John Stoltenberg's and Cristan Williams' The Conversations Project: Some Final Thoughts

graphic is from here

Note: When I heard Prince died earlier on Thursday, what I recalled was how much Andrea Dworkin loved his work.

The message in the above graphic was never anything 

The Conversations Project endeavored to do. 

Yet they insisted they were a radical feminist group.

I may be writing more about this, but just wanted to update you that after four months of very engaged involvement, I've been purged without notice from The Conversations Project Facebook group started by John Stoltenberg and Cristan Williams, although John was largely absent.

Here are a few concluding thoughts:

1. The group was steadfastly anti-radical feminist, but couched this as
anti-T--F, as if those radical feminists who are against the liberalism and male supremacy in trans politics should and can be separated out from those who are or were not.

2. There was consistent refusal to admit that they were misusing and misunderstanding the early work of Andrea Dworkin while ignoring all of Dworkin's later work (like, at least 11/12ths of what Andrea wrote). The only passages of hers they ever referred to (a lot) were Dworkin's most liberal points in Woman Hating about multisexuality and androgyny. They refused to acknowledge Andrea's mid-70s discussion of androgyny was something that wasn't specific to her, and something that was of political interest during that decade, but never thereafter. (As was the case for so many white feminists in that period: Kate Millett, Shulamith Firestone, and Marge Piercy, for example.) They refused to consider why Andrea later rejected the last section of Woman Hating as politically and intellectually problematic. They clung to a few early ideas because dealing with anything else--such as pornography, prostitution, male privilege, male power, white and male supremacy, the process of subordinating female bodies such as through intercourse, battery, and rape--would have implicated some of their own politics as more overtly pro-patriarchal and white supremacist. The only snippets of Catharine MacKinnon's work they paid any attention to were from a grossly overly-steered interview Cristan did with Catharine. As if that's what MacKinnon's thirty plus years of radical feminist activism should be reduced to.

3. There were less than five pro-radical/pro-feminist people in the group. One person, a white transsexual (not transgender) woman, left the group only after about a week being there due to the incessant liberalism, anti-radicalism, and anti-feminism. Now there are no radical feminists in the group, although one member, Margo, who identifies as a white lesbian feminist, has consistently advocated for feminist values and sisterly approaches to dealing with the Turf War, and I respect her very much for that. And one man there has been consistently affirmative of radical feminist perspectives on gender and sex. When Margo posted things that called for respect and regard for all feminists, few to no members "liked" her comments. Cristan and John never "liked" them.

4. The group was so white (how white was it?) that the only posts made about women of color, or even more generally, people of color, were exploitive: John and one other member, early on, posted links to Navajo understandings of gender, not because he ever discussed or linked to how to end white colonialist-patriarchal genocide, but, disturbingly, just because such ideas might be useful to or of interest to whites.

5. The white members of the group (the great majority) refused to center women of color. They refused to center an examination of how their race, sex, and class privileges shaped their views, their values, and their agendas. Doing so was considered 'off topic'. Supporting white, class-privileged transwomen was always on topic. No one white and trans in the group ever made it a point to name how they had white privilege.

6. The dominant membership always positioned some radical feminists as THE enemy. They did not critique or focus on white men (as a structurally positioned enemy class). When white men were critiqued, it was without the same disdain and derision as they demonstrated for some white radical and lesbian feminists. (I call that blatant misogyny, anti-lesbianism, and anti-feminism.) They never, ever considered what trans-critical feminists were arguing against or for. It was always only viewed as "hatred" and "wanting us dead". As if white and male privilege and power--including theirs--doesn't result in the deaths of women across many differences.

7. The group was never committed, even vaguely, to an anti-capitalist, anti-patriarchal, or anti-colonialist agenda. Never. Ever. Ever. In this sense and others, the group was willfully and determinedly liberal yet being called liberal was considered an insult, for reasons which remain unclear. If it is so blatantly what you are and is all you want to be, own it and be proud of it, for god's sake. I conclude they valued the term "radical" because it allowed them to discuss the rare liberal points of Dworkin and MacKinnon as if those were radical. I think it gave them a kind of cache to make it seem as if they were distinguishable from their more honest liberal comrades. When I linked to useful ways to understand historical radicalism (as an actual political stance against institutionalised oppression), they rejected or ignored them. Sadly and outrageously, there was nothing about their perspective that was radical. Nothing. And their name revealed this from the start: no group that is seriously radical (that I've ever been aware of) makes a point of cramming the term into their title twice.

8. The group never considered what it is that causes the mass deaths of marginalised women of color. It was beyond their vision, their call to action, to do so. All they could come up with is transphobia. As if.

9. It became crystal clear to me that Cristan, and more surprisingly John, did not understood the traditional political meaning of "radical" when it comes to radical feminism. Again, John was largely absent as an active member, although he read a lot of the comments. But what became distressingly clear was that he could not articulate what Andrea's radical feminism meant or was. He was and is only concerned with prioritising the points of view of white and/or male-privileged people, over and against lesbian feminists. He refuses to see that Andrea never divorced 'woman' (the patriarchal construction) from what actually happens, oppressively, violatingly, demeaningly, to almost all female people from birth to death. Instead, he believes that what Andrea said about "multisexuality" in 1974, or this, from 1975, "it is not true that there are two sexes that are discrete and opposite, which are polar...", were in fact radical things to say. They were radical things to read--for him, a white man. What the group seemed to mean by 'radical' was allegedly post-modernly complex or intellectually ground-breaking. 'Radical', for him, only addressed acts of speech or ideas in writing, not political campaigns or efforts at social change. (For some discussion about Andrea's later abandonment of such 'radical ideas', please see the notes in a book called Without Apology: Andrea Dworkin's Art and Politics, by Cindy Jenefsky.) I repeatedly pointed out, if these are such 'essential' points of Andrea's, why do they never again appear in her work, over the next twenty years? Crickets chirped. This was a stubbornly anti-activist group. The only allegedly 'radical' action John engaged in was introducing young people to a liberal idea of multisexuality. Campaigns to end violence against women? Nope. How to organise against heteropatriarchy? Nope. Talking to college students about being colors in a color wheel: that's where it's at for John.

10. Also, members had no interest in supporting or working towards a truce between some white radical lesbian feminists and some white liberal trans activists. Only Margo, and the transsexual woman who left in disgust, explicitly welcomed this as a goal. The rest were intent on demonising some feminists (not just some of their views, but their personhood), while ignoring how their own political perspective was misogynistic, racist, and, yes, anti-trans.

The Conversations Project: The Radical Inclusivity of Radical Feminism should be titled:

"John and Cristan's Project: Radically Ignoring Radical Feminism".

Sad. And predictable. There's this old expression, 'When someone shows you who they are, believe them.' Yup. Everything I first experienced in that group in January proved to remain the case in April. Lesson learned.

"Andrea Dworkin's Woman Hating and the Priority of Sisterhood" -- a new guest post by Margo Schulter

image of quote of Dworkin's is from here

What follows was submitted as a comment to a recent post. It concerns a predominantly white-centered battle between some people identified as radical feminist, and some identified as transgender. But as its length would have required breaking it up into several sections, I decided I would post it here as a separate entry, with permission. Margo is white and has been directly involved in Radical and Lesbian Feminist community. — Julian

Andrea Dworkin's Woman Hating And 

The Priority Of Sisterhood

by Margo Schulter

As a transsexual Lesbian feminist who has been seeking to help build inclusive women's and Lesbian communities based on radical feminist values for 42 years, I can hardly consider the meaning of Andrea Dworkin's writings on intersex and transsexual people in Woman Hating (1974), and on "multisexuality" both there and in "The Root Cause" (1975), as a mere academic question. As a Second Waver myself, I will here try to offer a bit of perspective both on the current context in which these issues arise, and on why Andrea Dworkin might later have mixed feelings about some of what she said in Woman Hating.

Indeed, anyone acquainted with the achievements of Dr. Helen O'Connell, for example, would know that some of what Dworkin presented in 1974 is now outdated science; while other portions might be strongly dependent on the specific backdrop of 1960's counterculture, or open to dangerous misunderstandings that Dworkin might have preferred not to highlight when choosing the best passages for an online library of her writings. I'll address some of these points below, and argue that her views on intersex and trans people very likely do not fall in these categories, a conclusion I share with her close colleague and uncompromising radical feminist Catharine MacKinnon, as well as her partner John Stoltenberg.

This dialogue about Woman Hating grows in good part out of a courageous act of John Stoltenberg in 2013: analyzing and defending the ethics of Chelsea Manning in exposing war crimes of the colonialist patriarchy. http://thefeministwire.com/2013/10/the-postconventional-ethics-of-chelsea-manning/. In the process, because he correctly gendered Chelsea Manning, he attracted considerable negative attention from feminists who hold the view that trans women either are men and should be gendered accordingly, or at least are "males" or "nonfemales" with no place in the women's and Lesbian communities.

In response, Stoltenberg in 2014 wrote a piece for the Feminist Times theme of #GenderWeek, "Andrea was not transphobic." http://www.feministtimes.com/%E2%80%AA%E2%80%8Egenderweek-andrea-was-not-transphobic/. This was a powerful act of allyship with trans women in general and transsexual radical Lesbian feminists coming from Andrea's Second Wave roots in particular. And for some "true believers" that it is possible to be a zealous follower of the feminism of Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon and at the same time seek the systematic exclusion of transsexual women from feminist and Lesbian communities, Stoltenberg's arguments pointed to an anomaly. Given Dworkin's position that all transsexual people are in "primary emergency" (a condition she had earlier defined as applying, for example, to Africans and African-Americans in the Maafa, Indigenous people in the Turtle Island Holocaust starting soon after 1492, and Jews in the Shoah), how could a follower of Dworkin seek the general exclusion or marginalization of transsexual women as a subgroup of the sex class female?

What I would emphasize is that accepting what Dworkin said in 1974 and 1975 about intersex and transsexual people and "multisexuality" leaves open a vast range of questions about how feminists in 2016 should approach real differences in experiences and vulnerabilities among women at many intersections of oppression. Thus private groups and spaces for either women who are Assigned Female At Birth (AFAB) or women who are trans may sometimes serve valuable purposes. But I do see Dworkin's views as incompatible not only with a general rejection or exclusion of transsexual women from the women's and Lesbian communities, but equally with the attitude of some trans women who distrust or devalue all women who are AFAB, often based on a supposed "cis/trans" binary, which I find as misleading as the sex and gender binaries that Dworkin challenged. If I ask for inclusion and solidarity as a Lesbian woman who enjoyed some male privilege until I transitioned at age 22, as well as a survivor of trans oppression, I surely must stand shoulder to shoulder in solidarity with women who have never enjoyed male privilege and are survivors of AFAB socialization. As Audre Lorde and other Women of Color have especially shown, sisterhood is a multidimensional reality: but surely it must be a two-way street on the elementary level that I acknowledge the 99% and more of my sisters in the female sex class who have indeed survived AFAB socialization, and have experienced things I cannot imagine. They are my older sisters, not my "cis oppressors"; rather, the patriarchy is our common oppressor.

Here I should also point to something that dyadic (nonintersex) people like Andrea Dworkin and Janice Raymond, and also on a humbler level myself, got wrong at least by omission in the 1970's: the vital intersex issue of childhood medical abuse. The practice of Intersex Genital Mutilation (IGM), optional surgery performed on nonconsenting infants and children to bring them into conformity with the patriarchal sex binary and its heteronormative obsession with the penetrative sexual act that Andrea Dworkin would address in Intercourse (1987), should have attracted the passionate condemnation of all feminists for a number of reasons. In reality, however, it only happened when intersex people themselves very visibly spoke out, starting in the mid-1990's. Yet Woman Hating beautifully expresses some of the feminist values fulfilled by the militant intersex movement starting some two decades later, with IGM still very much an issue in many parts of the world.

As you note, Julian, Andrea Dworkin later indicated her own misgivings with some portions of Woman Hating. Should we take this to include the passages on intersex and transsexual people? Here I would suggest a reasoned approach in weighing the probabilities of what she may have intended.

First, as I mentioned, there are statements she made or cited in 1974 that we now know to be wrong in ways very, very, important for Lesbian feminists and feminists in general, as with this: "the clitoris is a vestigial penis."

In fact, as Dr. Helen O'Connell of Australia has shown in paradigm-changing research, the clitoris is far larger and more complex than the external and visible portion homologous to the glans penis: that is only, as the African-American feminist Sophia Wallace puts it, "the tip of the iceberg" of the internal clitoris, including the shaft, the crura or legs, and the bulbs (formerly called "vestibular bulbs"). In short, the clitoris overall is about the same size as the penis, except that it is mostly internalized — and yet more richly innervated (supplied with nerves) and intricate! Thus the human phalloclitoris (as it is often termed in the intersex community) or virga (a medieval Latin term that can apply to clitoris or penis, and I would propose also the range of intermediate forms), differs along the female-male continuum not so much in size as in the degree of internalization or externalization. Here Woman Hating needs an update which I am sure that Dworkin would support, whether or not she was aware of this issue when she chose for other portions of her work to have priority in an online archive.

She might have yet more serious concerns about portions of her chapter on "multisexuality" that addressed the incest taboo, for example, or "bestiality." Here I agree with at least one other commentator that from a truly radical perspective that values human empathy and respectful touch, the "erotic" may embrace many forms of affection that the patriarchal mindset simply cannot comprehend. But such words, in the context of a culture where physical and sexual child abuse are rife, may have later struck her as, to say the least, inapposite. She may have realized that she had looked too far ahead of her times in a way which might endanger those she most wanted to protect: abused women and children. And I will add my conviction that her concern in this regard embraces not only the vast majority of women and girls who are AFAB, but also trans women subject to rape and other crimes of violence.

In contrast, her words about intersex and transsexual people do not pose a similar risk. As long as transsexual Lesbian feminists and other transsexual women who participate in feminist groups behave as sisters, understand that women who have survived AFAB socialization are in this sense our seniors, and respect the basic rule of enthusiastic consent and noncoercion that no Lesbian owes sex to any other Lesbian, regardless of birth assignment, there should be no insoluble problems. And members of feminist communities who do not meet these expectations, regardless of birth assignment, can and should be asked to leave.

Julian, you also raise a point where there has been a rather heated dialectic of conflict, as I might say, but a ready synthesis is available. You are absolutely right that it is implicit in Dworkin that the vast majority of women are AFAB, and are indeed oppressed under the brutal patriarchal hierarchy of gender because of their actual or perceived reproductive capabilities — which, under patriarchy, become vulnerabilities.

Thus transsexual women who are good feminists recognize that in that sense, within the female sex class we are the exception rather than the rule, which makes it all the more important for us to show sex-class consciousness and solidarity by supporting women's reproductive rights as a women's issue and feminist issue. What hurts our sisters, hurts ourselves.

Although Andrea does not address the details of how transsexual women might interact with other women in the feminist movement, a discussion early in Woman Hating about "primary emergency" indicates that women who have special oppressions — and, for me, AFAB oppression as well as trans or intersex oppression amply qualifies here — have a responsibility also to look to the general experience and interests of the female sex class. That means at once recognizing, for example, that negative menstrual stereotypes and insulting language demean all women, include those of us who never ourselves have periods, and that discussions of menstruation and allied health concerns should be welcome in inclusive women's groups; and also that women who share the experience of menstruation may sometimes want to have rituals of a kind led by Z Budapest for themselves only.

From this perspective of interpreting Andrea's views from 1974 in an inclusive and flexible way, John Stoltenberg's arguments for the spirit of inclusion are powerfully supported by Catharine MacKinnon, whose opposition to pornography and what she terms prostitution and I term sexage work (from the French sexage, a feminist concept meaning sex-based servitude or slavery) is well known. She speaks best for herself: http://radfem.transadvocate.com/sex-gender-and-sexuality-an-interview-with-catharine-a-mackinnon_n_433

As a Second Wave feminist, I would add that recognizing a continuum of physical sex (with intersex people representing natural variations rather than pathological cases) and of what we perceive under patriarchy as gender identities and styles of gender expression, in no way makes the gender hierarchy of patriarchy less real or oppressive! Andrea shows that we can use common sense and hirstorical experience to recognize both what is brutally "real" under patriarchy, and what is ultimately "true" about feminist possibilities, without any need for "postmodernism." Kate Millett and Andrea Dworkin had it right: while "gender identity" or "sex identity" develops in the first years of life in a given social context as a basic reality for an individual, transsexual or otherwise, the patriarchal system of gender is not just a "performance," or an even playing field with equally valid "choices." Being raped, or facing an unwanted pregnancy, is not just a theatrical scene; the playing field of gender roles and expressions under patriarchy is not level ground, but has a twisted topology of threatened and too often realized violence. This violence, as it affects women who are AFAB, transsexual, and/or intersex, is something that Woman Hating calls on all women to oppose in common sisterhood.

The way I like to phrase an inclusive feminist approach is this: "The rule does not exclude the exceptions, and neither do the exceptions exclude the rule." Thus the vast majority of women are AFAB, and a large portion of this majority face the risk of unwanted pregnancy — facts essential in understanding the origins and nature of patriarchy as enforced reproductive labor and slavery, and the need of all women, including intersex and transsexual women, to unite in order to liberate our sex class. The presence of a relatively few acculturated transsexual women in the feminist and Lesbian communities need in no way decenter the concerns of women who are AFAB, and good feminist process will maintain balance. Such process, of course, depends on the acknowledgment of privileges and immunities, including, for those of us who are transsexual women, past male privilege and also immunity from childhood AFAB socialization.

A Second Wave tradition which I strongly support is the principle that each affinity group within the greater feminist and Lesbian communities can set its own boundaries. Thus a group like the Women's Liberation Front (WoLF) has every right to define itself as AFAB only. In fact, I admire many of the declared rules and guidelines of this group on conduct both online and in the larger world, and would see an effort to build similar groups and communities including women regardless of birth assignment as a sisterly response. Thus WoLF is free to set its own boundaries, and other affinity groups are free to do the same. Radical feminism is large enough to have room for both types of groups and private spaces.

In short, as I hope to have suggested by this point, living by Andrea Dworkin's radical feminist values as expressed in Woman Hating is a high challenge for transsexual women as well as women who are AFAB, including intersex women regardless of birth assignment. It means recognizing the material reality of women's reproductive slavery, and the psychological oppression of AFAB socialization, that we too need to center early and often. In short, if we identify as women, we must identify with women, so that sisterhood overcomes the illusory "cis/trans" binary. Sisterhood first and foremost! That seems to me implicit in everything that Andrea Dworkin has written.

Is John Stoltenberg Wrong? On Andrea Dworkin, Sex Difference, and Gender Dominance

image of book cover is from here

What follows seeks a careful, thoughtful read of Andrea Dworkin's early writings. I hope to make two points:

1. Andrea's view of 'woman' was directly and politically tied to the female body—unambiguously.
2. John Stoltenberg decontextualises or overvalues key points in some of her early work, points she later abandoned or came to understand as politically problematic. In the process, the core of her work is ignored.

In John's article, "Andrea Dworkin was not Transphobic", he stated that her early views were profound and life-changing for him. From "Andrea Was Not Transphobic" at Feminist Times:

One passage in Woman Hating changed my life forever:

“The discovery is, of course, that “man” and “woman” are fictions, caricatures, cultural constructs. As models they are reductive, totalitarian, inappropriate to human becoming. As roles they are static, demeaning to the female, dead-ended for male and female both.”

That is the opening of the last chapter of the book, chapter 9: "Androgyny: Androgyny, Fucking, and Community." Also from that chapter, page 175:

... The first question then is: What of biology? There are, after all, men and women. They are different, demonstrably so. We are each of one sex or the other. If there are two discrete biological sexes, then it is not hard to argue that there are two discrete modes of human behavior, sex-related, sex-determined. One might argue for a liberalization of sex-based roles, but one cannot justifiably argue for their total redefinition.  

Hormone and chromosome research, attempts to develop new means of human reproduction (life created in, or considerably supported by, the scientist’s laboratory), work with transsexuals, and studies of formation of gender identity in children provide basic information which challenges the notion that there are two discrete biological sexes. That information threatens to transform the traditional biology of sex difference into the radical biology of sex similarity. That is not to say that there is one sex, but that there are many. 

The issue, in part, is this matter of whether there are "two discrete biological sexes". Beginning on page 176, she offers the following evidence of the two not being "discrete", or polar opposites, biologically:

The words “male” and “female, ” “man” and “woman, ” are used only because as yet there are no others. 

1. Men and women have the same basic body structure. Both have both male and female genitals —the clitoris is a vestigial penis, the prostate gland is most probably a vestigial womb. ... 

2. Until the 7th week of fetal development both sexes have precisely the same external genitalia. Basically, the development of sex organs and ducts is the same for males and females and the same two sets of ducts develop in both.  

3. The gonads cannot be said to be entirely male or female. Dr. Mary Jane Sherfey writes: In their somatic organization, the gonads always retain a greater or lesser amount of the opposite-sex tissue which remains functional throughout life. 

4. Chromosomal sex is not necessarily the visible sex of the individual. It happens that a person of one chromosomal sex develops the gonads of the other sex. Gonadal sex and chromosomal sex can be in direct contradiction.  

5. Chromosomal sex is not only XX or XY. There are other chromosomal formations, and not much is known about them or what they signify.  

6. A person can have the gonads of one sex, and the secondary sexual characteristics of the other sex.  

7. Men and women both produce male and female hormones. The amounts and proportions vary greatly, and there is no way to determine biological maleness or femaleness from hormone count.  

8. One hormone can be transformed by the body into its “opposite, ” male into female, female into male.  

9. It is now thought that the male hormone determines the sex drive in both men and women. 

10. The female hormone (progesterone) can have a masculinizing effect. Dr. Sherfey writes:

We may have difficulty conceiving it, but natural selection has no difficulty using sexually heterotypic structures for homotypic purposes. For example, progesterone is the “pregnancy hormone” essential for menstruation and the prolonged pregnancy. It is as uniquely a “female” hormone as one can be. Yet progesterone possesses strong androgenic properties. It may be used to masculinize female embryos. In 1960, Jones (27, 63) demonstrated that progesterone given to human mothers early in pregnancy to prevent threatened miscarriages. . . severely masculinized a female fetus.

11. Visible sex differences are not discrete. There are men with tiny cocks, women with large clits. There are men with highly developed breasts, women with almost no breast development. There are men with wide hips, women with no noticeable hip development. There are men with virtually no body hair, women with much body hair. There are men with high voices, women with low voices. There are men with no facial hair, women who have beards and mustaches.  

12. Height and weight differences between men and women are not discrete. Muscle structures are not discrete. We know the despair of the tall, muscular woman who does not fit the female stereotype; we know also the despair of the small, delicate man who does not fit the male stereotype. 

13. There is compelling cross-cultural evidence that muscle strength and development are culturally determined. There are cultures in which there are no great differences in somatotype of men and women...

14. There are hermaphrodites in nature. Robert T. Francoeur, in Utopian Motherhood: New Trends in Human Reproduction, admits: The medical profession and experimental biologists have always been very skeptical about the existence of functional hermaphrodites among the higher animals and man, though the earthworm, the sea hare, and other lower animals do combine both sexes in the same individual.

We are not being told two sexes don't exist, in nature or otherwise; we are being told they don't exist 'discretely'. Any casual observations of humans around the world, and even within one culture or region, bears that out: females and males are not "opposites" or entirely physically different kinds of people. Due to that, she concludes, "[w]e are justified in making a radical new formulation of the nature of human sexuality. We are, clearly, a multisexed species which has its sexuality spread along a vast fluid continuum where the elements called male and female are not discrete."

This is a crucial point for John in his work. The insight also informs the work of others, many of whom are neither radical nor feminist.

Gender, sex, and sexuality as "a vast fluid continuum" is pursued by many white sexual Liberals and Queer Theorists in the following decades. I describe them as Liberals because, unless exceptionally, they are not engaged in efforts to eradicate colonialist patriarchy from the roots up. And too often they seek to distance themselves from those who do. A problem occurs when focus on sexual fluidity or continuums becomes the primary work, not in collaboration or coalition with radical and feminist activists.

Achieving greater dignity and visibility to those who are intersex or transsexual is a worthwhile endeavor—life saving for some. But seeking visibility in an unchallenged status quo was not the objective, even in this early work of Andrea's. We are being led to consider the following:

"...the concrete implications of multisexuality as we find it articulated in both androgynous mythology and biology necessitate the total redefinition of scenarios of proper human sexual behavior and pragmatic forms of human community. If human beings are multisexed, then all forms of sexual interaction which are directly rooted in the multisexual nature of people must be part of the fabric of human life, accepted into the lexicon of human possibility, integrated into the forms of human community. By redefining human sexuality, or by defining it correctly, we can transform human relationship and the institutions which seek to control that relationship. Sex as the power dynamic between men and women, its primary form sadomasochism, is what we know now. Sex as community between humans, our shared humanity, is the world we must build." 

Isolated from her core message, some of the above can come across as post-modern and Liberal Queer Theory-making. It is important to note, the problem with post-modernism isn't its discursive critique of colonialist patriarchal modernism; it is its belief that changes in language adequately lead to sufficient changes in culture, and therefore society. The problem with Liberalism isn't that it necessarily refuses Radicalism. The problem is that people are seduced by speaking and writing projects that don't disturb the major power-brokers of society. And, it is easier to target radical activists than be accountable to them. It is also pro-hegemonic to ignore those who are most harmed by systems of exploitation and violence, effectively protecting and preserving the status quo.

People, usually those atop various political hierarchies, are far too satisfied to avoid and ignore the most heinous realities: they can also better afford to do so. I know of no one who occupies various positions at the bottom of several political hierarchies who are Liberal or who believe that only reforming colonialist patriarchy is sufficient to save their lives.

Yet, Liberals can and have worked with Radicals; the problem is that because Liberals don't actively pursue radical transformation, they instead attack Radicals and their theories and agendas, often as being illiberal and even conservative. To the extent that people seeking to reform the status quo only endeavor to create more text, more identities, or more laws within patriarchy, they are liberal and a problematic form of post-modern. Academic discourse aside, it means they are invested, often without intent and usually without awareness, in the mass subordination, enslavement, and murder of women and girls.

According to Andrea, "redefining human sexuality", or "defining it correctly" does not, by itself, leave us with something other than "the power dynamic between men and women, its primary form sadomasochism", unless we build it. Dworkin, in this abandoned early theory, is calling for a more complex, non-hierarchical mythology of gender and sex as part of an overall program of dismantling patriarchy. It is not an end unto itself. The goal is not "more genders". The goal is the end of gender-as-hierarchy, and all expressions of male supremacist violence. So if we don't get there by changing terms and sexual categories, how do we?

"We must destroy the very structure of culture as we know it, its art, its churches, its laws." — Andrea Dworkin, "The Rape Atrocity and the Boy Next Door", page 48, Our Blood.

The project isn't primarily discursive (one of creating new theory) or one of expanding identities (as liberal genderqueer proponents do). It is eradicating male supremacist violence, including as it expresses itself through culture, art, religion, and laws.

To appreciate the implications of anything she wrote, one must face this fact:

Andrea's writing was a radical and feminist political act; she wrote as an activist, building revolution into her prose and nonfiction. She wanted patriarchy dead as soon as possible, accomplished by ending all forms of sexual violence against women and girls—against their spirits and minds, and against their female bodies. This, more than anything else, was what I believe Andrea wanted to see achieved.

We must also keep this in mind. With Nikki Craft alone, over a period of years, Andrea carefully selected the contents of the Andrea Dworkin Online Library. The section from Woman Hating now being promoted by John as, according to him, dis-identifying womanhood with femaleness, was not chosen by Andrea as something she wanted to have preserved in cyberspace. What she did choose was a portion of part 2, "The Pornography" as an introduction to a full chapter called "Woman as Victim: Story of O", pp. 53-63, from Woman Hating, copyright © 1974 by Andrea Dworkin.

From "The Pornography":

Pornography, like fairy tale, tells us who we are. It is the structure of male and female mind, the content of our shared erotic identity, the map of each inch and mile of our oppression and despair. Here we move beyond childhood terror. Here the fear is clammy and real, and rightly so. Here we are compelled to ask the real questions: why are we defined in these ways, and how can we bear it?

Now, the opening paragraph from "Woman as Victim: Story of O": 

The Story of O, by Pauline Reage, incorporates, along with all literary pornography, principles and characters already isolated in my discussion of children's fairy tales. The female as a figure of innocence and evil enters the adult world—the brutal world of genitalia. The female manifests in her adult form—cunt. She emerges defined by the hole between her legs. In addition, Story of O is more than simple pornography. It claims to define epistemologically what a woman is, what she needs, her processes of thinking and feeling, her proper place. It links men and women in an erotic dance of some magnitude: the sado-masochistic complexion of O is not trivial—it is formulated as a cosmic principle which articulates, absolutely, the feminine.

What is epistemically existent is the colossal and subordinating violence done to women's female bodies by men. This, not the separation of female bodies from women's lives, is what Andrea exposed.

Far less frequently quoted than some of what is above, is this: Andrea states, "I think there are a lot of things really wrong with the last chapter of Woman Hating." See, Without Apology: Andrea Dworkin's Art and Politics, by Cindy Jenefsky (1998). The quote is from page 139, in her notes to chapter 3. Her point is not thoroughly discussed so we do not know all of what she meant.

John's article continues:

That belief in the possibility of life beyond gender was a core of both her work and mine. A speech I gave within a few months after our meeting was published as Refusing to Be a Man (the title I gave my first book). In a speech of Andrea’s written about a year later she drew a distinction between reality and truth in order to say that: 

“while the system of gender polarity is real, it is not true…. [T]he system based on this polar model of existence is absolutely real; but the model itself is not true. We are living imprisoned inside a pernicious delusion, a delusion on which all reality as we know it is predicated.”

As already indicated, I do not believe "life beyond gender", per se, was "a core" of her work. The distinction may appear subtle, but here, John is conflating his own literary and political project with hers, implying a mutually reinforcing intellectual pursuit and activist agenda. We are deliberately told the chronology of their early writings. But the thing is, he has not strayed from his earliest points. She moved on.

The speech he links to above appears as chapter 9 in Our Blood, "The Root Cause". I shall excerpt a substantial portion of the speech, here:

One basic principle of reality, universally believed and adhered to with a vengeance, is that there are two sexes, man and woman, and that these sexes are not only distinct from each other, but are opposite. The model often used to describe the nature of these two sexes is that of magnetic poles. The male sex is likened to the positive pole, and the female sex is likened to the negative pole. Brought into proximity with each other, the magnetic fields of these two sexes are supposed to interact, locking the two poles together into a perfect whole. Needless to say, two like poles brought into proximity are supposed to repel each other. 

The male sex, in keeping with its positive designation, has positive qualities; and the female sex, in keeping with its negative designation, does not have any of the positive qualities attributed to the male sex. For instance, according to this model, men are active, strong, and courageous; and women are passive, weak, and fearful. In other words, whatever men are, women are not; whatever men can do, women cannot do; whatever capacities men have, women do not have. Man is the positive and woman is his negative.
... 

This diseased view of woman as the negative of man, "female by virtue of a certain lack of qualities," infects the whole of culture. It is the cancer in the gut of every political and economic system, of every social institution. It is the rot which spoils all human relationships, infests all human psychological reality, and destroys the very fiber of human identity.

This pathological view of female negativity has been enforced on our flesh for thousands of years. The savage mutilation of the female body, undertaken to distinguish us absolutely from men, has occurred on a massive scale.

Here we see the core theme of her work, well reiterated, consistent with the quote above from "The Rape Atrocity". "The diseased view" is not that woman has a female body. "The pathological view" is not that women are female. The sociopathology is the uses and abuses to which women's female bodies are put, in patriarchal cultural mythology and in hard-core practice.

Advocating the addition of other genders, while leaving unchallenged the tyrannical sexual hierarchy that is globalised, is not a revolutionary effort. It is liberal to the core. The big mistake is thinking Dworkin sought to separate women's resistance to patriarchy from being female, or men's efforts to transform themselves from being male. What Andrea sought was the end of any association, presented to us as both truth and reality, of being a woman with being feminine and submissive, or being a man with being masculine and predatory.

Addendum:

Many people I know, respect, and love are intersex, non-binary, or transsexual. There is no unspoken claim here by me that Andrea was anti-transsexual or that she denied the existence of intersex people. She was an astoundingly empathic and compassionate human being, very much against cruel stereotyping and hatred of any group systematically targeted for violence and socially marginalised by the powerful. She wrote in Woman Hating, page 182:

...whatever we choose to make out of the data of what is frequently called Intersex, it is clear that sex determination is not always clearcut and simple. Dr. John Money of Johns Hopkins University has basically isolated these six aspects of sex identity: 

1. Genetic or nuclear sexuality as revealed by indicators like the sex-chromatin or Barr-body, a full chromosomal count and the leucocytic drumstick;

2. Hormonal sexuality which results from a balance that is predominantly androgenic or estrogenic; 

3. Gonadal sexuality which may be clearly ovarian or testicular, but occasionally also mixed; 

4. Internal sexuality as disclosed in the structure of the internal reproductive system; 

5. External genital sexuality as revealed in the external anatomy, and finally; 

6. Psychosexual development which through the external forces of rearing and social conditioning along with the individual's response to these factors directs the development of a personality which is by nature sexual. 

At this point, Dr. Money is more commonly known to have been a child abuser and pro-predation.

And from page 186:

Transsexuality  

How can I really care if we win “the Revolution”? Either way, any way, there will be no place for me. A transsexual friend, in a conversation 

Transsexuality is currently considered a gender disorder, that is, a person learns a gender role which contradicts his/her visible sex. It is a “disease” with a cure: a sex-change operation will change the person’s visible sex and make it consonant with the person’s felt identity.  

Since we know very little about sex identity, and since psychiatrists are committed to the propagation of the cultural structure as it is, it would be premature and not very intelligent to accept the psychiatric judgment that transsexuality is caused by faulty socialization. More probably transsexuality is caused by a faulty society. Transsexuality can be defined as one particular formation of our general multisexuality which is unable to achieve its natural development because of extremely adverse social conditions.  

There is no doubt that in the culture of male-female discreteness, transsexuality is a disaster for the individual transsexual. Every transsexual, white, black, man, woman, rich, poor, is in a state of primary emergency (see p. 185) as a transsexual. There are 3 crucial points here. One, every transsexual has the right to survival on his/her own terms. That means that every transsexual is entitled to a sex-change operation, and it should be provided by the community as one of its functions. This is an emergency measure for an emergency condition. Two, by changing our premises about men and women, role-playing, and polarity, the social situation of transsexuals will be transformed, and transsexuals will be integrated into community, no longer persecuted and despised. Three, community built on androgynous identity will mean the end of transsexuality as we know it. Either the transsexual will be able to expand his/her sexuality into a fluid androgyny, or, as roles disappear, the phenomenon of transsexuality will disappear and that energy will be transformed into new modes of sexual identity and behavior.

She goes on to discuss Transvestism, Bestiality, and Incest, although not in the pro-predation, pro-perpetration ways that MRAs claim. But it should be quite clear that what she proposes here was later rejected for several reasons, in part because it is victim-ignoring, politically naive, and speculative relative to her later work. For example, this, from page 180 of Woman Hating:

It is interesting here to speculate on the perceptions of men like Lionel Tiger (Men in Groups) who in effect project human cultural patterns of dominance and submission on the animal world. For instance, Dr. Sherfey tells us that “In many primate species, the females would be diagnosed hermaphrodites if they were human” (Italics hers.) Most probably, we often simply project our own culturally determined modes of acting and perceiving onto other animals—we effectively screen information that would challenge the notions of male and female which are holy to us. In that case, a bias toward androgyny (instead of the current bias toward polarity) would give us significantly different scenarios of animal behavior.

Nothing too dangerous happens to non-human animals if we don't bother to notice that female and male are not the only presentations of sexed being. A lot happens to them, and to us, if we fail to challenge the ways female human beings across their lifetimes, as girls and as women, are harassed, threatened, beaten, raped, and murdered, precisely for being female women. Colonialist patriarchy is a core problem in the West and beyond. Girls across the globe are imperiled right now, but more generations of girls will continue to be if we ignore the bulk of what Andrea so truthfully described in her work across the 1980s and until her death, about entirely unspeculative gendered atrocities.

Andrea Dworkin: Ten Years Gone (April 9, 2005 - 2015)

image of Andrea's book covers is from here

Ten years ago Nikki Craft got the news and delivered it to me, so sadly.

Andrea died.

There was shock. Disbelief. Questions. Grief.

It was not only hard to believe, it also raised a new fear about the future: losing such a pivotal feminist figure in the fight against sexual violence, giving voice to her and other women's past and present, she refused to call male supremacist violence anything other than that. Who would continue to name it and speak against it with such literary passion?

What has happened in the last ten years is the continued proliferation of pornography and other systems of sexual exploitation and abuse: pimping, brothel-keeping, and trafficking, for example. Hand-held devices mean people of many ages have visual access to raped children and adults, literally at one's fingertips.

Genocides continue against Indigenous people around the world.

There is more slavery than ever.

Corporate greed continues to destroy the Earth, increasingly swiftly.

The Global North and West continues to colonise, exploit, and pillage the Global South and East.

50 years after Bloody Sunday, white male supremacist atrocities against Black and Brown people is still endemic and normal in the U.S.; the only difference may be some level of recognition and disgust by fellow whites to the ritual harassment and mass murder of Black people by well-organized racist white police forces.

*                    *                    *

April 10th, 2005, Nikki and I got to work immediately--it helped with the grief--to create a website with a memorial page, where people could share their grief, memories, and how their lives were affected constructively by Andrea and her writing: http://www.andreadworkin.net/messages/

I got to know her writing starting in my early twenties, like many of my generation. I consumed her essays, books, wanting to read anything and everything she ever wrote. She shifted my perspective on so many issues or gave political meaning to experiences I hadn't understood.

She affected the trajectory of my activism.

I want to focus, today, on one effect, one not necessarily highlighted when people talk about her.

What I most learned from Andrea is the necessity of facing painful truths denied by the status quo. And challenging the status quo to stop reinforcing and fueling horror. Of course for that to happen, my society would have to radically change: all white and male supremacist institutions would have to be transformed; violent hierarchies dissolved; systemic exploitation, including from sex and work, deconstructed.

What I learned was to make a perspective into something flexible. never absolute; to always challenge myself to stay open to voices of people more marginalised, more silenced. And to use what I know to inform activism in all spheres of my life.

The purpose of theory is to clarify the world in which we live, how it works, why things happen as they do. The purpose of theory is understanding. Understanding is energizing. It energizes to action. When theory becomes an impediment to action, it is time to discard the theory and return naked, that is, without theory, to the world of reality. People become slaves to theory because people are used to meeting expectations they have not originated—to doing what they are told, to having everything mapped out, to having reality prepackaged. People can have an antiauthoritarian intention and yet function in a way totally consonant with the demands of authority. The deepest struggle is to root out of us and the institutions in which we participate the requirement that we slavishly conform. But an adherence to ideology, to any ideology, can give us the grand illusion of freedom when in fact we are being manipulated and used by those whom the theory serves. The struggle for freedom has to be a struggle toward integrity defined in every possible sphere of reality—sexual integrity, economic integrity, psychological integrity, integrity of expression, integrity of faith and loyalty and heart. Anything that shortcuts us away from viewing integrity as an essential goal or anything that diverts our attention from integrity as a revolutionary value serves only to reinforce the authoritarian values of the world in which we live.  —  Andrea Dworkin, Letters from a War Zone, U.S. edition, pages 127-128 [Quote added 1/8/2016]

What I have done in the last ten years is decenter whiteness from my political perspective and from how I comprehend and emotionally experience the world. What I have found is that any effort to do this is met with aggressive resistance just as any challenge to male supremacy is met with hostility.

What I have continued to examine is the relationship and degree of overlap between white and male supremacy. And to see intersectionality as having to do with multiple positions of marginalisation and powerlessness, beyond identity.

I believe the only way through the atrocities--to end them--is to center the lives and voices of people who virtually never make it into corporate media. To center the forms of resistance and social/economic/political transformation invisibilised people have been employing for decades and centuries. To not assume any expression of whiteness or maleness is universal, transcultural, or ahistorical, even while some forms of oppression have existed for millennia; whenever I have seen this done, it both recenters and redenies the ways whiteness permeates everything as male power permeates everything: differently, similarly, and in ways that shift and transmute.

To honor her, I will continue to listen, learn, remember, and do my work in collaboration with people who don't have the unearned privileges I too often take for granted.

To view the quote more easily, you may click here.

April 9, 2014: The 9th Anniversary of Andrea Dworkin's Death

image is from here

It is good to see some of Andrea's work being regarded as important. It doesn't happen nearly enough.

It is 2014. A twelve-year-old boy rapes his 7-year-old sister after watching hardcore pornography. Should this be a feminist issue? Judging by the lack of any mainstream feminist response, no. Perhaps once it would have been, but not today. 

We’ve grown too worldly wise for moral panic. No longer are feminists shouty, sexless beings, piecing together a politics based on exception, exaggeration and fear. Terrible things happen to women and girls but when it comes to blame (such an awful word!) we are circumspect. Men rape women, boys rape girls, but it’s nothing to do with how we represent sex. It’s nothing to do with the stories we tell our children. Hatred of women just is.

For the rest of the article, please see here:

http://www.feministtimes.com/dworkin-right-about-porn/

I hope that Andrea's work continues to inspire radical activism against all forms of white male supremacy.

Yom HaShoah and The Question of Memory: Whose memory matters?

image is from here

In response to visiting the U.S. [Nazi] Holocaust Memorial Museum, white Western Jewish feminist Andrea Dworkin wrote, The Unremembered: Searching for Women at the Holocaust Memorial Museum.
 

When atrocity happens to women, men often don't know about it even while men do what it is men don't remember. When I remember what happened to the Jews of Europe in the early to middle part of the last century, I wonder how it can be that U.S. white Jews with class privilege can now so easily overlook the contemporary genocide Indigenous people in North America and beyond. I know how it can be. We say "we didn't know", the same excuse used by white gentile Germans. Utter this phrase to Jews of European descent with regard to how the Nazi Holocaust (HaShoah) could occur, to people who lost family in WWII in concentration camps, and you'll likely be met with an expression of exasperation and anger. Appropriately. When I attempt to bring the topic of white's genocide against Native Americans, I am met with a look of disbelief or incomprehension. What kind of genocide do you mean?

The kind that results in the organised, systematic destruction of a people, I might say. The kind that causes the dissolution of culture, sickness, and mass death. Is the presence of genocide only to be measured against the particularly heinous methods used by Nazis in Europe? If there are no gas chambers and ovens, but there is virulent colonialism and racism, is a genocide not occurring? 

Please see: Ward Churchill Speaks: On Colonialism as Genocide from Maximilian Forte on Vimeo.

I won't get too far into what the Israeli military is doing to Palestinian people, not because I think it unworthy of attention, but because my Jewishness is not connected to Israel. I have a homeland called New York City. Israeli Jews are not, directly, my people. I have no personal emotional or political connection to them. My people are white U.S. Americans, and U.S. Jews of every color. As a white U.S. Jew, I do have blood on my hands to the extent that the U.S. actively supports racist, murderous apartheid in Israel and the region. I oppose the oppression and destruction of Muslim Palestinians by Israeli Jews. And the ethnic and religious divides there are not so sharp as one might believe if one only consumes U.S. media. Muslims and Palestinians live in Israel. Israeli Jews and Muslims live in Palestine. Generally, though, I am far too ignorant about the particulars of the history there to have much of use to say that could be considered informed.

I haven't even read Dworkin's book, Scapegoat: The Jews, Israel, and Women's Liberation. I have read a review of it by Veronica A. Ouma (*here*), but some of the assertions about Dworkin's political views are inaccurate, such as stating she supported or advocated female supremacy. She most certainly, and explicitly, did not. Proof of that is here:

Biological Superiority:

The World's Most Dangerous and Deadly Idea  

Two days from now marks the eight anniversary of Andrea's unexpected death on 9 April 2005. I miss her voice in my world. She spoke against inhumanity in so many forms. There are few people who show such literary commitment to justice and liberation for women. I remember her. I remember those six million Jews destroyed in Europe from 1935-45. And the other five million killed during that time, in that place, who were not Jewish. I remember, on the 19th anniversary of the beginning of the Rwandan Genocide, the 800,000 Tutsis killed by Hutu extremists. I remember Indigenous Americans exterminated on this land and those who are being destroyed currently. On this day, Yom HaShoah, I remember that past and this present.

What is Women's Courage When Men Define the Terms?

image is from here

Over at Shakesville, I just read Melissa's post "Women are Brave", which you may link back to by clicking *here*. Rather than post a comment on a feminist blog, I'll put my comment here in my own space. I've learned that a male voice isn't always appropriate, and is often enough unwelcome, in spaces designed to be woman-centered.

Her post led me to think back to something I once read by Andrea Dworkin on the subject. I did some searching and found Andrea Dworkin's chapter in her book Our Blood, called "The Sexual Politics of Fear and Courage". A scanned version of the book is available to be read as a pdf document (or may be downloaded) *here*.

As I reflect on Melissa's blog, Dworkin's work, and on the purgatory of contemporary U.S. society, I am struck with the degree to white men define the terms so many of us live by. Inside a white male supremacist system, "courage" is traditionally and ubiquitously understood to be masculine in nature, belonging to men; a capacity understood patriarchally to be inherently male and associated with strength. Fear is understood to be feminine in nature, the "natural" province of women, and is associated with weakness. For men and boys to be what men determine to be "weak", including by being afraid, is--so the status quo society says--to be less manly and more like a woman or girl. For women to be courageous and strong as men define it, is to be unwomanly and more like a man. If she isn't punished for being "brave" in the patriarchal definition of the word, she might gain temporary male status.

In Melissa's incisive account of a stand-up comedy club, I find examples of how men define not only terms but also act them out in social spaces. At the club, a combination of men's sexual violence against women, including the threat of violence and "jovial" harassment and objectification, ensures that women aren't likely to be too unafraid. As Dworkin has stated, "By the time we are women, fear is as familiar to us as air. It is our element. We live in it, we inhale it, we exhale it, and most of the time we do not even notice it." Curiously, the only men I know personally who seem to have this deep-seated fear-orientation to the world are male survivors of child sexual abuse. While women do, in fact, live with courage and bravery as they negotiate many challenges and obstacles, men do their best and worst to make sure fear, in women, is never completely irrational or unwarranted.

The misogynist violence that men direct at women ensures that those men aren't seen--by other woman-hating men--as too weak. Rape is one of many acts in which males may cast off their supposed weakness and exercise patriarchal power by terrorising and violating women. War is another realm where men get to be brave and heroic by doing violence and 'conquering' fear, against the bodies, minds, and spirits of threatened people. Military war, when perpetrated by the Western world, is also the place where imperialism, white supremacy, capitalism, and colonialism are acted out in patriarchal terms. Invasion is always sexualised in the male supremacist imagination.

It's going to be interesting to see how U.S. female soldiers in military combat are regarded by male soldiers: will the women be seen as heroic, like the men? Will any individual woman in military combat be treated more like one of the guys? Or will her patriarchally-defined courage be seen as tainted by her gender? (Sort of the way bigoted straight men argue that marriage is tainted if queers--defined by dominant straight male society as feminine men and masculine women--can do it too.) A serious concern is that any woman in military combat may be additionally vulnerable to rape by male soldiers who want to be sure she doesn't believe she's equal to men. I say additionally because we know this is already happening endemically and systematically to civilian girls and women, and to women troops off the battlefield. Or, rather, off the battlefield that men name as such, for many private and social spaces men occupy are battlefields for women, such as the bed, the home, the workplace, and the street.

We also know that U.S. male soldiers practice rape against the women and girls of invaded countries, usually populated by people of color: even a partial list of such countries invaded and/or occupied by U.S. troops or covert operations is long: Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Guatemala, El Salvador, Grenada, Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan. Taken together, the body count is in the many hundreds of thousands; how many of those murder victims were also victims of rape is impossible to say. It was likely to be grossly under-reported or not reported at all: all forms of men's sexual violence is under-reported because terrorising people and forcing submission works to silence and shame them. If we leave out all other European countries that made conquest and occupation of other sovereign nations a national pastime, and only focus on Britain's imperial invasions, we are left with very few countries untouched by brutal, white imperial/patriarchal force. (Source for that comment is *here*.)

What we may notice internationally in the West is that when European white women are in seats of typically and traditionally white male power, they sometimes argue, over the disdainful shouts of men, for equality not supremacy. See, for example: To End Extreme Poverty, Let’s Try Ending Extreme Wealth or this: This bold equality push is just what we needed. In 1997.

When we consider the politics of many prominent, activist women of color, we see comprehensive intersectional analysis and proposals for global peace and justice. See, for example: Staying Alive: Women, Ecology, and Development, by Vandana Shiva, and The Winona LaDuke Reader: A Collection of Essential Writings.

A flip side of this issue of gender and courage is seen when we try and make heroes of  men who preached against many forms of violence, such as Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. or John Lennon. This is not at all to say either man was non-violent historically in their own lives. At least John Lennon spoke honestly about his abuses as such and endeavored to be a different kind of man in his later years. At least Dr. King set an honorable example of how to love one's enemy while holding them accountable for their crimes against humanity. But when such men advocate peace-not-war, or equality with women, they become vulnerable to being stigmatised 'feminine'.

Referencing Melissa's post, it says a great deal that men on stage doing comedy or men in the audience, need to reinforce and verbalize the worst aspects of male supremacist/patriarchal practice, and in particular to affirm a phallic identity. I admire the woman who did her own comedy, successfully, disproving so much that is taught in a racist patriarchal society like ours about women's power to create something new that is solely hers while deeply shared, in the midst of a culture of sexual predation and cultural appropriation. More power to her. More power to all women fighting for justice and equality.

Despite the saying that sits atop this post, liberally redefining terms won't shift society's political hierarchies. Many of us strive to make language express the complexities of who we are. As I listen to those singly or multiply oppressed, I hear again and again how difficult it is to make the dominant language speak their truths. It is courageous, isn't it, to endure and survive rape and warfare? I'd say so. But will patriarchal men ever see the courage of it, or only determine her survival to be a residual sign of his weakness?

However we maneuver meanings and memes, such effort is insufficient if our goal is liberation. The means and machinery of gynocidal straight male supremacy and genocidal and imperialist white supremacy must be shut down; new systems and institutions fostering equality and non-violence must become the status quo. Only then will new definitions have rooting and resonance beyond small, non-dominant groups of people. And only then will whole truths be spoken about life under siege, without interruption and mistranslation by the former masters.

Referring back to the phrasing in the image above, I'd say: "When peace-work is routinely seen as courageous, and war-making is popularly viewed as the work of cowards, we will know substantive, life-affirming change has occurred."

And when women of color define the terms we all live by, and govern globally, I will know we have radically purged ourselves of purgatory, razed hell, and brought heaven down to Earth.

And one more time, Andrea Dworkin never said "All Sex is Rape"... but how many times does that have to be said for anti-feminists to believe it?

image is from here

Java man has a question. It's not new and it's not original but it is anti-feminist and fueled by misogyny. Anti-feminism and misogyny isn't new or original either. With thanks, again, to Toto, what follows is from Yahoo Answers. (You may click *here* to see the rest of the answers, most of which are dripping with contempt for feminists and for Andrea in particular.)

Java man

What did Andrea Dworkin mean when she said "All men are rapists"

Also: "Heterosexual intercourse is the pure, formalized expression of contempt for women's bodies." Why do feminists idolize this man hater so much?

Toto 

I will answer your question fully below, but a better question is this:

Why do so many people--usually anti-feminist men--keep claiming that radical feminists said those things, when it's been demonstrated again and again that they never did? Proof that what you claim she said is a lie is below.

I notice you and the others promoting these misquotes as truths don't ever quote the next two--and I will be happy to let you know where the quotes come from:

"I have spent 20 years writing these books. Had I wanted to say men are beasts and scream, that takes 30 seconds."  -- Andrea Dworkin (Modern Times Interview of Andrea Dworkin With Larry Josephson, on "Modern Times", American Public Radio, 1992, as accessed on Sep. 5, 2010.)

I notice you and the others promoting this nonsense don't quote her saying this:

"I came here today because I don't believe that rape is inevitable or natural. If I did, I would have no reason to be here. If I did, my political practice would be different than it is. Have you ever wondered why we are not just in armed combat against you? It's not because there's a shortage of kitchen knives in this country. It is because we believe in your humanity, against all the evidence." -- Andrea Dworkin

The answer to your question is easy:

She never said "All men are rapists" and neither did any other published feminist such as Marilyn Frye or Catharine A. MacKinnon, which is why you and others can't cite the quote from any of their books. (Putting quotes around the words with Dworkin's name in the same sentence doesn't mean she said it.)

Now, if she actually said and wrote it, wouldn't you think you (or anyone else) would be able to tell us in which book or article or speech it appears?

They never said "All sex is rape" either and the proof is linked to here and below:

http://www.snopes.com/quotes/mackinnon.asp

This is the truth:
John Berger once called Dworkin "the most misrepresented writer in the western world". She has always been seen as the woman who said that all men are rapists, and that all sex is rape. In fact, she said neither of these things. Here's what she told me in 1997: "If you believe that what people call normal sex is an act of dominance, where a man desires a woman so much that he will use force against her to express his desire, if you believe that's romantic, that's the truth about sexual desire, then if someone denounces force in sex it sounds like they're denouncing sex. If conquest is your mode of understanding sexuality, and the man is supposed to be a predator, and then feminists come along and say, no, sorry, that's using force, that's rape - a lot of male writers have drawn the conclusion that I'm saying all sex is rape." In other words, it's not that all sex involves force, but that all sex which does involve force is rape. [Source for this paragraph is here and below: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2005/apr/12/gender.highereducation]

For more on why so many people describe Andrea Dworkin, a human rights activist, as a man-hater or as someone who said the nonsense you are spreading here, see this excellent article:

http://www.andreadworkin.net/memorial/jenson.html

As for the other quote, you take it out of context. It's not a statement of fact. It's an observation based on evidence which is part of a larger discussion on the reality--a fact--that so many men hate and abuse women in and out of bed (which is the serious social and global issue, not what feminists think of men):

"But the hatred of women is a source of sexual pleasure for men in its own right. Intercourse appears to be the expression of that contempt in pure form, in the form of a sexed hierarchy; it requires no passion or heart because it is power without invention articulating the arrogance of those who do the f---ing. Intercourse is the pure, sterile, formal expression of men's contempt for women; but that contempt can turn gothic and express itself in many sexual and sadistic practices that eschew intercourse per se. Any violation of a woman's body can become sex for men; this is the essential truth of pornography." -- Andrea Dworkin [Source is here and below: http://www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/dworkin/IntercourseII.html]

I hope the readers here appreciate the difference in meaning. It's quite significant.

 Sources for the above:

http://www.snopes.com/quotes/mackinnon.asp

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2005/apr/12/gender.highereducation

http://www.andreadworkin.net/memorial/jenson.html

http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~rjensen/freelance/dworkintribute.htm

http://www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/dworkin/IntercourseII.html

Andrea Dworkin, Male Supremacy, and the Persistent Refusal of Men to Engage Intelligently with the work of Feminist Philosophers

cover of book is from here

Andrea analysed the sexual politics of The Story of O in her first feminist book, Woman Hating (1974).

What follows are a couple of responses I posted to a man; I read them on a discussion-based website dedicated to the life and work of a colleague of Andea Dworkin's named Michael Moorcock. The particular discussion thread is about Andrea's political writings and views, including about The Story of O. For those who don't know about the colleagial relationship between Andrea and Michael, *here* is a link to a conversation between them, with thanks to Nikki Craft. And *here* is a post from this blog that includes a piece of writing Michael did about Andrea, following her death in 2005. 

I have deleted the name of the person who posted the points I take issue with. I don't believe in "outing" people for their opinions and viewpoints expressed online*. And I don't know if he'd want me putting his name, as it appears at that site, on my blog. To his credit, the remarks are unusually civil--while also deeply woman-hating. Most men who critique Andrea Dworkin online do so using more openly and virulently misogynistic language. It is because the website doesn't seem to encourage snark and nastiness as predominant values that I felt comfortable to post my own comments there. Most men at that site seem to regard Andrea as an important political philosopher.

*An upcoming post will deal with this a bit more.

Each response I wrote I also gave a title, as that's the format there.

Dworkin didn't say its because of our genitals that women, through sex, are degraded

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Quote:

Originally Posted by **** To be entirely honest, as much as I can sympathize that porn, especially in the production end of its business cycle, is powerfully exploitive of women and that most forms of commercial porn focus, indirectly or otherwise, on a very narrow, often ugly bandwidth of sexuality, I find a lot of Dworkin's pronouncements baffling. When she asserts that, because of the accidental structure of the male/female genitalia, violence and degradation are unalterably implicit in sex, it's seems more the wounded mysticism of a damaged child than any reasonable argument.

I don't see that as her analysis. I see her analysis directing us to radically alter the social and political arenas in which males and females live, wherein females are regarded socially as both inferior to and "for" males. Her analysis doesn't discuss what life might be like outside male supremacy: she is dealing with the structural and systemic political realities most, if not all, women and men live in. Her work is often misunderstood and assumed to be unreasoned by people who don't take the time to read what she wrote. 

On assuming self-hate as a condition of being oppressed

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Quote:

Originally Posted by **** It's statements of her's like that about some presumed ubiquity of self-hate among oppressed or exploited peoples that lead me to dismiss most of her arguments. It reads, obnoxiously, as if she's projecting her own self-hate onto people who conduct themselves bravely, stoically in pretty brutal situations. The Story of O has nothing to say about the legitimate sufferings of people like those of Occupied Palestine or Darfur.....

I'm wondering if you hold a similarly dismissive view of the work of Frantz Fanon, and many other anti-racism activists who write about how self-hatred and/or self-negation is part and parcel of being systematically oppressed. And I'm curious about why you move so quickly into psychoanalysing her, rather than dealing with her arguments directly including by quoting her work.

Responding to the latter part of your comment, I think there is a connection between The Story of O and literature addressing the experiences of other occupied people, if we understand the The Story of O to be a book about how deep oppression goes. The sufferings of oppressed people who deeply internalise the views of ourselves held by our oppressors is not, in my view, illegitimate. The fact that some oppressed groups of people have more physical distance from their oppressors than do women across a lifetime doesn't mean we can't examine what oppressed people have in common. In my experience, the intricacies of male supremacy are generally and usually ignored by men who benefit structurally if not also interpersonally from it. And men often address as "serious" or "important" only the forms of oppression that include populations of men as "the oppressed". When the focus is on how men and boys intimately and institutionally oppress women and girls, it is often considered "not relevant" in one way or another, to discussions and activism addressing gross systemic violence.