Hell yeah - another victory for people that think rationally and don't overstate or sensationalize to mask their deficiencies. What happened? The evil supreme mistress of bullshit, Andrea Dworkin, has passed away. Yes, it's stupid to celebrate a death, but this chick was full-on batshit insane, devoting her life to "ending" malehood and, above all else, pornography. I couldn't support anything - not even my long-lusted-after National Thin-Mints-for-Free Initiative - if one of the riders was "no more porn." Check out some of the things she's said and see if you think she's the type to invite intelligent, even discourse.
Now, before some of the TTables women (ha!) jump on me for being a bastard, this chick is to sexual equality what the Ayatollah Khomeni was to religious tolerance. And, what's just as bad, people bought her line of nonsense. Most feminist criticism is forced and empty of real intellectual value: Her life-long line of crap is devoid of any redemptive value at all. I was not a fan.
Posted by Chris at April 12, 2005 02:02 PMOn the lighter side, here's this. My record: a Ruthian 322.9.
Posted by: Chris at April 12, 2005 02:33 PM341.5
Yeah I'm workin'...wanna fight about it?
While you may find her misguided, it would be hard to convince me that the woman wasn't intelligent. Both feminine & masculine archetypes are vacuous, and I think this becomes more evident with the passage of time.
Posted by: John at April 12, 2005 03:04 PMShe can write with big words, but there is very little intelligence present. She was CRAZY. Among other things, she claimed that rape was non-existant before pornography was invented, despite using rape to define the nature of cavemen. She argued that in an ideal world beastiality and incest are acceptable practives , that humans "devolved" from a hemaphroditic organism and, therefore, all gender issues - down to pregnancy - are at best misunderstood and, at worst, the work of devil men. Marriage and heterosexual sex are only different forms of rape, etc. Also, she and her husband were both homosexual: run that around your skull for a while. Finally, she lied about being raped, then used the rape as a fundamental foundation for her arguments.
Once she said: "Seduction is often difficult to distinguish from rape. In seduction, the rapist often bothers to buy a bottle of wine."
To which I reply: "A prostitute is just like any other woman, they all trade something for sex." (South Park line)
She said: "No woman needs intercourse; few women escape it."
I say: "You need to get laid. Everybody needs sex. If you let it, it can be great fun."
Posted by: Chris at April 12, 2005 04:31 PM"Erotica is simply high-class pornography; better produced, better conceived, better executed, better packaged, designed for a better class of consumer."
I don't understand what she's trying to get at.
"'Women's fashion' is a euphemism for fashion created by men for women. "
If only that were the case...
I'm not up much on this whole debate, so I'd never even heard of this woman before. But man, if she actually believed all those quotes, what a nut job.
Posted by: Fatboy at April 12, 2005 04:51 PMI will not claim to have read any of Dworkin's essays. Unfortunately, this makes anything I read about Dworkin hearsay. The discussion portion of Brian Carnell's essay is at least as interesting as the essay itself. The bestiality thing doesn't make any sense, if it is true. I'm not sure how capable an animal is of giving consent. Go here for more confusing, biased, contradictory rhetoric.
Do I strike you as the kind of person who would endorse her entire agenda?
Most importantly of all, I don't know enough or care enough for it to make any difference to me if she is demonized here or elsewhere.
Chris & Fatboy . . . strange bedfellows . . .