carries, to me, the quality I reject in celibate priests lecturing young betrothed couples about the nuances of intimate married life.
Yet she was right, where a host of more liberal, and softer, minds were wrong: sex is, at bottom, an expression of power -- not always contempt, but power; often an exchange of powers unreachable except through the otherness of the lover's body. That's its magic. Where there is total equality, there is no sexuality. Lust and power move the same pistons in the brain, and if you try to disentangle them into one and the other, you find yourself holding indistinguishable threads in each hand.
Her obituaries, even in the liberal media outlets like the "Washington Post," descended into cattiness for long paragraphs. The conservatives were hardly less unkind. The Times (London) showed the weasel's tooth early on in its summary of her:
That's good. It's also vicious. The Telegraph, meanwhile, resurrected Camille Paglia's zinger: "Dworkin pretends to be a daring truth-teller, but never mentions her most obvious problem, food." Again, undeniably true, and undeniably cruel.
One of the worst jobs, characteristically, comes from Britain's Independent, which manages to get in all the obligatory digs at Fascist Amerikkka while at the same time revealing its utter ignorance of American history in the 1920s and '30s, confusing it with its own vituperative cartoons of Bushworld:
The Independent also singularly omits that Dworkin's experience with being an abused spouse, which it describes, happened in Europe at the hands of a radical European husband. It also identifies her critics as "mostly male," overlooking the numerous feminists, including Paglia, who have taken her to task, and felt in return the lash of her wrath.
The neo-con-ish New York Sun has a pretty fair review of the woman and her work, and goes further even than the WaPo in scotching the widespread belief that Dworkin had ever said all heterosexual sex is the same as rape.
Several of the obituaries point to the insightful comments of Susie Bright, who explored many of the same topics that obsessed Dworkin, but who comes across as Glinda to Dworkin's Elphaba:
Of course, as Bright notes on her site, "This is a woman who called for my 'assassination' on previous occasions," which makes it hard to feel entirely outraged at the cattiness of some of the obituaries.
Bright was hardly alone in the honor of being on Dworkin's hit list. Allen Ginsberg, once Dworkin's idol (when she fled the New Jersey suburbs to New York City, she had a copy of "Howl" in hand), once had this exchange with her:
The pundit nation's attempt to classify her as a "progressive" or a "conservative" resembles a game of hot potato.
Certainly she found a sympathetic reader, and a friend, in social conservative Maggie Gallagher:
It's also no accident that one of the very few places to pass Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon's proposed law defining pornography as a civil rights violation against women was red state capital Indianapolis (in 1983; the law was overturned by the courts).
As the woman who had famously claimed, "I really believe a woman has the right to execute a man who has raped her," Dworkin wrote as one of her last published pieces an article in the "Guardian," calling for the death penalty for Scott Peterson, shamelessly defending American popular support for the death penalty in that bastion of British liberalism, and even refusing to condemn the law passed in the wake of the case that would criminalize harm done to a fetus in an assault on a pregnant woman, even if the bill poses a threat to Roe v. Wade.
But it would be a mistake to call her a conservative. She followed her causes, consequences be damned. It's usually a tactic of one's enemies to take your sane proposals and stretch them out to absurd consequences -- reductio ad absurdum. Dworkin had no problem with that; she often did the work for them.
I think Salon's summation of her life hits the right note on that:
She was a pure product of America, after all, and as another New Jersey writer always reminds us, The pure products of America go crazy--
Well, I think Andrea would understand that. And if we can take it from Bill, we ought to hear it from her, too.
Yet she was right, where a host of more liberal, and softer, minds were wrong: sex is, at bottom, an expression of power -- not always contempt, but power; often an exchange of powers unreachable except through the otherness of the lover's body. That's its magic. Where there is total equality, there is no sexuality. Lust and power move the same pistons in the brain, and if you try to disentangle them into one and the other, you find yourself holding indistinguishable threads in each hand.
Her obituaries, even in the liberal media outlets like the "Washington Post," descended into cattiness for long paragraphs. The conservatives were hardly less unkind. The Times (London) showed the weasel's tooth early on in its summary of her:
With probability-defying regularity, she herself fell victim to the violence, misogyny and bias that supplied the primary theme of her speeches and more than a dozen books.
That's good. It's also vicious. The Telegraph, meanwhile, resurrected Camille Paglia's zinger: "Dworkin pretends to be a daring truth-teller, but never mentions her most obvious problem, food." Again, undeniably true, and undeniably cruel.
One of the worst jobs, characteristically, comes from Britain's Independent, which manages to get in all the obligatory digs at Fascist Amerikkka while at the same time revealing its utter ignorance of American history in the 1920s and '30s, confusing it with its own vituperative cartoons of Bushworld:
Her father was that American rarity, a committed socialist who was appalled by racism and discrimination, and was an unwavering supporter of organised labour.
The Independent also singularly omits that Dworkin's experience with being an abused spouse, which it describes, happened in Europe at the hands of a radical European husband. It also identifies her critics as "mostly male," overlooking the numerous feminists, including Paglia, who have taken her to task, and felt in return the lash of her wrath.
The neo-con-ish New York Sun has a pretty fair review of the woman and her work, and goes further even than the WaPo in scotching the widespread belief that Dworkin had ever said all heterosexual sex is the same as rape.
Several of the obituaries point to the insightful comments of Susie Bright, who explored many of the same topics that obsessed Dworkin, but who comes across as Glinda to Dworkin's Elphaba:
"She was the one who got us looking at porn with a critical eye, she made you feel like you could just stomp into the adult bookstore and seize everything for inspection and a bonfire. The funny thing that happened on the way to the X-Rated Sex Palace was that some of us came to different conclusions than Miss Dworkin."
Of course, as Bright notes on her site, "This is a woman who called for my 'assassination' on previous occasions," which makes it hard to feel entirely outraged at the cattiness of some of the obituaries.
Bright was hardly alone in the honor of being on Dworkin's hit list. Allen Ginsberg, once Dworkin's idol (when she fled the New Jersey suburbs to New York City, she had a copy of "Howl" in hand), once had this exchange with her:
Ginsberg: "The right wants to put me in jail."
Dworkin: "Yes, they're very sentimental; I'd kill you."
The pundit nation's attempt to classify her as a "progressive" or a "conservative" resembles a game of hot potato.
Certainly she found a sympathetic reader, and a friend, in social conservative Maggie Gallagher:
Yes, I received a gift from Andrea, the kind of gift which, intellectually speaking, you can receive only from someone with whom you profoundly disagree. From the opposite ends of the political spectrum, we had each glimpsed a piece of the same truth. Against the backdrop of a pornographic Playboy culture that tried to teach us that sex is just a trivial appetite for pleasure, radical feminist Andrea Dworkin wrote that "sexual intercourse is not intrinsically banal." I was not alone! Andrea saw it, too.
It's also no accident that one of the very few places to pass Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon's proposed law defining pornography as a civil rights violation against women was red state capital Indianapolis (in 1983; the law was overturned by the courts).
As the woman who had famously claimed, "I really believe a woman has the right to execute a man who has raped her," Dworkin wrote as one of her last published pieces an article in the "Guardian," calling for the death penalty for Scott Peterson, shamelessly defending American popular support for the death penalty in that bastion of British liberalism, and even refusing to condemn the law passed in the wake of the case that would criminalize harm done to a fetus in an assault on a pregnant woman, even if the bill poses a threat to Roe v. Wade.
It is hard, in following the harrowing story of Laci and her unborn son, not to think of Conner as a child nearly born, a life destroyed. This is especially true because Laci saw Conner as her son.
But it would be a mistake to call her a conservative. She followed her causes, consequences be damned. It's usually a tactic of one's enemies to take your sane proposals and stretch them out to absurd consequences -- reductio ad absurdum. Dworkin had no problem with that; she often did the work for them.
I think Salon's summation of her life hits the right note on that:
Though holdovers from the counterculture of the 1960s will probably hate to hear it, Andrea Dworkin, who died over the weekend, was one of their own. The rosy lens of intervening decades has softened many people's memories of those times, so that it's become easier to see the '60s as a time of righteous, liberal-minded protest movements and groovy celebrations of pot and casual sex.
She was a pure product of America, after all, and as another New Jersey writer always reminds us, The pure products of America go crazy--
and young slatterns, bathed
in filth
from Monday to Saturday
to be tricked out that night
with gauds
from imaginations which have no
peasant traditions to give them
character
but flutter and flaunt
sheer rags succumbing without
emotion
save numbed terror
under some hedge of choke-cherry
or viburnum--
which they cannot express--
Unless it be that marriage
perhaps
with a dash of Indian blood
will throw up a girl so desolate
so hemmed round
with disease or murder
that she'll be rescued by an
agent--
reared by the state and
sent out at fifteen to work in
some hard-pressed
house in the suburbs--
some doctor's family, some Elsie
voluptuous water
expressing with broken
brain the truth about us--
her great
ungainly hips and flopping breasts
addressed to cheap
jewelry
and rich young men with fine eyes
as if the earth under our feet
were
an excrement of some sky
and we degraded prisoners
destined
to hunger until we eat filth
Well, I think Andrea would understand that. And if we can take it from Bill, we ought to hear it from her, too.
Labels: Andrea Dworkin, Feminism
