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Andrea Rita Dworkin ( September 26 , 1946 – April 9 , 2005 ) was an American Radical Feminist and writer best known for her criticism of Pornography , which she linked with Rape and other forms of Violence against women. An anti-war activist and ) and '' Intercourse '' ( 1987 , ISBN 0684832399), which remain her two most widely known books. EARLY LIFE Dworkin was born in Camden, New Jersey to Harry Dworkin and Sylvia Spiegel. She had one younger brother, Mark. Her father was a schoolteacher and dedicated Socialist , whom she credited with inspiring her passion for social justice. Her relationship with her mother was strained, but Dworkin later wrote about the influence that her mother's belief in legal birth control and legal abortion, "long before these were respectable beliefs," inspired her later activism (''Heartbreak'' 23). Though she described her Jew ish household as being in many ways dominated by the memory of the Holocaust , it nonetheless provided a happy childhood until the age of 9 when an unknown man molested her in a movie theater. When Dworkin was 10, her family moved from the city to the suburbs of Cherry Hill Township, New Jersey , which she later wrote she "experienced as being kidnapped by aliens and taken to a penal colony" (''Life and Death'', 3). In sixth grade, the administration at her new school punished her for refusing to sing " Silent Night " (as a Jew , she objected to being forced to sing Christian religious songs at school) (''Heartbreak'', 21-22). Dworkin began writing poetry and fiction in the sixth grade. Throughout high school, she read heavily (with encouragement from her mother and father). She was especially influenced by Arthur Rimbaud , Charles Baudelaire , Henry Miller , Fyodor Dostoevsky , Che Guevara , and the Beat Poets , especially Allen Ginsberg (''Life and Death'' 23-24, 28; ''Heartbreak'' 37-40). COLLEGE AND EARLY ACTIVISM In 1965 , while a student at Bennington College , Dworkin was arrested during an anti- Vietnam War protest at the United States Mission to the United Nations . She was sent to the New York Women's House Of Detention , where she was given an internal examination by two prison doctors so rough that she bled for days afterwards. She spoke in public and testified before a grand jury about her experience, and the media coverage of her testimony made national and international news (Dworkin, ''Heartbreak'', 77-81). The grand jury declined to make an indictment in the case (80), but Dworkin's testimony contributed to public outrage over the mistreatment of inmates. The prison was closed seven years later. Soon after testifying before the grand jury, Dworkin left Bennington to live in Greece (''Heartbreak'' 80, 83) and pursue her writing. She traveled to from Paris to Athens on the Orient Express (83-85), and went to live and write in Crete (87). While in Crete, she "wrote a series of poems called ''(Vietnam) Variations''; poems and prose poems I collected in a book printed on Crete called ''Child''; a novel in a style resembling magical realism called ''Notes on Burning Boyfriend''" -- a reference to the pacifist Norman Morrison , who had burned himself to death in protest of the Vietnam War -- "and poems and dialogues I later hand-printed using movable type in a book called ''Morning Hair''" (98). After living in Crete, Dworkin returned to Bennington for two years, where she continued to study literature and participated in campaigns against the college's student conduct code, for Contraception on campus, for the legalization of Abortion , and against the Vietnam War (''Heartbreak'', 107-112). LIFE IN THE NETHERLANDS After graduating with a degree in Literature , she moved to Amsterdam to interview Dutch Anarchists in the Provo countercultural movement (117). She became involved with, and then married, one of the anarchists that she met. He began to abuse her severely soon after they were married -- punching and kicking her, burning her with cigarettes, beating her on her legs with a wooden beam, and banging her head against the floor until he knocked her unconscious (''Heartbreak'', 119; ''Letters from a War Zone'', 103, 332). After she left her husband late in 1971 , she spent a year caught in the Netherlands, where she was "attacked, persecuted, followed, harassed, by the husband I had left" (''Life and Death'', 17), who beat her and threatened her whenever he found where she was hiding (''Life and Death'', 19, 21). She found herself desperate for money, often homeless, thousands of miles from home and family, later remarking that "I often lived the life of a fugitive, except that it was the more desperate life of a battered woman who had run away for the last time, whatever the outcome" (17). For a while, she worked as a Prostitute in order to survive. A feminist and fellow expatriate, Ricki Abrams , offered her help, sheltered her in Abrams's home, and helped her find places to stay on houseboats, a communal farm, and deserted buildings (''Life and Death'', 18–19) while Dworkin hid from her former husband and tried to work up the money to return to the United States . Abrams introduced Dworkin to early radical feminist writing from the United States , and Dworkin was especially inspired by Kate Millett 's '' Sexual Politics '', Shulamith Firestone 's '' The Dialectic Of Sex '', and Robin Morgan 's '' Sisterhood Is Powerful '' (''Life and Death'' 19; ''Hearbreak'' 118). She and Abrams began to work together on "early pieces and fragments" of a radical feminist text on the hatred of women in culture and history (''Woman Hating'', Acknowledgement), including a completed draft of a chapter on the pornographic counterculture magazine ''Suck'', which was published by a group of fellow expatriates in the Netherlands (''Life and Death'' 21; ''Heartbreak'' 122). Dworkin later wrote that she eventually agreed to help smuggle a briefcase of heroin through customs in return for $1,000 and an airplane ticket, thinking that if she was not caught she could return home with the ticket and the money, or if she was caught, she could escape her ex-husband by going to prison. The deal for the briefcase fell through, but the junkie who had promised her the money gave her the airline ticket, and she was able to return to the United States in November 1972 (''Letters from a War Zone'' 332-333; ''Life and Death'' 22). Before she left Amsterdam, Dworkin talked with Ricki Abrams about her experiences in the Netherlands, the emerging feminist movement, and the book they had begun to write together. Dworkin agreed to complete the book and get it published when she reached the United States (''Life and Death'', 22). In her memoirs, Dworkin relates that during the conversation, she vowed to dedicate her life to the feminist movement: RETURN TO NEW YORK AND CONTACT WITH THE FEMINIST MOVEMENT When she returned to New York City , Dworkin brought back the "early pieces and fragments" of the book that she had begun to write with her friend Ricki Abrams , and took odd jobs to support herself while she expanded and finished the book, which became ''Woman Hating''. In the book she offered radical feminist analyses of Fairy Tale s and literary Pornography , which she argued presented women as passive, dependent, and defined by a male sexuality that eroticized women's humiliation and submission, and then discussed "gynocidal" expressions of that view of femininity, in the form of European Witch Hunt s and Chinese Foot Binding . She argued that binary gender roles were a myth, expressed in the stories and enforced by the violence, that could and should be overcome, in favor of an "androgynous society," for the sake of women's freedom and human flourishing. ''Woman Hating'' became Dworkin's first published book in 1974 . In New York, Dworkin worked again as an antiwar organizer, participated in demonstrations for recalls her Take Back The Night speech in 1978 : Many of Dworkin's early speeches are reprinted in her second book, ''Our Blood'' (1976). Later selections of speeches were reprinted ten and twenty years later, in ''Letters from a War Zone'' (1988), and ''Life and Death'' (1997). RELATIONSHIP WITH JOHN STOLTENBERG In , and he as Gay . Stoltenberg, recounting the perplexity that their relationship seemed to cause people in the press , summarized the relationship by saying "So I state only the simplest facts publicly: yes, Andrea and I live together and love each other and we are each other's life partner, and yes we are both out." Dworkin and Stoltenberg were married in 1998 ; after her death, Stoltenberg said "It's why we never told anybody really that we married, because people get confused about that. They think, Oh, she's yours. And we just didn't want that nonsense" {Link without Title} . CRITIQUE OF PORNOGRAPHY Andrea Dworkin is most often remembered for her role as a speaker, writer, and activist in the feminist Anti-pornography Movement . Her critique of pornography began with ''Woman Hating'', in which she offered a critical analysis of the contemporary pornography, in the novels '' Story Of O '' and '' L'Image '', and in the counterculture pornographic newspaper ''Suck''. Dworkin argued that pornography presented the adult and explicit development of the sexual politics expressed implicitly for children in Fairy Tale s, and that it portrayed women as passive victims, whose identity was expressed in eroticized degradation, humiliation, or outright violence. In February 1976 , Dworkin took a leading role in organizing public pickets of '' Snuff '' in New York City and, during the fall, joined Adrienne Rich , Grace Paley , Gloria Steinem , Shere Hite , Lois Gould , Barbara Deming , Karla Jay , Letty Pogrebin , Robin Morgan , Susan Brownmiller in forming the activist group that would eventually become Women Against Pornography (Brownmiller 297-299). She spoke at the first Take Back The Night march in November 1978 , and joined 3,000 women in a march through the Red-light District of San Francisco (Brownmiller 391-392). In 1979 , Dworkin published ''Pornography: Men Possessing Women'' , which analyzes (and extensively cites examples drawn from) contemporary and historical pornography as an industry of woman-hating dehumanization. Dworkin argues that it is implicated in violence against women, both in its production (through the abuse of the women used to "star" in it), and in the social consequences of its consumption (by encouraging men to eroticize the domination, humiliation, and abuse of women). ANTIPORNOGRAPHY CIVIL RIGHTS ORDINANCE See Also: Antipornography civil rights ordinance In 1980 , Linda Boreman (who had appeared in the pornographic film '' Deep Throat '' as "Linda Lovelace") made public statements that her ex-husband Chuck Traynor had beaten and raped her, and violently coerced her into making Deep Throat and other pornographic films. Boreman made her charges public for the press corps at a press conference, with Dworkin, feminist lawyer Catharine MacKinnon , and members of Women Against Pornography . After the press conference, Dworkin, MacKinnon, Gloria Steinem , and Boreman began discussing the possibility of using federal civil rights law to seek damages from Traynor and the makers of ''Deep Throat''. Linda Boreman was interested, but backed off after Steinem discovered that the Statute Of Limitations for a possible suit had passed (Brownmiller 337). Dworkin and MacKinnon, however, continued to discuss civil rights litigation as a possible approach to combatting pornography. In the fall of 1983 , MacKinnon secured a one-semester appointment for Dworkin at the University Of Minnesota , to teach a course in literature for the Women's Studies program and co-teach (with MacKinnon) an interdepartmental course on pornography, where they hashed out details of a civil rights approach. With encouragement from community activists in south Minneapolis , the Minneapolis city government hired Dworkin and MacKinnon to draft an Antipornography Civil Rights Ordinance as an amendment to the Minneapolis city Civil Rights ordinance. The amendment defined pornography as a Civil Rights violation against women, and allowed women who claimed harm from pornography to Sue the producers and distributors in Civil Court for damages. The law was passed twice by the Minneapolis city council but vetoed by the mayor. Another version of the ordinance passed in Indianapolis, Indiana in 1984 , but overturned as Unconstitutional by the Seventh Circuit Court Of Appeals . Dworkin continued to support the civil rights approach in her writing and activism, and supported anti-pornography feminists who organized later campaigns in Cambridge, Massachusetts ( 1985 ) and Bellingham, Washington ( 1988 ) to pass versions of the ordinance by Voter Initiative (cf. ''Life and Death'', pp. 90-95). TESTIMONY BEFORE ATTORNEY GENERAL'S COMMISSION ON PORNOGRAPHY On admonishment against prior restraint by the D.C. Federal Court in Meese v. Playboy (639 F.Supp. 581). In her testimony and replies to questions from the commissioners, Dworkin condemned the use of criminal obscenity prosecutions against pornographers, stating, "We are against obscenity laws. We don't want them. I want you to understand why, whether you end up agreeing or not" (285). She argued that obscenity laws were largely ineffectual (285), that when they were effectual they only suppressed pornography from public view while allowing it to flourish out of sight (285-286), and that they suppressed the wrong material, or the right material for the wrong reasons, arguing that "Obscenity laws are also woman-hating in their very construction. Their basic presumption is that it's women's bodies that are dirty" (286). Instead she offered five recommendations for the Commission, recommending (1) that "the Justice Department instruct law-enforcement agencies to keep records of the use of pornography in violent crimes" (286), (2) a ban on the possession and distribution of pornography in prisons (287), (3) that prosecutors "enforce laws against pimping and pandering against pornographers" (287), (4) that the administration "make it a Justice Department priority to enforce RICO [the Racketeer Influenced And Corrupt Organizations Act ] against the pornography industry" (287), and (5) that Congress adopt federal anti-pornography civil rights legislation which would provide for civil damages for harm inflicted to woman. She suggested that the Commission consider "creating a criminal conspiracy provision under the civil rights law, such that conspiring to deprive a person of their civil rights by coercing them into pornography is a crime, and that conspiring to traffic in pornography is conspiring to deprive women of our civil rights" (288). Dworkin compared her proposal to the Southern Poverty Law Center 's use of civil rights litigation against the Ku Klux Klan (285). Dworkin also submitted into evidence a copy of Linda Boreman 's book ''Ordeal'', as an example of the abuses that she hoped to remedy, saying "The only thing atypical about Linda is that she has had the courage to make a public fight against what has happened to her. And whatever you come up with, it has to help her or it's not going to help anyone." Boreman had testified in person before the Commission, but the Commissioners had not yet seen her book (289). ''RIGHT-WING WOMEN'' In in the United States focused especially on preserving male authority in the family, the promotion of Fundamentalist versions of orthodox religion, combating abortion, and undermining efforts to combat Domestic Violence (192-193), but that it also had, for the first time, "succeeded in getting ''women as women'' (women who claim to be acting in the interests of women as a group) to act effectively in behalf of male authority over women, in behalf of a hierarchy in which women are subservient to men, in behalf of women as the rightful property of men, in behalf of religion as an expression of transcendent male supremacy" (193). Taking this as her problem, Dworkin asked, "Why do right-wing women agitate for their own subordination? How does the Right, controlled by men, enlist their participation and loyalty? And why do right-wing women truly hate the feminist struggle for equality?" (194). ''INTERCOURSE'' See Also: Intercourse (book) In 1987 Dworkin published '' Intercourse '' (ISBN 0684832399), in which she extended her analysis from pornography to Sexual Intercourse itself, and argued that the sort of sexual subordination depicted in pornography was central to men's and women's experiences of heterosexual intercourse in a male supremacist society. Citing from both pornography and literature -- including '' The Kreutzer Sonata '', '' Madame Bovary '', and '' Dracula '' -- Dworkin argued that depictions of intercourse in mainstream art and culture consistently emphasized heterosexual intercourse as the only kind of "real" sex, portrayed intercourse in violent or invasive terms, portrayed the violence or invasiveness as central to its eroticism, and often united it with male contempt for, revulsion towards, or even murder of, the "carnal" woman. She argued that this kind of depiction enforced a male-centric and coercive view of sexuality, and that, when the cultural attitudes combine with the material conditions of women's lives in a sexist society, the experience of heterosexual intercourse itself becomes a central part of men's subordination of women, experienced as a form of "occupation" (cf. Chapter 7, "Occupation/Collaboration" ) that is nevertheless expected to be pleasurable for women and to define their very status ''as women''. Such descriptions are often cited by Dworkin's critics, interpreting (sometimes even falsely quoting) the book as claiming that "All heterosexual intercourse is rape," or more generally that the anatomical features of '') ''BUTLER'' DECISION IN CANADA In 1992, the Supreme Court Of Canada made a ruling in R. V. Butler (the "Butler decision") which incorporated some elements of Dworkin and MacKinnon's legal work on pornography into the existing Canadian obscenity law. In ''Butler'' the Court held that Canadian obscenity law violated Canadian citizens' rights to free speech under the Canadian Charter Of Rights And Freedoms if enforced on grounds of morality or community standards of decency; but that obscenity law ''could'' be enforced constitutionally against some pornography on the basis of the Charter's guarantees of sex equality. The Court's decision cited extensively from briefs prepared by the Women's Legal Education And Action Fund (LEAF), with the support and participation of Catharine MacKinnon. Andrea Dworkin opposed LEAF's position, arguing that feminists should not support or attempt to reform criminal obscenity law. In 1993, copies of Dworkin's book ''Pornography'' were held for inspection by Canadian customs agents fostering an urban legend that Dworkin's own books had been banned from Canada under a law that she herself had promoted. However, the Butler decision did not adopt Dworkin and MacKinnon's ordinance; Dworkin did ''not'' support the decision; and her books (which were released shortly after they were inspected) were held temporarily as part of a standard procedural measure, unrelated to the ''Butler'' decision [http://www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/dworkin/OrdinanceCanada.html . FICTION Dworkin published three fictional works after achieving notability as a feminist author and activist. She published a collection of short stories, ''The New Woman's Broken Heart'' (ISBN 0960362800) in in 1990 . Dworkin's short fiction and novels often incorporated elements from her life and themes from her nonfiction writing, sometimes related by a first-person narrator. Critics have sometimes quoted passages spoken by characters in ''Ice and Fire'' as representations of Dworkin's own views ( [http://www.dailybruin.ucla.edu/db/issues/00/02.15/view.angelucci.html , [http://www.mensnewsdaily.com/archive/r/ross-eric/2005/ross072205.htm , [http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2002/4/3/84026/28710 , cf. [http://www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/dworkin/LieDetect.html ). Dworkin, however, wrote "My fiction is not autobiography. I am not an exhibitionist. I don't show myself. I am not asking for forgiveness. I don't want to confess. But I have used everything I know--my life--to show what I believe must be shown so that it can be faced. The imperative at the heart of my writing--what must be done--comes directly from my life. But I do not show my life directly, in full view; nor even look at it while others watch" (''Life and Death'', 15). LATER LIFE In , the use of rape during the civil war in Bosnia-Hercegovina , the Montreal Massacre , Israel , and the gender politics of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum . In the same year, the '' New York Times Book Review '' published a lengthy letter of hers in which she describes the origins of her deeply-felt hatred of prostitution and pornography ("mass-produced, technologized prostitution") as her history of being violently inspected by prison doctors, battered by her first husband and numerous other men. {Link without Title} In , calling for the establishment of a women's homeland (with "land and guns") as a response to the oppression of women. In . Emotionally fragile and in failing health, Dworkin mostly withdrew from public life for two years following the articles. {Link without Title} In and William Faulkner in the development of American political and cultural identity, which was left unfinished when she died. ILLNESS AND DEATH During her final years Dworkin suffered from fragile health, and she revealed in her last column for the ''Guardian'' that she had been weakened and nearly crippled for the past several years by severe Osteoarthritis in the knees. Shortly after returning from Paris in 1999 , she had been hospitalized with a high fever and blood clots in her legs. A few months after being released from the hospital, she became increasingly unable to bend her knees, and underwent surgery to replace her knees with titanium and plastic prosthetics. She wrote, "The doctor who knows me best says that osteoarthritis begins long before it cripples -- in my case, possibly from homelessness, or sexual abuse, or beatings on my legs, or my weight. John , my partner, blames ''Scapegoat'', a study of Jewish identity and women's liberation that took me nine years to write; it is, he says, the book that stole my health. I blame the drug-rape that I experienced in 1999 in Paris." Dworkin died in her sleep on the morning of April 9 , 2005 , at her home in Washington, D.C. [http://newyorkmetro.com/nymetro/news/people/features/11907/index4.html]. She was 58 years old. When a newspaper interviewer asked her how she would like to be remembered, she said "In a museum, when male supremacy is dead. I'd like my work to be an anthropological artifact from an extinct, primitive society" [http://books.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,,1457741,00.html]. LEGACY AND CONTROVERSY Dworkin authored ten books of radical feminist theory and numerous speeches and articles, each designed to assert the presence of and denounce institutionalized and normalized harm against women. She became one of the most influential writers and spokeswomen of American Radical Feminism during the late 1970s and the 1980s . She characterized pornography as an industry of damaging objectification and abuse, not merely a fantasy realm. She discussed prostitution as a system of exploitation, and intercourse as a key site of subordination in patriarchy. Her analysis and writing influenced and inspired the work of contemporaries and younger feminists, such as Catharine MacKinnon , Gloria Steinem , John Stoltenberg , Nikki Craft , Susan Cole , and Amy Elman . Dworkin's uncompromising positions and strident style of writing and speaking, described by Robert Campbell as "apocalyptic" earned her frequent comparisons to prophets (by Gloria Steinem ). Her attitude and language often sharply polarized debate, and made Dworkin herself a figure of intense controversy. After her death, the conservative gay writer Andrew Sullivan claimed that "[M any on the social right liked Andrea Dworkin. Like Dworkin, their essential impulse when they see human beings living freely is to try and control or stop them – for their own good. Like Dworkin, they are horrified by male sexuality, and see men as such as a problem to be tamed. Like Dworkin, they believe in the power of the state to censor and coerce sexual freedoms. Like Dworkin, they view the enormous new freedom that women and gay people have acquired since the 1960s as a terrible development for human culture" [http://www.andrewsullivan.com/index.php?dish_inc=archives/2005_04_17_dish_archive.html]. Critic and "dissident feminist" Cathy Young complained of a "whitewash" in feminist obituaries for Dworkin, argued that Dworkin's positions were manifestly Misandrist whether or not she was the first to observe that "All sex is rape", and stated that Dworkin was in fact insane [http://www.reason.com/hitandrun/2005/04/the_dworkin_whi_1.shtml]. Other feminists, however, published sympathetic or celebratory memorials online and in print ( [http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/16/opinion/16mackinnon.html?ex=1271304000&en=0b54a3eb2e26dcd9&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss , [http://www.msmusings.net/archives/2005/04/andrea_dworkin.html , [http://www.sapphosbreathing.com/archives/000578.html , [http://buggydoo.blogspot.com/2005/04/andrea-dworkin.html]). Catharine MacKinnon , Dworkin's longtime friend and collaborator, published a column in the '' New York Times '', celebrating what she described as Dworkin's "incandescent literary and political career", suggested that Dworkin deserved a nomination for the Nobel Prize In Literature , and complained that "Lies about her views on sexuality (that she believed intercourse was rape) and her political alliances (that she was in bed with the right) were published and republished without attempts at verification, corrective letters almost always refused. Where the physical appearance of male writers is regarded as irrelevant or cherished as a charming eccentricity, Andrea's was reviled and mocked and turned into pornography. When she sued for libel, courts trivialized the pornographic lies as fantasy and dignified them as satire" [http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/16/opinion/16mackinnon.html?ex=1271304000&en=0b54a3eb2e26dcd9&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss]. Dworkin's reports of violence suffered at the hands of men sometimes aroused skepticism, the most famous example being the public controversy over her allegations of being drugged and raped in Paris. In 1989 , Dworkin wrote an article about her life as a battered wife in the Netherlands, "What Battery Really Is" (1989), in response to fellow radical feminist Susan Brownmiller , who had argued that Hedda Nussbaum , a battered woman, should have been indicted for her failure to stop Joel Steinberg from murdering their adoptive daughter. '' Newsweek '' initially accepted "What Battery Really Is" for publication, but then declined to publish the account at the request of their attorney, arguing that Dworkin needed to publish anonymously "to protect the identity of the batterer" and remove any references to specific injuries, or else to provide "medical records, police records, a written statement from a doctor who had seen the injuries." Dworkin submitted the article to the '' Los Angeles Times '', which published it on March 12 , 1989 (''Letters from a War Zone'' 330). Some critics, such as " did not amount to Defamation in the legal sense). Other critics, especially women who identify as feminists but sharply differ with Dworkin's style or positions, have offered nuanced views, suggesting that Dworkin called attention to real and important problems, but that her legacy as a whole had been destructive to the women's movement {Link without Title} . SEE ALSO
EPIGRAM :"Andrea Dworkin is to Patriarchy what Karl Marx was to Capitalism." -- Erik Emanuelsson BIBLIOGRAPHY Nonfiction
Fiction and poetry
Numbered short articles
Books and essays about Andrea Dworkin
Reviews
Controversy over allegations of rape in Paris
Obituaries and Memorials
REFERENCES
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