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Andrea Dworkin, once called "Feminism's Malcolm X," has been worshipped, reviled, criticized, and analyzed-but never ignored. The power of her writing, the passion of her ideals, and the ferocity of her intellect have spurred the arguments and activism of two generations of feminists. Now the book that she's best known for-in which she provoked the argument that ultimately split apart the feminist movement-is being reissued for the young women and men of the twenty-first century.
Intercourse enraged as many readers as it inspired when it was first published in 1987. In it, Dworkin argues that in a male supremacist society, sex between men and women constitutes a central part of women's subordination to men. (This argument was quickly-and falsely-simplified to "all sex is rape" in the public arena, adding fire to Dworkin's already radical persona.)
In her introduction to this twentieth-anniversary edition of Intercourse, Ariel Levy, the author of Female Chauvinist Pigs, discusses the circumstances of Dworkin's untimely death in the spring of 2005, and the enormous impact of her life and work. Dworkin's argument, she points out, is the stickiest question of feminism: Can a woman fight the power when he shares her bed?
Thank you, Andrea DworkinReviewed by S. Schafer, 2009-08-22
The time was the early nineties. I was in a small liberal arts
college that was heavily steeped radical feminist thought. We had a
"Womyn's Alliance", eco-feminism was spoken there (which connected
the rape of the Earth to rape of women), and we had a sexual
offense policy that required verbal consent before any sexual
advances. Oh, and we had nude co-ed swimming as well, as if to
demonstrate just how highly evolved we were.
I was the cofounder of a pro-feminist men's group. A typical topic
we'd disucss: is it wrong to fantasize about women while
masturbating, and what to do about it? One of us had a girlfriend,
the rest of us were too shy to approach women. As well we should
have been - one female student invited me to her room and then
pulled a knife on me and accused me of sexually intimidating her
before I'd even stepped inside.
Dworkin's book helped set me free. It broke the spell.
First, Dworkin actually broke one of the foundational principles of
feminism in her book, that gender is socially constructed. This was
a silly belief to begin with, not based in fact and demonstrably
false, but appealing to those of us who saw masculinity as
inherently bad and wishing to change it. No, Dworkin said: women
have slits between their legs, and men want to invade these slits,
and this invasion of privacy is comparable to "atrocities that have
marked the twentieth century ranging from Auschwitz to the
Gulag".
Dworkin may have never said that sex is rape. She actually seems to
be saying something much stronger: sex is slavery. Sex is
colonialism. Sex is genocide. But it's not a social
construct.
Against this backdrop, I finally do get a girlfriend, and she wants
me to tie her up. She WANTS me to have sex with her. Is she a
damaged victim of the patriarchy's brainwashing? Actually, she
seems to know what she wants much more clearly than I do, and she
seems to be enjoying herself. And then later at this school, I meet
a woman who I had always thought was a lesbian but turns out to be
bisexual, and she's complaining that the sexual offense policy has
made the male students timid and she wishes they were more
aggressive.
Reality meets theory and theory loses. The female orgasm alone
refutes Dworkin's book. And to look at it more broadly, sexual
expression often involves the exchange of power in either
direction, and the willing surrender of power in the bedroom is not
violation.
Of course true subjugation of women occurs (genital mutilation,
etc), and so does rape, and both are very bad things. However, the
answer is NOT to pathologize our innate human drives, to try to
feminize men in general so they don't rape as much. The answer is
to confront the problem behavior.
[...]
2) Evolutionary biology teaches us that females also select males
(which is why male birds tend to have pretty plumage), and so women
are entirely complicit in our sexual make up. If women had selected
for "softer men", that's likely what we would have. But clearly,
women throughout the ages have selected for men who are stronger
and more aggressive than they are, who are good hunters and can
protect them while they are nursing babies. "This is nihilism, or
this is truth"
Product of a diseased mind.Reviewed by GangstaLawya, 2009-08-16
Andrea Rita Dworkin had a diseased mind. She rants and raves against nature. It is tantamount to arguing that we are enslaved by food because we have to eat it and calling for a revolution for food abstinence. Mankind cannot sustain itself without intercourse. She's also a hypocrite. She expresses hatred against men (well, non juwish men, actually, if you see her other books) while accusing them of chauvinism, while practicing an extreme form of feminist chauvinism. It reminds me of another juwish writer, Peter Singer of Princeton, who thinks it permissible to murder children post birth while weeping about the holocaust. What is it with that race that they go against everything that is normal and make hypocrisy their ethic? They murder Palestinians and practice nepotism in politics and business and then rant and rave about anti-semitism. Pretty demented stuff.
Great Book, Great AuthorReviewed by Sara G. Harden, 2007-12-13
Dworkin is a hero and she speaks the truth. Whether you like it or not its the truth and the truth hurts.
IntercourseReviewed by R. Swaney, 2007-06-06
After Betty Friedan, Andrea Dworkin seems to top the list as one of
the most referenced feminists. Her popularity did not prepare me in
the least for what exactly her book de jour is. That is,
Intercourse, the book coined as "saying" "all sex is rape," is
actually an intriguing literary criticism with a brief peppering of
art history. Any quotes I previously listed by Dworkin were taken
out of context in that it would only make sense that after Dworkin
is read a conversation must occur on art's ability (and lack of) to
reflect and represent life.
Dworkin's book begins at Tolstoy and moves through biographies of
he and his wife and his literary work The Kreutzer Sonata. The book
provides a feminist and specific sexual critique on how sexuality
is represented throughout classical, fictional pieces ranging from
Tennessee Williams to James Baldwin to Bram Stoker to the Bible and
how these works reflect the reality of the culture they were
produced in. This bundle of information is presented to the reader
and then weaved together in a luxurious manner to critique present
views on sexuality. (Absolutely fascinating to me as this is what I
did for my late modern art assignment last semester.)
Similar to Reading Lolita in Tehran, it is not necessary that
you've actually read any of these works. However, as with any
literary criticism it's a bit difficult to rebut or disagree with
it without reading the actual texts the critique is based on.
Overall, it's a brilliant piece of feminist literature that is
blunt and honest and thought provoking. Whether or not you agree
with everything (or anything) that Dworkin says, it's a thought
stimulating book that consistently questions the reader.
Ravings and Ramblings of an IdeologueReviewed by John Stanhope, 2007-05-26
Dworkin presumes to tell straight women what their experience of
sex is really like. But Dworkin never was a straight woman. When
she treats of political subjects, her sexual preference is
irrelevant; but when she starts describing experiences she has
never had, her preference is relevant and unqualifying.
This pathetic, raving tome is testimony to the power of the PC
movement in America. Only in a heavily propagandized atmosphere
could such a book be published and taken seriously. It will be out
of print very soon, and future generations coming across a rare
copy will laugh in amazement at what we printed back in the
Twentieth Century. Its illogic and flailing rage will be a negative
example to future women writers; that is the only good it will ever
do.
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