I’ve only read a few chapters of Intercourse, only the second feminist book I’ve ever read. It’s amazing how different it is to read a book by Dworkin than it is to read about Dworkin. The shocking slogans and out-of-context quotes are all I’ve ever heard, and they’re so unfair. You simply have to read the entire book to get a real idea of the enormous complexity of her thoughts on sex in our culture. Most of it is simply pointing out things famous writers have actually written about sex, love and reducing women to lovely things to be fucked.
She was a hero to me from the time I first heard that she had joined forces with the right wing to try to limit the spread of pornography. To be blunt, I don’t care who helps me to get this stuff back under the bed, under the counter, and in the closet once again; it just has to be done. To live in a world that openly condones the increasingly violent excesses of porn just to try to prove itself sex-positive is intolerable to anyone who has a distaste to being degraded and degrading others.
It’s not that I’m anti-sex. I love sex, but more than sex, I love to love, and that’s something that encompasses and surpasses sex; sex being merely a subset of love. To love, in my mind, is like the Italians put it – volere bene – to wish someone wellness. To wish all good for someone, to want to give without getting back. Unconditionally, regardless of sex.
To say that you are sex-positive and support the rapelike porn sex of our modern world – whether you are a woman or a man – is willful ignorance. Dragging sex down into an insensitive animal level in order to continue to deliver ever-increasing shocks to your jaded sex-sickened body and mind isn’t positive.
I’ve read a lot of negative crap about Dworkin and I can see that it’s all hooey. She’s an easy target, telling the truth we don’t want to hear, and the criticism that she doesn’t offer us a solution to the problem of sexual imbalance is just whining. She seems to expect us to feel free to imagine a solution for ourselves. If she were truly angry, she would have given us all up without ever writing a word.
Lars L. | 14-Mar-08 at 7:27 am | Permalink
I have not read the book yet, I will make a point out of doing so once this semester with all its additional work is done, but until then I have a question to you concerning the book.
How *does* she argue? Its, to me, a very interesting thing how people like to put their point across (and a part of my study).
Fred | 14-Mar-08 at 7:43 am | Permalink
She weaves a complex web of assertions based on texts by male authors. It’s a delightfully “male” voice, one that assumes authority rather than one which posits everything as a tentative theory to be disproved. It’s not a feminine voice.
I do get lost at times. Dworkin puts more radical thoughts into a single page than I can hope to comprehend quickly. I can see why her critics resort to quips and slogans to refute her; actually trying to mount a counterargument as complex and comprehensive as her assertion is a daunting, perhaps quixotic task.
Lars L. | 14-Mar-08 at 9:13 am | Permalink
I’ve taken the time since my last reply to look some quotes from the book up on wikipedia, and I do see some of the merit of her critics, her description of the intercourse (p.122-124) seems to be a bit… strong.
To analyse her sentence, she starts by describing what a intercourse is in very strongly loaded words, putting those words aside she uses comparisons to some *very* negative issues to show that there is no comparison.
This subtle retorical maneuver is also called a strawman within the use of logic, its drawing attention to a negative comparison while dismissing your own stance on it leaving the subject with a compared state wich you cannot clame the author for.
I agree though that critizing her, has to be done with a good deal of consideration as to put forth critism on either her use of retorics or her points, wich to me seems to be two different things, the part I mentioned does have its merit, but I find the way she words it destructive to her own argumentation.
Fred | 14-Mar-08 at 10:24 am | Permalink
Trying to analyze anything critically out of context is for fools.
The most important point to understand when reading quotes from Dworkin is that she is commenting on male literature, not simply making these things up. You can find all the context for her arguments both in her work and the canon of dead white male literature, where the same ideas hide right out in the open for everyone to see.
chiroptera | 15-Mar-08 at 4:07 pm | Permalink
I found your blog via a comment at Twisty’s place.
I think I dated Nigel! You’ve summed these ‘characters’ up so well. Nigel had read feminist literature, but turned out to be, in his own words in an online discussion, a ‘whoremonger’! Oh, and did I mention he was in law enforcement?
Fred | 15-Mar-08 at 5:10 pm | Permalink
Power and control. Funny how the lust for what these knobs think is sex is also the same lusts for power and control. I used to be easily swayed by arguments for women being allowed to prostitute themselves. Then I figured out that a woman never prostitutes herself, she is prostituted by the fantasies of economic power and control of the dudes who use her.
So many men think they are feminists, including myself, but none of us really are. We are just inclined to be sympathetic. Sometimes I think “Do I really have anything good to say? Or am I deluding myself?”
But for god’s sake, a self-confessed whoremonger claiming to be a feminist? That’s just ignorance or lying. Even before I ever read any feminist thought at all I knew better than to rape a prostitute. It always seemed so terribly sad to me. Now it seems like an intolerable outrage.
chiroptera | 15-Mar-08 at 6:43 pm | Permalink
Yes, I think perhaps my ‘Nigel’ (whom I call Lowry, althought that’s not the sick pay-for-rapist’s real name) is a different character. He’s more like the serial killer with superficial charm that he uses in the daytime. He’s a little closer to Pornsick Pat that Nigel, I guess.
By the way, I’ve been reading Dworkin lately, too, and she just clarifies what I have already observed.
Lars L. | 20-Mar-08 at 10:14 am | Permalink
Sorry for this slow response to your last comment Fred, but is there not a small problem in claiming that men cannot be feminists? Does that not imply that we cannot understand women who work for equality inherently?
Personally, I believe that the idea that feminism only can be understood by women, to be well, silly, if we are to believe and work for a society where the sexes are equeal, then we should never fall into the trap where one sex is made “unable to understand” for if we *do* accept that men are unable to understand, then what would be true in the reverse? ie. what would women be unable to understand due to being women?
The point I am trying to make here is that I truly believe the genders to be equeal as far as how the thought process goes, and that being able to understand, or unable to, has more to do with personality than gender.
Fred | 05-Apr-08 at 4:16 pm | Permalink
I took a long time to get back to you, too, Lars, and I apologize. The whole idea of feminism being a movement to liberate women has been debated a lot. I have read some eloquent writing that sums up the argument that a man can’t really be a feminist that was more or less about women being the only real experts on their own oppression, since oppression is either invisible or, in the case of someone sympathetic like me, abstract.
My identification with the oppression of women started when my daughter was born, as a matter of fact. I identified so closely with her that I found it almost impossible to compartmentalize my participation, however minor, in our misogynistic culture and my love for her. Feminism opened up my mind to an increasing empathy for what women struggle against every day, mostly in their own hearts, without even acknowledging it to themselves.
bluemilk | 06-Apr-08 at 3:59 am | Permalink
A very thoughtful post, thanks.