On death

[demiurgent]

Andrea Dworkin died, as friends of mine have mentioned. The news of it has more or less traveled by meme, at least in America. The news outlets gave it a bye. Andrea Dworkin was many things -- a pioneer, a radical, a feminist, arguably insane, arguably antifeminist, strongly antisex and antierotic, someone who couldn't be made iconic by any side of the sexual revolution -- but she was no Terry Schiavo.

Susie Bright eulogized her about as well as I've seen. She grasped the essential contradictions that defined this woman, far better than I ever could. I recommend the essay.

In a lot of ways, Dworkin served the conservative (and conservative fringe) movements better than the liberal, as all radicals do. She became someone the right could point to to repudiate feminism, even as they seized on (carefully selected) bits of her writings to justify their own agenda. There are ways in which she was the Liberal Ann Coulter, fixated on her beliefs to the exclusion of evidence and unyielding in the details even when it damages the whole. I'm kind of surprised more isn't being made of her death, but then even the most machiavellian of thinkers on both sides of the aisle probably want to steer clear. Opening the Dworkin box means examining things people most want to ignore.

In the end, I wasn't a Dworkin disciple. Arguably, as a man, I couldn't have been if I wanted to -- I by definition was part of the problem. And yet, I also can't dismiss her. Certainly, she helped shape feminist thought even as feminism fragmented around her. Bright compares her to Malcolm X, and I think the comparison is apt.

In the end, she remained absolutely true to herself, no matter how harried the fight got. She held to principles that many of her early disciples couldn't abide, even when it moved her from the center of the movement she helped define to the fringe of it. You have to respect that. You have to respect Andrea Dworkin.

And we should note her passing.

Comments

[akhenaten.livejournal.com]

[after reading the Susie Bright article]

Ah, after reading again about how pornography is supposed to be demeaning to women and entirely violent and rape-approving, all I can think of is Camille Paglia's one proof against this: Gay Porn.

[akhenaten.livejournal.com]

...But I don't want to be disrespectful of the dead, even as I surely believe that one of the greatest pleasures in life is changing your mind about a deep-seated belief, and that those that deny themselves this pleasure merely stagnate.

Derrida last semester, Dworkin this semester.

[demiurgent.livejournal.com]

And yet Harold Bloom lurches on, claiming the Canterbury Tales were influenced by Shakespeare centuries before the fact.

[wednesday]

And, curiously enough, gay porn managed to be seized at Customs under Canadian obscenity rules heavily influenced by Dworkin and Catherine MacKinnon's work.

[ursulav.livejournal.com]

And perhaps as further proof that I am a Young Puppy, I've never heard of her. *sigh* It's a shame.

[mrbankies.livejournal.com]

I can't speak to age so much, not knowing yours and being to polite to ask, but don't feel bad. I recognize her name, but that's it.

[wednesday]

Go find a copy of _Pornography_, then read the essay she wrote about the process of authoring it. It's...

Yeah.

[elfstar18.livejournal.com]

I also hadn't heard she died. Having never been to college, and being pretty firmly outside academia, my only real exposure to Dwarkin (and --excuse my spelling --McKinnon?) has been when grad student friends bring her up as an example of Why Feminism Is Ridiculous. (A quote about all sex being rape is the one that is most often tossed around.) I don't think feminism is ridiculous or irrelevant at all, and have mostly bad feelings toward someone who can be used in an educated woman's argument for why she is not a feminist.

I have always been confused, though, as to why people immediately bring her writings up as an example of What Feminists Think. I wonder if it's because it *is* so extreme and therefor dismissible. Now I sound a bit like a conspiracy theorist.

Anyway, of course it takes her death to make me realize that I might actually want to read her writing. It always goes that way. (thinking of Will Eisner now.)

Sorry for the rambling, I am thinking outloud and should probably move it over to my own journal.

Thanks for the link. And the news. That's all I really meant to say. Yep.

[nous-athanatos.livejournal.com]

The news of it has more or less traveled by meme, at least in America. The news outlets gave it a bye.

And for this I am thankful. I'm sick of the culture wars being waged over the bodies and the legacies of people after the fact. The Derrida obit in the NY Times still has me steamed.

I think that Dworkin's work was reductive, antagonistic and polemical as hell, which is not so much a criticism as a statement of fact. Wollstonecraft was the same sort of figure in her time, though history has softened our view of her. Both, I think, tried to shift the discourse out of those comfortable fall-back positions in which they had become entrenched.

Bright does a good job of situating Dworkin within the feminist discourse.

Thanks for the news and the link.

[shaenon.livejournal.com]

Love the Susie Bright obituary. Although, like most feminists, I disagree with most of Dworkin's work (her actual theories, as opposed to the soundbites scratched up by antifeminists, are interesting on an academic/polemic level, but not particularly applicable to real life), I have to confess I would like to have that Googlism attached to my name. "An hysterical and puritanical castrator"--hell yeah!

[dvandom.livejournal.com]

I, however, will cheerfully disrespect the dead in general. They can't fight back, which makes them the best sort of target. :) (Aside: also, either they're in heaven and my mean words can't hurt them, in hell and my mean words don't even reach the threshold of their pain, or there's no afterlife and they can't be hurt by the slings and arrows anymore.)

However, since most of what I know about Paglia consists of what I suspect to be straw(wo)men and exaggerations, I don't really have a whole lot to say in the way of disrespecting this particular dead person. And anyone who annoys Dave Sim as much as she did can't be ALL bad.

[(Anonymous)]

I hope you'll understand why I have nothing but contempt for this particular deceased... especially since Dworkin's "Sex is rape!" rants sound way too close to the "Government is evil!" and "Tax is theft!" knee-jerk rants I deal with in my political activities.

Some broken people just aren't funny.

Kris Overstreet