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.

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.

By the way, I’ve been reading Dworkin lately, too, and she just clarifies what I have already observed.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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).