"Men know everything - all of them- all the time - no matter how stupid or inexperienced or arrogant or ignorant they are.”

February 20, 2008 9:22 AM

Adding to today's cavalcade of posts tagged with feminism, here's a short, non-comprehensive post about controversial and awesome feminist Andrea Dworkin. Usually criticized without being read or understood, Dworkin's writing offers a lot to love or hate. Here's a link to an archive of some of her short stories, essays, and excerpts from her books, so that you can get to know this brilliant and singular mind for yourself. I particularly recommend the beautiful short story "the simple story of a lesbian girlhood" as a place to start. It's very different from her non-fiction. There's also something to be said for this strange little eulogy posted shortly after her death in, of all places, National Review Online.
posted by 1 (42 comments total)

Why or how is this a better post than it was 24 hours ago?
posted by Dr. Wu at 9:26 AM on February 20, 2008

It's like deja vu all over again.
posted by rtha at 9:28 AM on February 20, 2008

Yeah, long story, but I was told that it was OK to repost it. Talk to Jessamyn.
posted by 1 at 9:29 AM on February 20, 2008

Bwuh?
posted by kittens for breakfast at 9:31 AM on February 20, 2008

Aw, just read the short story and imagine that it's a warm summer evening, Kittens F. B.!

That's really all I'm hoping for, plus tomorrow is my birthday so pleeeeease?
posted by 1 at 9:36 AM on February 20, 2008

Well, at least it's not Google reader or my mind that's going anyway.
posted by Skorgu at 9:36 AM on February 20, 2008

I thought short, non-comprehensive posts about controversial and awesome feminist Andrea Dworkin were a Tuesday thing.
posted by farishta at 9:37 AM on February 20, 2008 [2 favorites]

My favorite part is the inflammatory pull quote in the title of the thread.... and then everything else saying "Aw... c'mon she so misunderstood..."
posted by tkchrist at 9:38 AM on February 20, 2008

I know, right. I think the mods just wanted to squash that rapidly-growing tradition.
posted by 1 at 9:40 AM on February 20, 2008

You know, that short story really is pretty good. Is the non-capitalization a statement, or is she just tryin' to look arty?
posted by Bookhouse at 9:43 AM on February 20, 2008

This is making me like her better today again, how?
posted by SPUTNIK at 9:46 AM on February 20, 2008

I think that it's intended to make the sentences flow together more, without pauses between them, as the story is presented as a woman's stream of consciousness. That's just my guess though.

In re posts about how this was posted yesterday: If you have a problem with Jessamyn deleting my post then telling me that it was fine to repost it today, please take it up with her via mail or on MetaTalk. Please don't take it out on my poor innocent post who, btw, tragically lost her twin yesterday.
posted by 1 at 9:49 AM on February 20, 2008

Stop modding your thread, 1.

Also, is the lack of capitalization in that story Dworkin's, or is it the fault of whomever transcribed it?
posted by klangklangston at 10:05 AM on February 20, 2008

I notice that the post title has changed slightly.
posted by Class Goat at 10:15 AM on February 20, 2008

24 hours is a long time on the internet. I was interested in this yesterday, but now it just seems old. ; )
posted by asok at 10:23 AM on February 20, 2008 [1 favorite]

Metafilter: 24 hours is a long time on the internet.
posted by The White Hat at 10:28 AM on February 20, 2008

igniting that most sterile of academic debates, about "identity", has certainly created a lot of schoolteacher jobs for many unreadable writers these last 30 years (it is impossible to call them philosophers -- maybe pop sociologists?); but since what really counts -- just ask any African American who lived down South before 1964 -- is rights, not confused chatter about identity, one can safely assume that a large part of the published work of various Puritans, censors and outright bores of which Dworkin's is a glorious specimen, has been probably useless and possibly harmful to the much more relevant cause of finally making possible for women to achieve equal rights.
posted by matteo at 10:29 AM on February 20, 2008

And here I thought Dworkin was just the character in Roger Zelazny's Amber series that created the magic deck of cards, and had sex with a unicorn.
posted by Eekacat at 10:29 AM on February 20, 2008 [1 favorite]

adding to today's cavalcade of posts tagged with feminism

Today's cavalcade? Huh?
posted by dersins at 10:32 AM on February 20, 2008

Andrea Dworkin is the reason I became a lesbian.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 10:32 AM on February 20, 2008 [2 favorites]

Matteo: nice text block, but Dworkin's appraoch was always from a civil rights perspective, and she specifically opposed all right-wing anti-porn that were based on the concept of "obscenity," to which she was also opposed.

Plus I think it's pretty hard to read one of her novels and come away with the impression that she's a Puritan, censor, or even bore.
posted by 1 at 10:41 AM on February 20, 2008

1? Go sit in the corner. Or something.
posted by katillathehun at 10:48 AM on February 20, 2008

and she specifically opposed all right-wing anti-porn that were based on the concept of "obscenity,


nobody told Ed Meese because her delirium in front of Meese's McCarthyite bunch won her accolades from the same people one does not imagine being radical feminists like, at all.

useful idiots, etc. (of the dead only the truth)


it's pretty hard to read one of her novels

oh yes, God, yes, it is. I'd even say "impossible", hard does not begin to describe it.


nice text block

nice moderating your own -- very weak -- post. and nice tantrum you had yesterday
posted by matteo at 10:49 AM on February 20, 2008

There's nothing like leaving a thread to be free to take on a life of it's own.
posted by asok at 10:52 AM on February 20, 2008

OK, I understand why one would want to help people understand the beauty and strength of one's favourite authors writing. However, this may not be the best way to do it. I am not familiar with many threads that have gone well under this kind of moderation. Invites the trolls, you see. /meta
posted by asok at 10:56 AM on February 20, 2008

That short story illustrates perfectly how awkward sex is to a young person no matter where you come from.

Or is that just me?
posted by grubi at 11:07 AM on February 20, 2008

Matteo: It's true that Dworkin was cynically applauded by some right-wingers because they shared some common ends and benefited from their support, but she was always careful to make clear where she disagreed with them and certainly did not compromise her own goals. Again, her approach to pornography, and women's status generally, was a rights-based approach. It's certainly fair to disagree that pornography represents an infringement on women's rights, but I don't think that makes her in any way Puritanical, and I'm curious to know where you see that in her writing.
posted by 1 at 11:09 AM on February 20, 2008

Seriously, 1, you need to stop moderating your own post. Really. Even if people say things you disagree with. If what you have to say wasn't covered by your post in the first place, then you should make a stronger post next time. But otherwise just breathe deeply and relax, and read what other people have to say on the subject without arguing with them.
posted by cerebus19 at 11:14 AM on February 20, 2008

Seriously, 1, you need to stop moderating your own post. Really. Even if people say things you disagree with. If what you have to say wasn't covered by your post in the first place, then you should make a stronger post next time. But otherwise just breathe deeply and relax, and read what other people have to say on the subject without arguing with them.
posted by cerebus19 at 11:14 AM on February 20 [+] [!]

Eponysterical?

(Too obscure?)
posted by kittens for breakfast at 11:17 AM on February 20, 2008

It's also not hard to argue that rights stem from identity, which opens up a whole other theory discussion.
posted by klangklangston at 11:18 AM on February 20, 2008

It's also not hard to argue that white men in the western world use "identity politics" pretty much constantly and just never get called on it. If your identity is the default, it's easy to think everybody else is doing something you're not.
posted by hydropsyche at 11:25 AM on February 20, 2008 [1 favorite]

I thought that URL looked familiar. Most of those links are from nostatusquo.com, which is a Nikki Craft website. You may remember Nikki Craft from such posts as this, this, and this.
posted by cerebus19 at 11:26 AM on February 20, 2008

igniting that most sterile of academic debates, about "identity", has certainly created a lot of schoolteacher jobs for many unreadable writers these last 30 years (it is impossible to call them philosophers -- maybe pop sociologists?); but since what really counts -- just ask any African American who lived down South before 1964 -- is rights, not confused chatter about identity, one can safely assume that a large part of the published work of various Puritans, censors and outright bores of which Dworkin's is a glorious specimen, has been probably useless and possibly harmful to the much more relevant cause of finally making possible for women to achieve equal rights.

Let's ask one!

when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she cannot go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her little eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see the depressing clouds of inferiority begin to form in her little mental sky, and see her begin to distort her little personality by unconsciously developing a bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son asking in agonizing pathos, "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross-country drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger" and your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and when your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodyness"—then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over and men are no longer willing to be plunged into an abyss of injustice where they experience the bleakness of corroding despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience ...

Letter from Birmingham Jail, 1963.

Identity is a part of rights, because people who identify or are identified in a certain group are sometimes denied their rights. So yeah, figuring out that identity is very important. Discussions of identity are not separate from a struggle for equal rights any more than they replace they struggle. We discuss identity every day, even if we're not thinking about it in formal academic terms.
posted by Tehanu at 11:29 AM on February 20, 2008

Thank you for this post.

I agree with the premise that Dworkin should be read as one reads a serious, challenging writer -- give her respect and listen. She is very clear and direct. If you can't do that, perhaps you can't listen to other women in your life; you might be surprised. "She meant it" is exactly right.

"Right-Wing Women" is a tour-de-force.
posted by lathrop at 11:46 AM on February 20, 2008

I loved reading Dworkin's first few books and then she lost me as she went on. I hated that she partnered with McKinnon on bullshit censorship legislation that doesn't work and I was sad that she wasn't able to grow as feminism grew. Her death touched me pretty deeply as she was a major early influence and I particularly love Susie Bright's last words about her as they seemed to sum up what I felt too.

I'm still confused about how exactly she died - as far as I know there was never any media about an autopsy.

1- people 'round these parts often react badly to a couple things that are in this post. One is having a sort of hobby-horse issue that you hold tenaciously too. I've been dissed for it here and it's just not the style that seems to work well here. Most metafilter posts are more like: “Look, I found something cool, what do you think?” and sometimes people like it, sometimes they don’t, and the happy contributor just has to accept that not everything will be popular. The other issue here is "babysitting the post" where you're coming back and answering each person's comments. For whatever reason, folks tend to react badly to that. Again, it reflects a sort of unwillingness to just accept when folks don’t resonate with where you’re coming from. Like I said, I’ve been there myself.
posted by serazin at 11:47 AM on February 20, 2008

I've long liked her fiction and quasi-sorta-fiction, but of course it's all so painful and horrific that it tempts me to a certain reductionism.

As in, I look at her non-fiction screeds, and think, "Jesus, with a life like that, no wonder she thinks that way"-- biography predicts theory, etc.

That probably wasn't the result she intended.

Consciously, anyway.
posted by darth_tedious at 11:51 AM on February 20, 2008

Here's a pretty good alternative view of Dworkin written just after her death. I'm not saying I agree with everything in it, necessarily, but I thought it would be useful to the discussion.
posted by cerebus19 at 11:53 AM on February 20, 2008

Here's what Susie Bright had to say (some NSFW pics on page) about Dworkin after her death.
posted by cerebus19 at 11:58 AM on February 20, 2008

Yeah, MetaFilter is like Coffee Talk with Linda Richman. You're just supposed to give us a topic, get verklempt and let us talk amongst ourselves. Thank god it's not dedicated to Barbara Streisand.
posted by adamdschneider at 12:52 PM on February 20, 2008

She certainly has a flair for the dramatic quote...

Men are distinguished from women by their commitment to do violence rather than to be victimized by it.

Only when manhood is dead - and it will perish when ravaged femininity no longer sustains it - only then will we know what it is to be free.

Seduction is often difficult to distinguish from rape. In seduction, the rapist often bothers to buy a bottle of wine.

The common erotic project of destroying women makes it possible for men to unite into a brotherhood; this project is the only firm and trustworthy groundwork for cooperation among males and all male bonding is based on it.

I want to see a man beaten to a bloody pulp with a high-heel shoved in his mouth, like an apple in the mouth of a pig.

Heterosexual intercourse is the pure, formalized expression of contempt for women's bodies.

The traditional flowers of courtship are the traditional flowers of the grave, delivered to the victim before the kill. The cadaver is dressed up and made up and laid down and ritually violated and consecrated to an eternity of being used

Being female in this world is having been robbed of the potential for human choice by men who love to hate us

Seems like a classic misandronist...
posted by SweetJesus at 1:18 PM on February 20, 2008

Yay, context means nothing!
posted by mandymanwasregistered at 1:29 PM on February 20, 2008

Got a source for those, Jesus?

Plus, didn't we do all of this when she died? I feel like these are all the exact same comments and arguments, and that Suzie Bright thing was already linked to death.
posted by klangklangston at 1:33 PM on February 20, 2008