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In reply to the discussion: Andrea Dworkin NEVER said "all sex is rape" [View all]lumberjack_jeff
(33,224 posts)For instance, do you agree with the model ordinance that she and MacKinnon got passed in Indianapolis which outlawed all books audio recordings and film that depict sex acts with which they disapprove? When asked if classics like the Illiad should be exempt from the law MacKinnon wrote;
"If a woman is subjected, why should it matter that the work has other value?"
Or do you agree with her when she said:
"Marriage as an institution developed from rape as a practice. Rape, originally defined as abduction, became marriage by capture. Marriage meant the taking was to extend in time, to be not only use of but possession of, or ownership."
Or when she said:
"Under patriarchy, every woman's son is her potential betrayer and also the inevitable rapist or exploiter of another woman."
Her writing, although too verbose for dictionaries, should serve as the working definition of misandry. I'm completely unsurprised to see a full throated defense of her here. It's also why I'm completely immune to concerns that the usual suspects don't approve of me. I would have it no other way.
Personally, I think Cathy Young said it best.
While Dworkin spoke passionately on behalf of women who are battered and raped, her advocacy was undercut by her bizarre claims for instance, that the high rate of Caesarean sections in the United States is driven by the sexual sadism of doctors. Her melodramatic assertion that the everyday life of women in our culture is an "atrocity" could only trivialize real atrocities. Her depiction of all women as perpetual victims "Being female in this world is having been robbed of the potential for human choice by men who love to hate us" is profoundly demeaning.
She was nuts, and although I can extend a person some compassion for the circumstances that drove her to such a peak of hatred and insanity, I'm not going to give any slack to those who think that the insanity contains any nuggets of wisdom. It does not.