andrea dworkin is dead. (but her rampaging idiot ideas trample on.) here's queerday's sum-uppance
Pissed-off lesbian-with-a-husband Andrea Dworkin, who posited that all male-female intercourse was by definition rape, and that pornography was at the root of crimes against women, has died at the age of 58 after a long illness. She was working on a book with the working title "Writing America: How Novelists Invented and Gendered a Nation," when she died, said her husband, John Stoltenberg, an editor for AARP. They were together for more than 35 years.note to the readership: we all say stupid things in our lives, but dworkin's work had a rather nasty effect on the world.
link to the daily scotsman article. thanks, queerday.
in other news,
queerday also reports that president clinton called arthur finkelstein "self-loathing and sad". here's their link to the new york times article in question, handily entitled "Clinton Says Gay Opponent of His Wife May Be 'Self-Loathing'".
3 comments:
porn back then was just cheesy and riddikulus, but pretty fuckin' hysterical. even in the 80's when my friend brought over her brother's smut magazines, and about ten of us would sit there giggling to UPS man and bored housewife, both of whom had these retarded expressions on their faces. there was this overall sense of playfulness -- sort of like pam and tommy lee's stolen tape. sex was depicted as being silly and fun. people get excited, and say silly things and end up in silly positions.
however, i've caught glimpses of the new "gonzo" style porn, which i would admit is pretty degrading to women, and it's just disturbing to watch a woman in obvious pain - not an "ow, hee hee! that's big, ow! hee hee!" but in a "when will this stop?!" way (whether it is "fantasy" or not doesn't matter to me - the fact is that in some cases, the girl just looks unhappy) as four guys are ravaging her body and calling her degrading names and sticking her head in a toilet -- and then realizing that, yes, men do get off on it (men are comfortable telling me this crap for some reason - sometimes i wish they wouldn't). so i don't know. perhaps it's a "fear factor" sort of thing, and people just like to see others suffer. or maybe the men who watch this stuff are just taking their frustrations out on the last woman who rejected them in a way that doesn't harm anyone directly. but yeah, i'd say this: censorship bad. and i don't think there is a direct causation - or even attenuated - between porn and violence against women. but people do need to take a look at what's out there and think about why the degradation of women in some of the best selling volumes is celebrated.
my girlfriend and i were bored last week and we went trotting through the adult section of a video store, and the majority of the stuff is just nasty gangbang "cumslutwhore" crap. it was slightly vexing. i did get a few giggles out of some of the titles that parodied famous movies and the gay male porn, but to be honest, i left kind of disturbed. the library was definitely populated heavily by stuff you wouldn't see at toys in babeland (an excellent store!!!) where the smut is geared towards a women-friendly audience.
okay, i've babbled on long enough. i'll admit in not being a porn connoiseur, so this could be off base, or maybe i just hang out with disturbed guys, but it's just the impression that i get.
i'm not disagreeing with you, just laying out my feelings a bit more clearly. my essential take on the situation is this:
1. i like porn
2. i recognise the potential of porn to desensitise and become addictive for many people
3. censorship is bad
4. dworkin allied with the christiaNazi right to suppress free speech
porn is a complicated issue, and andrea dworkin was a crazy wingnut unable to grasp the complexity or subtlety of the issue.
for some personal reasons, she made porn her cause célèbre and therefore pushed überfeminist insanity into the mainstream for discussion; this was not worth the fallout and she never apologised for her demonisation of everything with an XY chromosome (including transsexuals of all genres, including FTMs equally).
i applaud intelligent discussions of rape and sexual exploitation and gonzo porn (ick!), but she was never a part of those conversations. she was a post-biblical hyperprude.
hrm... lemme articulate this better. my concern is that, since there is a rise of this new type of amateurish bordering-on-violent degrade-women porn, it exists because there is a demand for it. so, rather than it being a **cause** for society's ills, it is a symptom of something kind of icky going on in society that produces the demand. if it were a fringe phenomenon, then i'd say "yeah, whatever" but it isn't - the stuff is the best selling crap out there. like i said, i don't believe in censorship, but i do believe that we have to figure out why so many men indulge in this type of portrayal of women as objects to be abused, as opposed to being simply objectified and appreciated as sexual beings (which i have no problem with). like i said, this stuff is pretty revolting, but it's become pretty mainstream, and that disturbs me. i'd like to see a study on it.
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