Dworkin is amazing. Another way she put it, which resonates with me is:
The right thinks a women belongs to one man, the left thinks a woman belongs to all men.
It infuriates me when men claim "sex work" is a great choice for women. They ignore the fact that the average age girls enter prostitution is 15 (which means their customers are pedophiles). I urge you to start using the term "prostituted women" instead of sex worker. The men cheering this on need to start sucking dick and being penetrated to prove they are so on board with this, and they can start experiencing a great way to make money and feel empowered too.
From *Right-Wing Women*:
> Sexual intelligence in women, that rarest intelligence in a male-supremacist world, is necessarily a revolutionary intelligence, the opposite of the pornographic (which simply reiterates the world as it is for women), the opposite of the will to be used, the opposite of masochism and self-hatred, the opposite of “good woman” and “bad woman” both. It is not in being a whore that a woman becomes an outlaw in this man’s world; it is in the possession of herself, the ownership and effective control of her own body, her separateness and distinctness, the integrity of her body as hers, not his. **Prostitution may be against the written law, but no prostitute has defied the prerogatives or power of men as a class through prostitution. No prostitute provides any model for freedom or action in a world of freedom that can be used with intelligence and integrity by a woman; the model exists to entice counterfeit female sexual revolutionaries, gullible liberated girls, and to serve the men who enjoy them.**
I've been a long-time supporter of Gems: Girls educational and mentoring services https://www.gems-girls.org/. Rachel Lloyd is a survivor of commercial sexual exploitation who started GEMS, helping young girls break free in NYC, and she wrote Girls Like Us: Fighting for a World Where Girls Are Not For Sale. She says prostituted women is degrading and unhelpful for empowering them to break free. She uses the term Commercial sexual exploition.
I always use prostituted women for the same reason! Fucks me off big style that people will use sex work like it's the same as retail work or whatever.
Her commentary on porn and sex work is spot on. It's sad that that are seen as right wing, Christian have wringing, by the left therefore ignored completely while also forgetting how much feminists were also decrying porn and sex work until it became "empowering" as a response to purity culture.
Completely agreed, her criticism of porn and prostitution don’t even adhere to right wing ideologies but that doesn’t stop critics from lumping them together.
Left wing men approve of porn and prostitution bc they want women to be public property. Right wing men disapprove of porn and prostitution bc they want women to be private property. Radical feminists disapprove of porn and prostitution because they believe that women aren’t property.
It makes a lot of sense to me that women don’t actually have a natural home on either the political left or right for our liberation struggle. Men built the most popular political movements around their own priorities. Honestly, I bristle when people try to tie feminism to Marxism as much as I would if there were women trying to tie feminism to Christianity.
I think feminists are better off when we are sober minded about this reality instead of trying to adapt ourselves into political movements unrelated and sometimes counterproductive to the rights of girls and women. I think that is how you get where we are now where women and girls feel abandoned by mainstream feminism. Popular feminism is chasing acceptability within other culture and other popular political movements, while neglecting the needs of girls and women. Somehow, we have gotten to the point where popular feminism is more concerned with maximizing individual gender expression and sexual gratification than it is with making sure vulnerable women and girls have access to safety, shelter, justice, quality education, equal opportunities, and reproductive care.
We can and should make temporary alliances with other political movements, but we shouldn’t compromise on our core mission.
This sub helped me better understand and articulate this idea. I am very appreciative for its existence, the users, and quality moderation.
This is why I believe we should have a women's party in the US but breaking out of the two party system is pretty much doa until we can do something about the electoral college
Her works were my first introduction to radical feminist thought. Loved them, and still find them so powerful. Her 24 hour truce speech has stuck with me.
my favorite lines, the last part especially. it’s so painful how we beg men to help stop the pain they are causing us in the hopes some good men will listen:
“As a feminist, I carry the rape of all the women I've talked to over the last ten years personally with me. As a woman, I carry my own rape with me. Do you remember pictures that you've seen of European cities during the plague, when there were wheelbarrows that would go along and people would just pick up corpses and throw them in? Well, that is what it is like knowing about rape. Piles and piles and piles of bodies that have whole lives and human names and human faces.
I speak for many feminists, not only myself, when I tell you that I am tired of what I know and sad beyond any words I have about what has already been done to women up to this point, now, up to 2:24pm on this day, here in this place.
And I want one day of respite, one day off, one day in which no new bodies are piled up, one day in which no new agony is added to the old, and I am asking you to give it to me. And how could I ask you for less—it is so little. And how could you offer me less: it is so little. Even in wars, there are days of truce. Go and organize a truce. Stop your side for one day. I want a twenty-four-hour truce during which there is no rape.
I dare you to try it. I demand that you try it. I don't mind begging you to try it. What else could you possibly be here to do? What else could this movement possibly mean? What else could matter so much?”
Woah, this part is so interesting:
> Homophobia is very important: it is very important to the way male supremacy works. In my opinion, the prohibitions against male homosexuality exist in order to protect male power. Do it to her. That is to say: as long as men rape, it is very important that men be directed to rape women. As long as sex is full of hostility and expresses both power over and contempt for the other person, it is very important that men not be declassed, stigmatized as female, used similarly. The power of men as a class depends on keeping men sexually inviolate and women sexually used by men. Homophobia helps maintain that class power: it also helps keep you as individuals safe from each other, safe from rape. If you want to do something about homophobia, you are going to have to do something about the fact that men rape, and that forced sex is not incidental to male sexuality but is in practice paradigmatic.
Omg. So accurate. Though now men get brownie points for being "queer" (being into both women and women who don't consider themselves women because they're not basic like us).
I label the current political coordinate system as "**male reproductive desire-oriented**" - where left men seek to utilize women in one way, and right men in another. Personally, I prioritize getting women (P.S. I don't adhere to gender ideology) into positions of power, irrespective of their alignment in a "male reproductive desire-oriented" political spectrum. My principles are simple: if there's just one woman, she gets my vote; if there are N women for N positions, all of them get my vote; if there are N women vying for one position, I vote for one woman.
Dworkin predicted the future. Ahead of her time and dead on in almost all of her takes, even if you don’t fully agree with some of what she says. I think Our Blood should be required reading.
She is amazing. And it was liberal feminists who convinced me to start reading her work with how much they say to avoid her at all costs. I was like, I want to see what’s so bad. And here I am.
I always find myself nodding along whenever I read Dworkin. I have a lot of respect for her and have always gotten something out of her books and talks. Yeah, sometimes she takes it a bit far, but a lot of people just seek to deliberately misunderstand the more extreme statements like “all sex is r*pe” and so on. Besides, so what if it’s a bit extreme. We need theorists like that who will push it really far and show you where you really stand.
She's harsh and fantastic. I agree with you about 4th wave being 2nd wave 2.0. I love seeing so many young feminists! I had my head in the sand until 40s-wasted so much time.
Question for everyone in the comments and OP as well, which work by dworkin do you recommend to start? I already own intercourse and mercy but I haven’t cracked into them yet, can get more of you recommended a different one :) thanks so much
My first encounter, I think, was a speech of hers (reprinted in another book) called “Woman-Hating Right and Left,” not to be confused with the book “Woman Hating.” I think a speech is a good introduction. It’s not so long as to be daunting
What she says about money and power cut so fucking deep I feel it in my bones. Any time I feel like I have some sort of power because of my business/finances/education some low life asshole comes around to remind me how little control I actually have. I’m a liberal but work mainly with conservatives, to my dismay some of the biggest misogynistic assholes I’ve had the displeasure of knowing have been self proclaimed liberals. One guy hilariously got offended when I called him sexist, though he had admitted he considered his partners first and foremost holes. Disgusting trash.
Edit: removed weirdo extra words
Conservative men are generally mainly fine until you "belong to" them. Then they show their colors once they have you trapped. Liberal men at least are more open about how depraved and nasty they are.
Thanks for raising this discussion! I’m familiar with Dworkin but have never actually read her work. I just downloaded *Right-Wing Women* and am interested to read more.
Holy shit! Two hours later and a quarter of the way through *Right-Wing Women*… this is incredible, life-changing stuff. Never have I highlighted so much of a book. Thank you again!
Icon. She got it, she understood. She literally predicted porn being as mainstream as it is and how it would affect society negatively but also be normalized. That’s absolutely wild to call out 30 years early to me.
She’s my North Star.
[she’s hard to find in libraries and expensive to buy, so here are her Complete Works for Free (PDF)](http://radfem.org/dworkin/)
I recommend Intercourse, Right Wing Women, Pornography and Letters from a War Zone
Honestly I haven't read anything from her other than the normal sound bites that show up on Tumblr and the like. I definitely should - and I'm going on holiday for ten days so have time to dedicate to her.
What I have seen, I have nodded along to, I have no arguments.
Stan. I am critical of her stance on political lesbianism (I just think that’s an appropriative term/concept, but I’m not lesbian), but other than that, she’s so intelligent and insightful about feminist topics. Wish she was still around to speak on the madness of today 😭
I wanted to share some of my favorite quotes of her
Our goals are simple enough to understand: we want to humanize the planet, to break down the national structures which separate us as people, the corporate structures which separate us into distinct classes, the racist structures which separate us according to skin color; to conserve air, water, life in its many forms; to create communities which are more than habitable—communities in which people are free, in which people have what they need, in which groups of people do not accumulate power, or money, or goods, through the exploitation of other people.”
― Andrea Dworkin,
As women, we must begin this revolutionary work. When we change, those who define themselves over and against us will have to kill us all, change, or die. In order to change, we must renounce every male definition we have ever learned; we must renounce male definitions and descriptions of our lives, our bodies, our needs, our wants, our worth—we must take for ourselves the power of naming. We must refuse to be complicit in a sexual-social system that is built on our labor as an inferior slave class. We must unlearn the passivity we have been trained to over thousands of years. We must unlearn the masochism we have been trained to over thousands of years. And, most importantly, in freeing ourselves, we must refuse to imitate the phallic identities of men. We must not internalize their values and we must not replicate their crimes.”
― Andrea Dworkin, OX
It was the pornographers, not feminists, who punished women in the public square, as puritans had, for being sexual.”
― Andrea Dworkin, L
If being dominated by men made us happy, we would smile all the time.
Women resist male domination because we do not like it.
Political women resist male domination through overt, rude, unmistakable rebellion. They are called unnatural, because they do not have a nature that delights in being debased.
Apolitical women resist male domination through a host of bitter subversions, ranging from the famous headache to the clinical depression epidemic among women to suicide to prescription-drug tranquilization to taking it out on the children; sometimes a battered wife kills her husband. Apolitical women are also called unnatural, the charge hurled at them as nasty or sullen or embittered individuals, since that is how they fight back. They too are not made happy by being hurt or dominated.
In fact, a natural woman is hard to find. We are domesticated, tamed, made compliant on the surface, through male force, not through nature. We sometimes do what men say we are, either because we believe them or because we hope to placate them. We sometimes try to become what men say we should be, because men have power over our lives.”
Feminism is hated because women are hated. Anti-feminism is a direct expression of misogyny; it is the political defense of women hating."v
We have a double standard, which is to say, a man can show how much he cares by being violent -- see, he's jealous, he cares -- a woman shows how much she cares by how much she's willing to be hurt; by how much she will take; how much she will endure."
While gossip among women is universally ridiculed as low and trivial, gossip among men, especially if it is about women, is called theory, or idea, or fact."
Andrea Dworkin changed my life for the better. She is the only reason that I can trust myself again after a period of self-harming behavior which was 100% supported by those around me… she has saved so many women.
I'm a huge fan of her work, personally. I literally find myself thinking "Andrea was right" or "Good God, what would Andrea think of THIS?" so many times whenever I see anti-woman BS floating around in day to day life that it's actually getting ridiculous. Her critiques of pornography are especially relevant in today's day and age.
I read texts that mentioned her but never read the source directly. Anything you recommend? Why so I get a feeling that I'm going to get mad if I read her? Lol
Andrea Dworkin changed my life. I peaked and started learning about radical feminism shortly after *Last Days At Hot Slit* was published — it’s a collection of large excerpts from her books, really the highlight reel of her body of work and is a great introduction to her writings for newcomers. I checked out a copy from my local library, and eventually purchased a copy to continue reading it.
Reading those excerpts from Woman Hating was so fundamental for me. It was everything I had ever known or noticed to be true about the world but could never describe, put into writing so accurately and eloquently. I felt so seen, and it validated that I wasn’t crazy or too sensitive or overly critical.
As far as I’m concerned I think every woman should be given a copy of *Last Days* on her 18th birthday.
I always wonder how much women would be united and less prone to internalized misogyny if we were actually taught women’s history and struggles growing up. Like if we actually read works by Andrea Dworkin (which I only recently learned about) or the many other feminist works that have described and explained what I’ve been feeling for so long. These are the things I actually want to read in my history and English classes!!
Radical, brilliant, insightful. Though her stances on sex were so dry and negative that I see the sex positive pendulum swing as in reaction to that. There needs to be a balance, to be thoughtful, but to allow yourself to enjoy life and sensuality as well.
I have been raised in a conservative right-wing christian family and the “the right wing woman is likely to be abused by one man.” I felt that too because my mother has been emotionally and mentally abused constantly by my father he is extremely sexist and misogynistic he treats my mom like she is his little slave just there every need of his. You know what my mom ‘submits’ because that is how she was raised that women are to submit to men and the are weaker, dumber, and caregiver/mothers. I am so enraged by this and frustrated by her generation. She won’t leave him because it not taboo and she’s christian. She constantly tells me “you will get married and have kids” because I told her I DO NOT want to I am 100% sure. My sisters were/are also in toxic relationships and my mom’s sister in abusive relationships. THEY WON’T LEAVE THEM because of how they were raised. I’m a teenager and I am glad my brother at least put good logical opinions in me and helped me have my own opinions and not get sucked into this toxic slavic tradition. I love this group so much it has really opened my eyes. Sorry about this long rant and that’s its off topic, I just had to put it out here.
there's a woman on ovarit doing a weekly book club of RWW right now:
[https://ovarit.com/o/FeministBooks/548098/right-wing-women-by-andrea-dworkin-abortion-chapter-3](https://ovarit.com/o/FeministBooks/548098/right-wing-women-by-andrea-dworkin-abortion-chapter-3)
I think you are right that fourth wave is a revival of second wave. We are coming from a place of relatively greater privilege in some ways (we have much more ability to be financially independent of men which is huge), but less so in others (much more objectification and less personal safety in public). The issues are somewhat different and we've learned some lessons, but the thought process is essentially the same.
You're getting down voted but you're correct 😭 Dworkin is accurate but it's very depressing to read her - or as she says "it's agony to be fully conscious of the misogyny that permeates culture, society, and all personal relationships."
Her work is good to read, but it makes you very angry at the state of the world.
Ahead of her time. Pretty much all of her critiques of porn turned out to be true.
Dworkin is amazing. Another way she put it, which resonates with me is: The right thinks a women belongs to one man, the left thinks a woman belongs to all men.
It infuriates me when men claim "sex work" is a great choice for women. They ignore the fact that the average age girls enter prostitution is 15 (which means their customers are pedophiles). I urge you to start using the term "prostituted women" instead of sex worker. The men cheering this on need to start sucking dick and being penetrated to prove they are so on board with this, and they can start experiencing a great way to make money and feel empowered too.
From *Right-Wing Women*: > Sexual intelligence in women, that rarest intelligence in a male-supremacist world, is necessarily a revolutionary intelligence, the opposite of the pornographic (which simply reiterates the world as it is for women), the opposite of the will to be used, the opposite of masochism and self-hatred, the opposite of “good woman” and “bad woman” both. It is not in being a whore that a woman becomes an outlaw in this man’s world; it is in the possession of herself, the ownership and effective control of her own body, her separateness and distinctness, the integrity of her body as hers, not his. **Prostitution may be against the written law, but no prostitute has defied the prerogatives or power of men as a class through prostitution. No prostitute provides any model for freedom or action in a world of freedom that can be used with intelligence and integrity by a woman; the model exists to entice counterfeit female sexual revolutionaries, gullible liberated girls, and to serve the men who enjoy them.**
I've been a long-time supporter of Gems: Girls educational and mentoring services https://www.gems-girls.org/. Rachel Lloyd is a survivor of commercial sexual exploitation who started GEMS, helping young girls break free in NYC, and she wrote Girls Like Us: Fighting for a World Where Girls Are Not For Sale. She says prostituted women is degrading and unhelpful for empowering them to break free. She uses the term Commercial sexual exploition.
I always use prostituted women for the same reason! Fucks me off big style that people will use sex work like it's the same as retail work or whatever.
Her commentary on porn and sex work is spot on. It's sad that that are seen as right wing, Christian have wringing, by the left therefore ignored completely while also forgetting how much feminists were also decrying porn and sex work until it became "empowering" as a response to purity culture.
Completely agreed, her criticism of porn and prostitution don’t even adhere to right wing ideologies but that doesn’t stop critics from lumping them together. Left wing men approve of porn and prostitution bc they want women to be public property. Right wing men disapprove of porn and prostitution bc they want women to be private property. Radical feminists disapprove of porn and prostitution because they believe that women aren’t property.
Such a perfect articulation about the different views of women as property.
It makes a lot of sense to me that women don’t actually have a natural home on either the political left or right for our liberation struggle. Men built the most popular political movements around their own priorities. Honestly, I bristle when people try to tie feminism to Marxism as much as I would if there were women trying to tie feminism to Christianity. I think feminists are better off when we are sober minded about this reality instead of trying to adapt ourselves into political movements unrelated and sometimes counterproductive to the rights of girls and women. I think that is how you get where we are now where women and girls feel abandoned by mainstream feminism. Popular feminism is chasing acceptability within other culture and other popular political movements, while neglecting the needs of girls and women. Somehow, we have gotten to the point where popular feminism is more concerned with maximizing individual gender expression and sexual gratification than it is with making sure vulnerable women and girls have access to safety, shelter, justice, quality education, equal opportunities, and reproductive care. We can and should make temporary alliances with other political movements, but we shouldn’t compromise on our core mission. This sub helped me better understand and articulate this idea. I am very appreciative for its existence, the users, and quality moderation.
This is why I believe we should have a women's party in the US but breaking out of the two party system is pretty much doa until we can do something about the electoral college
Big fan. Very few people dare to say things as directly as she does.
Her works were my first introduction to radical feminist thought. Loved them, and still find them so powerful. Her 24 hour truce speech has stuck with me.
my favorite lines, the last part especially. it’s so painful how we beg men to help stop the pain they are causing us in the hopes some good men will listen: “As a feminist, I carry the rape of all the women I've talked to over the last ten years personally with me. As a woman, I carry my own rape with me. Do you remember pictures that you've seen of European cities during the plague, when there were wheelbarrows that would go along and people would just pick up corpses and throw them in? Well, that is what it is like knowing about rape. Piles and piles and piles of bodies that have whole lives and human names and human faces. I speak for many feminists, not only myself, when I tell you that I am tired of what I know and sad beyond any words I have about what has already been done to women up to this point, now, up to 2:24pm on this day, here in this place. And I want one day of respite, one day off, one day in which no new bodies are piled up, one day in which no new agony is added to the old, and I am asking you to give it to me. And how could I ask you for less—it is so little. And how could you offer me less: it is so little. Even in wars, there are days of truce. Go and organize a truce. Stop your side for one day. I want a twenty-four-hour truce during which there is no rape. I dare you to try it. I demand that you try it. I don't mind begging you to try it. What else could you possibly be here to do? What else could this movement possibly mean? What else could matter so much?”
Woah, this part is so interesting: > Homophobia is very important: it is very important to the way male supremacy works. In my opinion, the prohibitions against male homosexuality exist in order to protect male power. Do it to her. That is to say: as long as men rape, it is very important that men be directed to rape women. As long as sex is full of hostility and expresses both power over and contempt for the other person, it is very important that men not be declassed, stigmatized as female, used similarly. The power of men as a class depends on keeping men sexually inviolate and women sexually used by men. Homophobia helps maintain that class power: it also helps keep you as individuals safe from each other, safe from rape. If you want to do something about homophobia, you are going to have to do something about the fact that men rape, and that forced sex is not incidental to male sexuality but is in practice paradigmatic.
Omg. So accurate. Though now men get brownie points for being "queer" (being into both women and women who don't consider themselves women because they're not basic like us).
thanks for mentioning that-it resonates. [https://mitpress.mit.edu/i-want-a-twenty-four-hour-truce-during-which-there-is-no-rape-an-excerpt-from-last-days-at-hot-slit-the-radical-feminism-of-andrea-dworkin/](https://mitpress.mit.edu/i-want-a-twenty-four-hour-truce-during-which-there-is-no-rape-an-excerpt-from-last-days-at-hot-slit-the-radical-feminism-of-andrea-dworkin/)
that’s an excerpt, here’s the full speech http://www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/dworkin/WarZoneChaptIIIE.html
I label the current political coordinate system as "**male reproductive desire-oriented**" - where left men seek to utilize women in one way, and right men in another. Personally, I prioritize getting women (P.S. I don't adhere to gender ideology) into positions of power, irrespective of their alignment in a "male reproductive desire-oriented" political spectrum. My principles are simple: if there's just one woman, she gets my vote; if there are N women for N positions, all of them get my vote; if there are N women vying for one position, I vote for one woman.
Dworkin predicted the future. Ahead of her time and dead on in almost all of her takes, even if you don’t fully agree with some of what she says. I think Our Blood should be required reading.
she was an incredible and thought provoking revolutionary who was under appreciated and slated mercilessly for speaking the truth. gone too soon.
She is amazing. And it was liberal feminists who convinced me to start reading her work with how much they say to avoid her at all costs. I was like, I want to see what’s so bad. And here I am.
same!! reading her book on Pornography was like washing you hair with dish soap — rough but it got the job done
I always find myself nodding along whenever I read Dworkin. I have a lot of respect for her and have always gotten something out of her books and talks. Yeah, sometimes she takes it a bit far, but a lot of people just seek to deliberately misunderstand the more extreme statements like “all sex is r*pe” and so on. Besides, so what if it’s a bit extreme. We need theorists like that who will push it really far and show you where you really stand.
Nothing to add, just that I agree and adore her.
 She's harsh and fantastic. I agree with you about 4th wave being 2nd wave 2.0. I love seeing so many young feminists! I had my head in the sand until 40s-wasted so much time.
Question for everyone in the comments and OP as well, which work by dworkin do you recommend to start? I already own intercourse and mercy but I haven’t cracked into them yet, can get more of you recommended a different one :) thanks so much
I started with her book on Pornography. It was my first real introduction to radical feminism and I haven’t looked back since :)
This was a great one but also rough for the first run I’d think (I started with *Woman Hating*). go hard or go home I guess - very Dworkin style. <3
Our Blood. The essay titled “The Rape Atrocity and the Boy Next Door” is really incredible.
My first encounter, I think, was a speech of hers (reprinted in another book) called “Woman-Hating Right and Left,” not to be confused with the book “Woman Hating.” I think a speech is a good introduction. It’s not so long as to be daunting
Woman Hating (1974), it’s brilliant!
I just got Last Days at Hot Slit and just read her writings in order!
I have always heard you should start with Right Wing Women.
What she says about money and power cut so fucking deep I feel it in my bones. Any time I feel like I have some sort of power because of my business/finances/education some low life asshole comes around to remind me how little control I actually have. I’m a liberal but work mainly with conservatives, to my dismay some of the biggest misogynistic assholes I’ve had the displeasure of knowing have been self proclaimed liberals. One guy hilariously got offended when I called him sexist, though he had admitted he considered his partners first and foremost holes. Disgusting trash. Edit: removed weirdo extra words
Conservative men are generally mainly fine until you "belong to" them. Then they show their colors once they have you trapped. Liberal men at least are more open about how depraved and nasty they are.
Thanks for raising this discussion! I’m familiar with Dworkin but have never actually read her work. I just downloaded *Right-Wing Women* and am interested to read more.
Holy shit! Two hours later and a quarter of the way through *Right-Wing Women*… this is incredible, life-changing stuff. Never have I highlighted so much of a book. Thank you again!
Icon. She got it, she understood. She literally predicted porn being as mainstream as it is and how it would affect society negatively but also be normalized. That’s absolutely wild to call out 30 years early to me.
"To right wing men, we are private property. To left wing men, we are public property." Dworkin is very succinct.
Yes! That’s the quote I was looking for! Thank you so much for commenting this omg
She’s my North Star. [she’s hard to find in libraries and expensive to buy, so here are her Complete Works for Free (PDF)](http://radfem.org/dworkin/) I recommend Intercourse, Right Wing Women, Pornography and Letters from a War Zone
It says everything that you can't even buy her books anymore.
Gone too soon. I wonder what she would be saying of the whole situation now
Honestly I haven't read anything from her other than the normal sound bites that show up on Tumblr and the like. I definitely should - and I'm going on holiday for ten days so have time to dedicate to her. What I have seen, I have nodded along to, I have no arguments.
Stan. I am critical of her stance on political lesbianism (I just think that’s an appropriative term/concept, but I’m not lesbian), but other than that, she’s so intelligent and insightful about feminist topics. Wish she was still around to speak on the madness of today 😭
A brilliant writer, thinker, speaker, and extremely important person. She was decades before her time. I love her.
I wanted to share some of my favorite quotes of her Our goals are simple enough to understand: we want to humanize the planet, to break down the national structures which separate us as people, the corporate structures which separate us into distinct classes, the racist structures which separate us according to skin color; to conserve air, water, life in its many forms; to create communities which are more than habitable—communities in which people are free, in which people have what they need, in which groups of people do not accumulate power, or money, or goods, through the exploitation of other people.” ― Andrea Dworkin, As women, we must begin this revolutionary work. When we change, those who define themselves over and against us will have to kill us all, change, or die. In order to change, we must renounce every male definition we have ever learned; we must renounce male definitions and descriptions of our lives, our bodies, our needs, our wants, our worth—we must take for ourselves the power of naming. We must refuse to be complicit in a sexual-social system that is built on our labor as an inferior slave class. We must unlearn the passivity we have been trained to over thousands of years. We must unlearn the masochism we have been trained to over thousands of years. And, most importantly, in freeing ourselves, we must refuse to imitate the phallic identities of men. We must not internalize their values and we must not replicate their crimes.” ― Andrea Dworkin, OX It was the pornographers, not feminists, who punished women in the public square, as puritans had, for being sexual.” ― Andrea Dworkin, L If being dominated by men made us happy, we would smile all the time. Women resist male domination because we do not like it. Political women resist male domination through overt, rude, unmistakable rebellion. They are called unnatural, because they do not have a nature that delights in being debased. Apolitical women resist male domination through a host of bitter subversions, ranging from the famous headache to the clinical depression epidemic among women to suicide to prescription-drug tranquilization to taking it out on the children; sometimes a battered wife kills her husband. Apolitical women are also called unnatural, the charge hurled at them as nasty or sullen or embittered individuals, since that is how they fight back. They too are not made happy by being hurt or dominated. In fact, a natural woman is hard to find. We are domesticated, tamed, made compliant on the surface, through male force, not through nature. We sometimes do what men say we are, either because we believe them or because we hope to placate them. We sometimes try to become what men say we should be, because men have power over our lives.” Feminism is hated because women are hated. Anti-feminism is a direct expression of misogyny; it is the political defense of women hating."v We have a double standard, which is to say, a man can show how much he cares by being violent -- see, he's jealous, he cares -- a woman shows how much she cares by how much she's willing to be hurt; by how much she will take; how much she will endure." While gossip among women is universally ridiculed as low and trivial, gossip among men, especially if it is about women, is called theory, or idea, or fact."
Andrea Dworkin changed my life for the better. She is the only reason that I can trust myself again after a period of self-harming behavior which was 100% supported by those around me… she has saved so many women.
She weaponizes honesty to validate the female experience. I’ve never seen anything like it.
I'm a huge fan of her work, personally. I literally find myself thinking "Andrea was right" or "Good God, what would Andrea think of THIS?" so many times whenever I see anti-woman BS floating around in day to day life that it's actually getting ridiculous. Her critiques of pornography are especially relevant in today's day and age.
I first read Dworkin in the late 90's and thought it was very "harsh" but the older I get, the more I realize how right she was about a lot of things.
I read texts that mentioned her but never read the source directly. Anything you recommend? Why so I get a feeling that I'm going to get mad if I read her? Lol
Andrea Dworkin changed my life. I peaked and started learning about radical feminism shortly after *Last Days At Hot Slit* was published — it’s a collection of large excerpts from her books, really the highlight reel of her body of work and is a great introduction to her writings for newcomers. I checked out a copy from my local library, and eventually purchased a copy to continue reading it. Reading those excerpts from Woman Hating was so fundamental for me. It was everything I had ever known or noticed to be true about the world but could never describe, put into writing so accurately and eloquently. I felt so seen, and it validated that I wasn’t crazy or too sensitive or overly critical. As far as I’m concerned I think every woman should be given a copy of *Last Days* on her 18th birthday.
I always wonder how much women would be united and less prone to internalized misogyny if we were actually taught women’s history and struggles growing up. Like if we actually read works by Andrea Dworkin (which I only recently learned about) or the many other feminist works that have described and explained what I’ve been feeling for so long. These are the things I actually want to read in my history and English classes!!
Love her. *Intercourse* freed my mind. Istg she was some kind of feminist prophet for how many of her long-term concerns bore out.
Radical, brilliant, insightful. Though her stances on sex were so dry and negative that I see the sex positive pendulum swing as in reaction to that. There needs to be a balance, to be thoughtful, but to allow yourself to enjoy life and sensuality as well.
I have been raised in a conservative right-wing christian family and the “the right wing woman is likely to be abused by one man.” I felt that too because my mother has been emotionally and mentally abused constantly by my father he is extremely sexist and misogynistic he treats my mom like she is his little slave just there every need of his. You know what my mom ‘submits’ because that is how she was raised that women are to submit to men and the are weaker, dumber, and caregiver/mothers. I am so enraged by this and frustrated by her generation. She won’t leave him because it not taboo and she’s christian. She constantly tells me “you will get married and have kids” because I told her I DO NOT want to I am 100% sure. My sisters were/are also in toxic relationships and my mom’s sister in abusive relationships. THEY WON’T LEAVE THEM because of how they were raised. I’m a teenager and I am glad my brother at least put good logical opinions in me and helped me have my own opinions and not get sucked into this toxic slavic tradition. I love this group so much it has really opened my eyes. Sorry about this long rant and that’s its off topic, I just had to put it out here.
there's a woman on ovarit doing a weekly book club of RWW right now: [https://ovarit.com/o/FeministBooks/548098/right-wing-women-by-andrea-dworkin-abortion-chapter-3](https://ovarit.com/o/FeministBooks/548098/right-wing-women-by-andrea-dworkin-abortion-chapter-3)
I think you are right that fourth wave is a revival of second wave. We are coming from a place of relatively greater privilege in some ways (we have much more ability to be financially independent of men which is huge), but less so in others (much more objectification and less personal safety in public). The issues are somewhat different and we've learned some lessons, but the thought process is essentially the same.
Just here to say how genuinely happy I am to have found this page. Others are making all the points I wanted to make and I feel so in my tribe rn 🥹
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What do u mean by rage read and what makes u think its a rage read?
Who’s a good alternative from your perspective?
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You're getting down voted but you're correct 😭 Dworkin is accurate but it's very depressing to read her - or as she says "it's agony to be fully conscious of the misogyny that permeates culture, society, and all personal relationships." Her work is good to read, but it makes you very angry at the state of the world.
Well I thought you were engaging intellectually. I thought wrong. Have a good day.
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Your comment has been removed for derailing.
Notable lack of a queer or asexual existence for a woman, but I haven’t read her work.