Andrea Dworkin Dies, Aged 58

Yay, I won 8)

I didn't think I was being pretentious (sorry if I was folks), I understood that to be the root of the word and I picked it up (in the incorrect form I posted here) on the TV, and thank you for correcting me. However it doesn't alter what I said.

As for revol - awa an bile yer heid! Ye're just a screwed up wee boy who gets kicks out of repeatedly posting up nudie pictures o women, and writing lofty-sounding but factually barren pseudo-criticisms of other posters (I doubt you would ever do anyone the graciousness of calling them a comrade) by name dropping and ad hominem. I get the sense half the time you don't even know what you're talking about.

'Oh yes... that one is a real Grundrisse comment!" and "Oh I see the worst facets of a regurgitated situationism, here," may be the kind of thing that impresses the muppets at your university debating club (You are a student aren't you? You certainly write like one.) but I can't think of a single instance where you've actually countered anything I've written, beyond merely imperiously asserting some element of the pseudo-dogma you claim to be defending. You make it up as you go along.

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Dworkin

But I have to ask myself how did Dworkin get in these demeaning and violent situations? She was first assaulted at a cinema. Where were her parents? Where were her friends? What sort of cinema was it? She was only nine years old.

Who was the perpetrator? It was dark, is she sure it was a male who assaulted her? Where were all the other people in the cinema? Couldn’t anyone help her? Who was she sitting next to? Did the assault happen in the theatre or in the toilets? What was she wearing at the time? Her overalls surely could have thwarted such an attack!

Where were her friends when she was drugged and raped in a hotel? Why was she vulnerable to attack? Was she trying to prove a point; that a lone woman should be safe any where? Did the rapists know who she was? If John Stoltenberg was her companion for 30 years, where was he?

Why did she marry an abusive man? Was she drawn to his abuse? Why did so much abuse enter her life?

Why did she work as a prostitute? Hasn’t she heard of the Salvos, or other charitable organisations? How can one woman have such a sordid abusive history? How much bad luck can one woman have?

Why did she use the term ‘men’ when she should have used the term

‘some men’?

I like the overall bit, and the unshaven bit. The obesity was probably a sign of her deep misery and vulnerability. Food rarely rapes you, though it can abuse you ; you can allow food to abuse you.

Um. Quite a lot it appears. I don't really get this post.

As far as I'm concerned Dworkin was an authoritarian nutter who sent feminism into the dark ages but that's neither here nor there really.

edit: on the other hand she seemed to catch a lot of folks attention and a lot of people got really inspired to fight for feminism, albeit her brand of it (be that good or bad, and I think it's probably a bit of both). I'm not really a fan of jumping on the recently dead unless they're nazis or popes even if I think their politics sucked. I'm much more bothered by "Porn is evil and SM perpetuates patriarchal sexual violence" Dworkinite prats than I am by Dworkin herself. There's more of them and she's dead. I think a lot of the problem is that my main experience of Dworkin's ideas is through being verbally abused by paternalistic patronising arseholes convinced they hold the authoritative say on what feminism is and that they've got a better hold on and understanding of my gender, my sexuality, my mind, the oppressive forces I face in society and a whole lot of other shit than I do. All that + no real reason to back it up except for a loosely coherent theory which a lot of other "radical feminists" agree with. They start off being against things that are applied to people like manhood or womanhood through circumstance, appearance, social forces, education within society, and lots of other things which they're right to be criticising and then start making essentialisations themselves and deciding they have the right to apply their own sort of bullshit on the people they're trying to liberate in place of the bullshit that stood before in a crazy evangelistic vanguardist way.

Truth is I have no idea about what Dworkin thought about anything. I just know the shit I've had to put up with from her followers and fans.

Cos she was trying to claim that men who did beat and rape women were not anomalies or freaks, but that such antics were endemic to the male persona (machismo or whatever). At least that's what Jess told me. An argument which I find utterly unconvincing btw.

i think phoebe hit the nail on the head, Dworkin, McKinnon and their various followers seem to think they can speak for every women, man and child, it's like a hyper leninism for the bedroom. I am amazed that anyone takes Dworkin serious within contemporary society, I mean she starts from a position of victimhood, solely focuses on victimhood and offers no way out of it. Having quite a few female friends I've found alot of them to be embarassed by the label feminism, and exactly because they equate feminism with being a perpeutal victim, I wonder why?

radical feminism, it's like Foucault never happened....

Worse still: radical feminism, it's like Foucault was working at the same time as them, but they ignored him 'cause he was a man.

I even saw a breath-takingly, buttock-clenchingly piss-poor wadical feminist critique of Foucauldian feminism, entitled, "What does he know?" (emphasis in original).

Can't remember which journal, or the author now. I know that the vile harridan Angela McRobbie loved it, though. Or "that's professor McRobbie to you," as she e-mailed back to one of her (female) postgrads who dared call her Angela. Sisterhood is powerful

What I meant by my post is.

How can one woman get into so many situations of sexual depravity?

From the age of 9, she had a reason to hate 'some men' Her writings stemmed from her self like 'damaged goods' (excuse the terminology) and as a result were fuelled by her hatred of the perpetrators. She reminds me of a woman wronged and her wrath is endless. Her vengeful raw writings remind me somewhat of Sylvia Plath's later nasty jibes, Sylvia's wrath at being 'wronged' was also fierce.

I have a nagging suspicion that Dworkins wrote in that raw and shocking way so that her books would sell and she would be listened to. Even if people believed that she was a nutter, atleast she was being noticed and this probably made her some money. It was one way to make a living I suppose. It is unfortunate that some fanatical feminists might take her writings as gospel.

It is a strange irony that the only reason I have even heard of her was because she died and I unwittingly stumbled upon an obituary with a photography of the overall clad 'unknown'.

I then surfed for info and I have enough info now to know that I can't be bothered reading her books. They are that fraction too sensationalist and edgy in a nasty way.

I can't figure out who has done more to harm the feminist cause Marilyn Monroe or Andrea Dworkins (I just wanted to put those two women in the same sentence so that Andrea would turn in her grave)

Ha!

Welcome to the site, by the way.

Oh balls, yet another Goldsmiths "celebrity" demystified before my very eyes.

Ho hum

edited to regain respect of revol68

butoon i had mucho respect for you until you used that smiley.

And who just used the word "mucho"?

Ping, I think after yesterday's PM embarrassment, you're in no position to make fun of anybody....

ah crap

At least for a few days anyway

I feel I should redress the balance by doing a list of "nice academics I have known." Not today, though.

Well all the bad ones have been from the Media and Communications depatrment anyway, which is officially the Bad Camp. Anthropology rules

Is Goldsmiths Spanish department any good then??

(I'm sick of discussing Dworkin.)

just came back from cuba and in the most unsisterly way possible..... (and i haven't read the thread cause i've got jetlag and i'm keeping to that excuse) but my first reaction is..

Andrea Dworkin dies, aged 58. yessss!!!!!!!!!

i'd have preferred maggie thatcher but you can't have it all...

sorry to turn up at the end of the party but she did for feminism what thatcher did for ideas of social justice.

i'm dissapointed though that i can disappear for ages and noone thought i was dead i was going to hold a mock funeral with photos (and fidel - the little shit - as my invited guest and then poison him with rum punch)

Nah, exploding cigars are better. If it's good enough for the CIA....

their exploding cigars failed though.. the only bit of admiration i have for the man is surviving hundreds of asassination attempts by the CIA. i mean, what calibre of people are the CIA recruiting? either that or their in-house training is shit.

I know, he survived all those assassination attempts and then nearly topped himself tripping over his own feet a few months ago. Maybe the CIA sabotaged the carpet?

Nah, even being that successful at an assassination is way beyond them now.

Actually Marx and Engels shared Dworkin's views on sex. After all, Marx and Engles equated houswives and prostitutes. All sex is rape in the current system.

--roman

marxleninmao.proboards43.com

According to the MIM website, you think Dworkin's too liberal because she refused to assert that all sex is rape. It's like saying all proletrians aren't exploited!

I think they did a bit more with housewifes and prostitutes (and maids) than equate them.