What Andrea Dworkin got right

Under patriarchy, every woman’s daughter is a victim, past, present and future. Under patriarchy, every woman’s son is her potential betrayer and also the inevitable rapist or exploiter of another woman. —Andrea Dworkin

…sex and murder are fused in the male consciousness, so that the one without the imminent possibility of the other is unthinkable and impossible. —Andrea Dworkin, Letters from a War Zone, 1989

Intercourse remains a means or the means of physiologically making a woman inferior [and is] the pure, sterile, formal expression of men’s contempt for women. —Andrea Dworkin, Intercourse, 1987

Andrea Dworkin, 1946-2005

Andrea Dworkin, 1946-2005

When Andrea Dworkin—radical feminist, author, and a Founding Mother of the modern feminist movement—died on April 9 at the age of 58, a great many men cheered.

Andrea Dworkin was falsely credited with saying “all sex is rape” (a quote that Boston Globe columnist Cathy Young calls “fairly accurate shorthand for [Dworkin’s] ravings”). What she did say, consistently and without nuance, is that all men are misogynist oppressors, and that all sexual intercourse is war: the male invades, subdues and occupies the female, just as Hitler’s armies did in Europe.

It would be comforting to shrug off Andrea Dworkin as a member of the lunatic fringe, and many have tried to do so. Unfortunately, her inflammatory language has been embraced by many of her sisters in the feminist movement:

  • Man’s discovery that his genitalia could serve as a weapon to generate fear must rank as one of the most important discoveries of prehistoric times, along with the use of fire, and the first crude stone ax. —Susan Brownmiller
  • Since marriage constitutes slavery for women, it is clear that… freedom for women cannot be won without the abolition of marriage. —Sheila Cronan
  • And if the professional rapist is to be separated from the average dominant heterosexual [male], it may be mainly a quantitative difference. —Susan Griffin
  • In a patriarchal society all heterosexual intercourse is rape because women, as a group, are not strong enough to give meaningful consent. —Catherine MacKinnon

It was Andrea Dworkin who first popularized this kind of thinking. Where did that rage come from?

Dworkin was raised in a middle-class, Jewish home in New Jersey. Dworkin’s family was deeply affected by the Holocaust, a horror that shaped her thinking about the terrors that could be wrought by powerful men. Those terrors became personal at the age of 9 when she was sexually assaulted in a dark movie theater. In 1965, while studying at Bennington College in New York, Dworkin was jailed for her role in an anti-Vietnam protest. While awaiting a hearing, she was sexually assaulted by two male prison doctors. She was so badly injured that she bled for 15 days.

After graduating, she moved to Amsterdam and married a Dutch political activist. Not long into her marriage, her new husband began beating her, a pattern of abuse that would last five years. She finally escaped and, fearing for her life, hid out in the city, becoming a prostitute to support herself. It was during this time that she began writing her first book, Woman Hating.

This was Andrea Dworkin’s education in the world of male-female relationships. She learned that male sexual desire can be wielded as a weapon. She learned that intercourse, ostensibly an act of love, can also be brutal, emotionally sterile and self-serving. She learned that men relate to women from a position of power looking down at weakness.

And, she learned that women unwittingly make themselves victims by submitting to men, pinning their hopes on some fantasy of love that men do not share.

Dworkin’s attacks on the nuclear family, on motherhood, on patriarchy and traditional gender roles all brought scorn from social conservatives who (rightly) feared that feminists intended to destroy the institution of marriage and family.

What is odd, however, is that Dworkin also made a great many enemies on the left. And what got her into trouble with her allies might seem surprising: pornography.

Dworkin had been in the sex trades. She saw a clear link between pornography and the objectification of women. She saw clearly that pornography incited male hostility towards women. She felt a deep compassion for these women and wanted to restore their dignity.

With her friend, Catharine MacKinnon, Dworkin drafted a law that would have banned pornography on the grounds that it debased women and violated their civil rights. The law passed in Indiana, but was soon struck down by the US Supreme Court.

In Canada, however, Dworkin’s anti-porn efforts succeeded. A Canadian court ruled that pornography was not protected under Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms and that it was in fact degrading to women. When Canadian Customs officers began seizing porn, GLBT advocates were outraged—porn is big in the gay community.

Dworkin’s anti-porn crusade set off shock waves on the left. The right to pornography is the new third-rail of modern liberal politics—touch it and you’ll die.

In the church of sexual libertinism, pornography is a holy sacrament. It is “high-brow” and liberating. The free flow of porn has become a leading indicator that the old moral values are dead and the new ethic of sexual narcissism is alive and well. In the view of many on the left, Dworkin’s attempt to eradicate pornography amounted to censorship and showed an appalling lack of enlightenment.

What Andrea Dworkin knew instinctively is that male-female relationships are terribly broken, the pieces so scattered and torn that no one seems to know what the thing ought to look like. She blamed this brokenness on men, and there she made a philosophical wrong turn. But if she failed to understand the root causes of the evil she witnessed, she did not fail to grasp the terrible price women were paying in a society that views them as sexual objects.

What Andrea Dworkin got right is that men are promiscuous. The liberalization of divorce laws has aided and abetted men who want to shirk their family commitments and spread their DNA far and wide. Marriage is on the decline because too many men lack the self-discipline to honor their commitments to the women they marry and the children they father.

What Andrea Dworkin got right is that pornography encourages the basest instincts of male sexuality. The porn industry is like a giant whirlpool, dragging down vulnerable men and women (and children!) by the thousands. Sexual objectification has gone mainstream, from beer commercials to women’s fashions to media to gangsta rap and Britney Spears. The pervasive message is this: women are sex toys; women exist to please their men.

What Andrea Dworkin got right is that male lust is intrinsically self-serving. And since nature has made men more powerful than women, sexual liberation inevitably benefits men and hurts women. The playing field will never be level; the rules of biology always favor men.

The Christian view of male-female sexuality is not domination and submission, not anonymous hook-ups and one-night-stands, not sex as recreational sport nor sex as a weapon. All of these are the rotten fruit of the sin that has corrupted all of creation. The Apostle Paul understood the damage done by sin and the promise of renewal in Christ:

Since, then, we do not have the excuse of ignorance, everything—and I do mean everything—connected with that old way of life has to go. It’s rotten through and through. Get rid of it! And then take on an entirely new way of life—a God-fashioned life, a life renewed from the inside and working itself into your conduct as God accurately reproduces his character in you. —Ephesians 4:22-24, The Message

The Christian view of marriage is a relationship modeled on the unbreakable covenant and unselfish love that God himself has for us. Marital sexuality is not rape, but a consensual commitment before God to create new life. It is to be a joyous experience of intimacy and trust, of mutual enjoyment and mutual giving.

Andrea Dworkin never knew that kind of love. As a prostitute and a three-time rape victim (she was raped again in a Paris hotel in 1999), Dworkin only saw women as the objects of male lust and male hatred. A great many women have come to share Dworkin’s view.

Dworkin may never have witnessed a marriage based on mutual respect and self-denying love (…you husbands must love your wives with the same love Christ showed the church. He gave up his life for her… you wives submit to your husbands as you do to the Lord. —Ephesians 5:22,25, NLT). Such marriages are rare, even among Christians. The proof is in the divorce statistics, which show little difference between couples who profess faith in Christ and couples who don’t. Reality too often falls short of the promise.

The Christian church has to answer the criticisms of people like Dworkin. In Christ there is hope: for peace, for respect, for love, for trust, for commitment, for fulfillment, all in the context of a marriage between a man and a woman. That promise too often goes unfulfilled.

Only when manhood is dead—and it will perish when ravaged femininity no longer sustains it—only then will we know what it is to be free. —Andrea Dworkin

Jesus said to the people who believed in him, “You are truly my disciples if you keep obeying my teachings. And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
“But we are descendants of Abraham,” they said. “we have never been slaves to anyone on earth. What do you mean, ‘set free’?”
Jesus replied, “I assure you that everyone who sins is a slave of sin.” —John 8:31-34, NLT

Andrea Dworkin saw plainly the sin-ravaged state of male-female relationships. What she never grasped was the promise that men and women could be set free from sin and all of the evil it brings to human relationships. Manhood need not die, but the one man, Jesus Christ did die to heal all of the wounds men and women have inflicted on each other.

Freedom, healing, and peace between the sexes is possible. Sexual liberation is possible, but only through the work of the one, true liberator—Jesus the Redeemer.

Further reading:

If women are being treated as sexual objects, it is men who are creating that hostile environment. The US sex industry has greater annual revenues than the combined revenues of ABC, NBC and CBS, and most of those dollars come from men. More than 25% of all internet searches are for porn sites, and more than 12% of all web sites serve up pornographic materials.

The problems between the sexes are bigger than just pornography, but pornography is a huge part of the problem. If you know someone who has become entangled in pornography, a great place to find help is X3 Church, a Christian ministry that reaches out compassionately to men and women who find porn controlling their lives. X3 Church is even exploring ways to bring the message of Christ into the midst of the porn industry. Take their PorNO! Pledge as a start. These guys are on the level and have some great resources for men, women, teens and families.

Correction: Reader Charles Johnson pointed out that the quote I attributed to Catherine MacKinnon (In a patriarchal society all heterosexual intercourse is rape because women, as a group, are not strong enough to give meaningful consent.) was never written by her, though she is erroneously credited for it. In fact, this quote is a paraphrase of MacKinnon’s views by Daphne Patai and Noretta Koertge in their book Professing Feminism. In my opinion, the quote summarizes MacKinnon well. However, since she did not utter these words, I will resort to the Dan Rather Rule and call this quote “fake, but accurate.”

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Comments

  1. What a very sad story. I feel so very sad for the 9 year old girl. What would she have been had that not happened to her?

  2. My thoughts exactly. Her life seems to have been a continuous tragedy, and she often said in her last years that she wanted to die many times daily.

  3. Charlie, thank you for this thoughtful and informative article. This post and many other things I’ve heard (even in blog comments) just reinforces my belief that people like Andrea are not our enemy. Someone else is. We need to pray for people like her, not cast aspersions.

  4. Thanks Charlie. This is a very intelligent post – and one that looks for the image in the brokenness. It is heartening to find an analysis that goes deeper than the usual kneejerk response.

  5. This is an interesting and nuanced picture of Andrea’s life. I think there is also a lot to disagree with here, but I appreciate those who can disagree with Andrea’s work without dismissing her or hurling abuse at her, like some of her critics (on both the Left and the Right) have been fond of doing in the past several days since her death.

    A couple of notes.

    1.

    Catharine MacKinnon DID NOT SAY “In a patriarchal society all heterosexual intercourse is rape because women, as a group, are not strong enough to give meaningful consent.” These words were written by Daphne Patai and Noretta Koertge in their book Professing Feminism. They are trying to summarize MacKinnon’s views, but this is their interpretation of her views, not anything she ever wrote.

    2.

    You cite a passage from Susan Brownmiller’s book Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape. Maybe her rhetoric is inflammatory; I don’t think it is particularly, but I’m used to far more strident writers than Brownmiller. But in any case it wasn’t particularly influenced by Andrea at the time. (Brownmiller started writing Against Our Will in 1971. She was already involved in the radical feminist movement in New York, but as far as I know she had not yet met Andrea.)

    3.

    Above you say: “What Andrea Dworkin got right is that pornography encourages the basest instincts of male sexuality. … What Andrea Dworkin got right is that male lust is intrinsically self-serving. And since nature has made men more powerful than women, sexual liberation inevitably benefits men and hurts women.” Well, Andrea did criticize the effects of pornography on men’s sexuality and she did criticize self-serving male lust. But she did not believe that it was a matter of “instincts,” and she did not believe that men’s lust is intrinsically self-serving or that there’s any kind of biological inevitability about it. Right or wrong, she argued that pornography is part of a conscious, male-dominated political order, that male lust is “self-serving” in our society but that we can and should struggle to build a new society in which men’s sexuality is free from domination and narcissism.

  6. Dear Sir,

    Splendidly done. Thank you so much for the insight. I will be a frequent visitor now that I’ve found you. Thank you.

    shalom,

    Steven

  7. Excellent piece. Kudos

  8. I appreciate this imformative post, and I appreciate, further Rad Geek’s addendums. We have whole new context in which to place some of this: the systematic use of rape in war, and the growth of sex slavery.

    It is an unwieldy subject, and maybe that is why it is so difficult for Christians to address it: we don’t know how to approach the cause and effect, and what to advise in remedy.

    I feel in some ways we are like medeival monks who keep hoping that self-flagellation will do away with the sins of our hearts. When it is a new heart we are wanting….

  9. Thanks for this post, Charlie. I don’t entirely share your perspectives, but I appreciate how you expressed them — and I especially appreciate and admire the compassion you offer to Dworkin, despite the ways in which her philosophy and yours differed. Knee-jerk responses are all too easy (especially to someone as far-out as Dworkin was), and I think they diminish genuine dialogue; responses like yours help to bring dialogue back, and I appreciate that a great deal.

  10. Some of what you wrote I found disturbing. What you say about male sexuality. I’m an agnostic and one of the reasons I don’t like Christianity is its sexaul asceticism. For instance:

    “pornography appeals to the basest instincts of male sexuality”

    And what exactly are you referring to? What is wrong with “base instincts” anyway? I admit many forms of porn do portray sex in dark, dominating, vulgar ways, but that is like saying all videogames are violent. The main theme of all pornography, as I understand it, is the purely physical erotic element of sex and the fantasies relating therof, in its rawest unadulterated form, however which way it may be portrayed. And that pleasure/desire, by itself, is something that ought to be enjoyed and not condemned. So what you’re saying is men are only to enjoy sex for its procreative and symbolic (i.e Christ and Church) properties and pure erotic/sensual/physical desire and its full and comlete satisfaction is intrinsiclly evil and is to be completley denied? Seriously I’m really asking, because Christianity does confuse me with regard to EXACLTY how sexual pleasure/desire is to be viewed.

    “Male lust is inherently self-serving”

    Indeed, but so is almost any other enjoyment of life. Eating is self-serving. Sleeping is self-serving, Playing golf is self-serving. Watching the sunset is self-serving. Why can’t sexual enjoyment be seen the same way? What makes it so wrong?

  11. I appreciate your comments and will attempt to answer some of your criticisms.

    First, I’d disagree with your characterization of Christianity as promoting “sexual asceticism”. Far from it. The command of Genesis is to “be fruitful and multiply”, and the purpose of the Song of Solomon is to promote a delight in sexual eroticism.

    What Christianity does promote is a strict sexual monogamy, of body, mind and heart. Jesus said that if you lust after a woman with your heart, you have committed adultery.

    Thus, one of the problems with pornography is that it normalizes a fantasy life involving other men and women besides ones’ spouse, which works against a commitment to monogamy. It may seem harmless, but it does something destructive, both in the relationship between the two people, and in one’s heart relationship with God.

    That doesn’t even get to the practical problems with porn, that it feeds on vulnerable young men and women, that it degrades them, that it pushes a great many actors/actresses into drug use and prostitution. That it creates an attitude about women that makes them into objects instead of individuals created in the image of God. These were the consequences that Dworkin was especially sensitive to.

    Even if you disagree with the Christian view of monogamy, wouldn’t you agree that it is degrading to women to be portrayed as sexual objects instead of individuals with hearts and minds? Or is it your position that porn does not in any negative way affect the way men view women, or the lives of the women who sell themselves to the porn industry?

  12. This is one of the better overviews of Dworkin available online, and the only one I’ve seen from a Christian perspective. It fits well with my own perspective on life, as I am a Christian, but I cannot agree with the evangelical tenor of the piece; we have to respect the fact that she was brought up as a Jew and consciously chose not to embrace Christianity. And although in her life she tackled dark issues head-on, and tried to make sense of rape and abuse, we should not say that her life was without love. That is rather presumptuous; if you read her works, it is filled with love for those she advocates for, for the “invisible” women who society ignored, who were raped and exploited all their lives. Her life’s work was angry, yes, but it was a righteous anger against rape and pornography and human rights abuses, from a very political gender perspective. She was a warrior for abused women, thought her critique in “Our Blood” is very extreme — as a friend said, “she draws her net too wide.” But her challenge of gender roles, saying they were socially constructed, is probably correct and fits with Paul’s words “In Christ there is neither male nor female.” As to the facts regarding her life, the article is correct except on one point. You say she did not experience the love of marriage, but she did have a partner of 30 years whom she married at some point. I have read her words about him in her Memoir and they are filled with love, as are his words of her in his eulogy of her.

  13. I find the life of Andrea Dwarkin very sad but yet similar to many lives of other women. Most women are so used to being objects of pornography that they don’t realise it as being used. I am not sure what exactly I think about the whole issue, I have lived a protected life and somehow was not exposed to many things but even I can safely say that women have been biologically put on an unsafe position.

  14. Charlie,

    thank you for your thoughts on the issues being discussed here. i happen to have stumbled on your piece as i browsed the web looking for a piece to read on why women are so debased in the society in which we live. i happen to work in an environment where men display nudities on their computer screens and everywhere, and as someone who walks in The way, i find this extremely disturbing. my take is that many more of this kind of article needs to be written, and find their way out into the real world. The world should know that there are still men (and many at that) who find pornography extermely repugnant, and we should not live in a world that carries on as though women debasement is an “in” thing. The truth is someone has to speak out for these women, and we must keep pushing in our different societies to get laws that will protect women from this avoidable disgrace and debasement

    liberty

  15. I’m so glad that you took the time to express your feelings. I agree completely. It is extremely harmful to our society and to the relationships between men and women when men are encouraged to treat women as sexual objects rather than persons.

    It is even more disturbing to me that modern women find this a good thing, because it represents some sort of perverted freedom to be whatever you want to be. For many feminists, pornography represents throwing off the old sexual morals and embracing a new sexual freedom.

    In reality, the women who are attracted into the porn industry by the thousands by the promise of wealth and glamour find just the opposite. Many live in actual or virtual slavery. They grab for something that looks like gold only to find that it is brass.

  16. Wow, that was just impressive. Not only was that eloquent in words, but also in content. I happened to stumble across this as well, and it was well worth the read. You really have a way with words, and without losing any of your content. Another great thing is that I agree with the content. Your message of Christianity is not forceful or arrogant. We need more level headed people like you that have such a talent for writing. I love all my Christian brothers and sisters, but some can get a little too “in your face”. Others do not say what they believe for fear of failure. I have to congratulate you on your success. Also, thank you for the pleasant and fair read.

  17. its all the same thing in this world of patriarchy every women has to say something or the other. Our words maybe different but our feelings are the same but we must not forget the ones like us who cannot voice themselfes and are victims. What bothers me is can this medium of communication help them or reach them? or how many of them will be benifited by this discussion of ours? belive me its only afew and still there are thousands of us who feel the same. THANKS! FOR BEING SO THOUGHTFUL TOWARDS EACH OTHER.

  18. I found this article as I was looking on the web for resources on Andrea Dworkin, and found this very enlightening, especially the examining of Dworkin’s background to help explain her attitude.

    However, there are some things I question: you said that ‘women are sex toys; women exist to please their men’. I do not disagree with this statement, I just wanted to add that this is not a modern phenomenon. The norms and values in our society have always put women under men – look at tradtional marriage vows for example: the women ‘honour and obey’ the man, the woman is given away to the husband by her father, and traditionally only the woman wore a ring to signify that she was ‘taken’. In the time of Charles II (1660+) men and women openly had extramarital relationships, and in the Victorian times the same happend only no one spoke about it. The issue of female subordination goes a lot deeper into society than Dworkin examined.

    I would also like to question your statement that ‘the playing field will never be level; the rules of biology always favour men’. How much does biology affect the roles of men and women in society? To simplify this question: does biologically being a woman mean staying in the kitchen, and being a man mean going out in public spaces and working? Why do women traditionally look after children? Is it really because of their biology? Or is it because of society, for example there is no institution set up for women to leave their children in which would then allow them to behave like men and work. Why do women earn less than men? Because they are women? Or because of society? I think it is not the rules of biology that favour men, but the rules of society.

  19. I don’t agree that all men are promiscuious- that’s an individual thing

  20. Thanks for taking the time to comment, Eva. I think women are often “guilty” of projecting their own hopes on men, and fail to understand how vastly different men are from women. The male view of sexuality and relationships bears little similarity to how women see those things themselves.

    Andrea Dworkin knew something about men that most women don’t because of her work as a prostitute.

    I don’t mean to imply that men can’t control their promiscuous impulses. Most do. But when they do so, they are fighting a battle between a civilized side of their nature (the way society wants men to be) and a carnal side (the way evolutionary pressures and modern hedonism has encouraged men to be).

    You need only look at modern college campuses, where “hooking up” for a night of meaningless sexual pleasure has become the modern way for men and women to relate to each other. Sounds fairly promiscuous to me, and I doubt that hooking up was invented by women.

    It’s one of the reasons why we must have a moral code to live by. Without one, we give in to our worst instincts and fail to live as God designed us to live.

  21. I am also glad to have found this piece. It clearly explains why the Christian Right embraces the feminist ideas that men are bad and women are good.

    “What Andrea Dworkin got right is that men are promiscuous. The liberalization of divorce laws has aided and abetted men who want to shirk their family commitments and spread their DNA far and wide. Marriage is on the decline because too many men lack the self-discipline to honor their commitments to the women they marry and the children they father.”

    “I doubt that hooking up was invented by women.”

    You obviously don’t get out much. I have been hit on by more young women and by more single moms than I care to count. Women are in fact more promiscuous than men. Having been “freed” from the “oppresive patriarchy”, women are reverting to their natural instictive behavior, and that is to collect semen from the highest status male they have access to. Marriage is on the decline because Draconian anti-male custody and support laws and courts have convinced legions of men that marriage is too dangerous to risk. No-fault divorce is bad for MEN. 70% of divorces are initiated by WOMEN, almost always WITHOUT CAUSE. Women get custody and child support. Men go bankrupt, and then to jail for non-payment of support. Some fun!

    “Andrea Dworkin knew something about men that most women don’t because of her work as a prostitute.”

    And she drew conclusions about ALL men based on the men she met: men who frequent prostitutes. See anything wrong with writing laws and enacting public policies based on that?

    “What Andrea Dworkin got right is that male lust is intrinsically self-serving.”

    All human activity is intrinsically self-serving. Having children and being a good father is intrinsically self-serving. I don’t need a “god” to tell me I need to do it, and that it is my own best interests to do it. As was pointed out above, eating and sleeping are self-serving. Female lust is also self-serving. What Andrea Dworkin got wrong was just about everything.

  22. Regarding her thoughts on pornography. I really get tired of self-righteous feminists like her talking down to both the consumers and creators of porn – lumping porn for/by consenting adults into the same category as rape or child exploitation. How dare you? That’s like making links between homosexuality and paedophilia.

    Seems to me she was just a woman with a massive chip on her shoulder.

  23. “The Christian view of male-female sexuality is not domination and submission”

    “you wives submit to your husbands as you do to the Lord” Ephesians 5:22,25

    What??

  24. As tragic as her life was, her views on sexuality were very narrow and in no way fully representative of what most ordinary people experience or feel.

    Her view deny female sexual desire.

    And it denies female use of sex as a weapon (to be perfectly clear, I am not claiming all women use it as such or that it’s always a battlefield – simply that sex can also be used by women as a manipulative tool for their own gains).

    As with any philosophy that relies on absolutes in human behavior, Ms Dworkin got very little right. Just as we can’t say “All blacks are ___” or “All whites like ___” we can’t say All men are sexual predators and all women are the victims.

  25. Father Dave says

    You are a complete and utter unthinking idiot. I feel sorry for you.

    (The beauty of being a complete and utter (sic) unthinking idiot is that you don’t have the sense to know when you’re being insulted!! Thanks for the laugh, Dave! — Charlie)

  26. (comment removed by administrator)

  27. Wake up! There are HUGE links to homosexuality and pedophilia! Ever heard of NAMBLA?!! Also look this up. That’s a different subject. I always thought Andrea Dworkin was off her rocker as are other feminists, but then reading about her sad life story, the poor woman never had a chance. You can see the hurt and pain on her face, in her eyes. Damn those disgusting men for doing that to her and ruining a precious child of God. Much needs to be learned from her.

  28. I had the pleasure of meeting Andrea here in NYC before she passed away. Essentially, she wrote and gave amazing lectures about topics that are basically forbidden! She had the guts to verbalize what other women wish they could say. There needs to be more Andrea Dworkins on this earth! Men have been getting away with this woman hating nonsense for way too long! Pornography doesn’t exploit men. There is a war on women in America happening as I Write this. Will it ever end? Men do not want to own up to the part they have played in the oppression of women that has been going on forever! Violent rap music, degrading videos, hateful tv shows, rape, spousal abuse, sexism, etc is all done by “Men.” Like a bratty child, they will never take responsibility for the nightmar of a life that women experience. Imagine if we lived in a sexist matriarchy?!

  29. “oppression of women” are you serious? What about selective service in the US? Thats not sexist? What about all the dangerous and dirty jobs performed by men? What about men not living as long as women? Pornography exploits men more because men are more likely to buy it than women.Same as prostitution. Its females exploiting males. Think before you write.

  30. There is nothing special about Andrea Dworkin’s life except for her passion and writing. Her life is not special. She was a woman. One third of all women in the world are raped and beaten, usually by their male partners, whatever their religious affiliation.

  31. Wait a second? lol. So she was raped and tortured by some individuals and her default position was to argue all men are evil, that marriage is evil, that porn is evil? And her desire, her liberation was the abolishment of marriage, which has succeeded brilliantly, and you Christians feel . . . what, that porn is bad, or that men are still just evil?
    Men don’t divorce merely because they are promiscuous. Some divorce because they can’t take it anymore. Some divorce because they don’t love, but women also divorce and leave, and this isn’t pointed out in your article.
    You have, or rather she has exactly what she wanted; a world where marriage is outdated and outworn. And what a wonderful world it is; most men under 30 can’t find a sexual partner worth a damn, and are justifiably terrified of trying in a world where they can be accused of harassment for asking someone out.
    So they turn to porn because at least these pseudo-relationships are safe, but Dworkin would argue even that is oppression of women, except, when what? You’ve eliminated the chance to be married, the chance to date, and even porn and therefore one’s own fantasies are illegal.
    Sex is language. It is how people communicate, and rape is hatred, but just as hatred as one form of communication along the continuum of speech rape is one form of sexual communication along the continuum of sex, and designed for the same reason. To hurt, to brutalize.
    Dworkin has her wish. Shame she’s not alive to see how completely fucked up everything is.

  32. gorgeousmisandrist says

    I love Andrea Dworkin. I’ve just begun reading her works. She was a VERY intelligent woman. I also like Valerie Solanas. You post a fake, non_existant god who is male and all good so that womyn will transfer those traits onto men and believe that this mythical god has made her male owner into a noble being. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Males are, intrinsically, basic animals that live for screwing and dominating. Sure, “nice guys” try to hide this aspect of themselves. For ages they have worked hard to build an image of “family man” for the purpose of social furtherance and domination of women in the home. Yet it is false, a false persona and sometimes they believe their own xxxxx xxxx. (I apologize to horses for posting their name in a comment about men). The women who see the deception in it all are seen as crazy and dismissed. How clever. My opinions only grow stronger with time and observations; males are basic, sex addicted pigs that no woman should marry. He is not able to love as a woman can. He is simply a penis with a human head and body built in.

    (Mr. Ed does not accept your apology. I would also point out that you have slandered pigs, too. I hope you are ashamed. We men, dickheads that we are, will just roll our eyes and laugh off this kind of feminist hogwash (oh, my, now you have *me* doing it!), but the animals are gentle spirits and you really should try harder not to hurt their feelings.)

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