Posted by anthrogirl on 2006-01-12 12:25:31
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Her most famous/controversial book is called Intercourse. I haven't read it, but have read a lot of things where it is discussed.
Mostly I'm just bumping this thread because I'm interested in what people have to say. My view of Dworkin has always been that she was a great feminist thinker with a few misguided ideas. But I wonder, too, if she's been vilified precisely because she was a famous feminist activist. For instance, I'm deeply skeptical of her anti-porn and anti-sex-work activism -- but I think it's as dangerous to uncritically affirm the sex industry. And I worry about some of the more uncritical versions of "pro-sex feminism" that are out there.
It's all very complicated. And I think Dworkin made some really important contributions. And I wish that people had done more serious engagement with her ideas -- the positive and the negative -- rather than dismissing them out of hand,
Dworkin made very important contributions. Her work was used by the Canadian censorship people to block gay and lesbian porn from Canada, and to seize books on anal health a from small gay bookstore. Her work in the US has been good too- she was one of the people who promoted tolerance against differently-pleasured women (swingers, SMers) in the feminist movement, so that many of us are afraid to publically join our other feminist sisters for fear of being humiliated again. She promoted dialogue between men and women by making and insisting upon the unprovable assertion that at least 1/2 of all women have been raped, and by saying that all men are potential rapists. She claimed that all porn was evil and damaging, regardless of audience, purpose, or content; in other words, what you might do in your bedroom with a videocamera is equivalent to a snuff film or Devil in Miss Jones. She also said that all consensual sex between a man and a woman was rape because of the power differential.
Whatever I may think of the porn industry or some male sex fantasies, I don't think Ms. Dworkin was simply slightly misguided. I think she was a very sad, emotionally disturbed woman whose horrifying sexual experiences drove her to the brink- and I say that because I've read Intercourse and some of her other work. She horrifies me. She and Katherine McKinnon are the fundamentalist lunatic fringe of the feminist movement, and their works are filled with hypocrisy and willful myopia about real women and their lives. Women, in fact, do read porn all the time- they call it 'romance novels'. They watch porn- they call it 'Desperate Housewives', or reading up on what Brad and Angelina are doing. Porn isn't always about men dominating women, or about men at all.
I must say that I am not in favor of groups like Cake and Suicide Girls. I don't think Britney Spears and Jenna Jamison are good role models. I dislike mainstream porn because it's almost always insulting to both men and women, and refuses to see women's sexuality as fluid and not necessarily male-centered. However, the truth is most people watch porn because they think sex is dirty, not because they see it as life-affirming or beautiful. Many of my dominatrix friends try to get their clients to see that an exchange of power isn't role reversal- it means both people have something to bring to the table, and it doesn't have to be about pain or degradation.
Posted by xuli on 2006-02-08 15:54:45
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Oh also, I recommend an awesome book called, "This Bridge Called My Back," ed. Gloria Anzaldua. It was a pretty eye-opening book for this white, middle class feminist!
Sorry to be slightly O/T, but that was edited by both Gloria Anzaldua and Cherrie Moraga. They both have other books of their own that are quite wonderful as well.
And Anthrogirl, I know what you mean. I find it quite saddening that when Anzaldua passed away two years ago there wasn't anything close to the response there has been to Friedan, because Anzaldua (and Moraga, who is still living) have done so much for the feminist movement in terms of guiding it towards being a movement of liberation for women of all races and social classes.
I have to admit I'm a little uncomfortable with your phrase "the Ayatollah Khomeini of feminism" though. Just because, well, it seems important to respect the specificity of the two situations.
Posted by anthrogirl on 2006-02-07 08:21:28
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I'm a bit of a revisionist, perhaps because I was there to see part of the Revolution, and to be directly affected by it. I have similar problems with Andrea Dworkin (see that thread)- actually more, since I see Dworkin as the Ayatollah Khomeni of feminism. I actually read The Feminine Mystique. Let me tell you something- my grandmother would have given her left boob to be poor, suffering Betty Friedan. It would have been a considerable leg up.
Liberation is not liberation if it only gives middle-class white women privileges. That is mostly what it did. Black women were for the most part not liberated by the feminist movement- they were liberated by the Civil Rights movement, which emphasized their humanity. I do not see most modern-day feminists talking about the rights of poor women, or about how programs like 'Take Your Daughter to Work Day' only work for women who have offices, not for women who work as waitresses or on factory floors. The assumption behind such ideas is that all women moved up the ladder and want to show off where they work. That's palin old bullshit. It's also plain old bullshit that all women feel the same about being sexually objectified (as a woman who has DD boobs and has been harassed on the street but who has also been called sexy by nice men, I can see two sides to that issue in a world where women who don't look like pale sticks are often thought of as ugly), about sexual pleasure (most 'modern' books act like anal sex is nasty and 'kinky' sex is too disturbing- which may explain why so many men look at porn and go to whores), physical display (if most women have a choice between the asexual soccer mom look and looking like a genuine woman or butch, I know which one most would choose), and class (not all of us want to move up, since movement often means becoming deracinated, or being exposed to liberal patronization and racism on a daily basis- personally, some of us would rather deal with a Klansman than liberal do-goody types who will send our children to their schools in exchange for our gratitude).
This does not mean that women who are queer, non-white, and/or poor cannot be feminists. It's justthat our brands of feminism might not be a one size fits most kind.
Posted by h_pets360 on 2006-02-09 03:10:26
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I think the problem with mainstream feminism, just like mainstream anything, is that it tends to be controlled, inadvertantly or not, by the people in power. and the people that are in power, or less restricted, in the feminist movement are middle and upper class white women. So poor white women, and the vast majority of women who are feminists who are also racial minorities get ignored.
there are pockets, and an increasing awareness. i'd like to say this is a good start, but it's a very very slow, very very late start.
Posted by goodwolve on 2006-02-11 10:39:07
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It is interesting to note that as a 36 year old woman I was in the wake of the feminist movement and crafts, cooking and anything that was overtly "feminine" was struck from my education. I had no home ec or any other form of teaching on these things. I am grateful for that actually because I was allowed to do many other things in school that weren't offered to the generation before me. And now I am able to find craft/womens art on my own and in my own way.
Also, I find that my daughter (15) is more able to express her very left thoughts in craft more so then I am. I have a "what would they think" moment and she doesn't care what they think. She expresses it in stitching words, or using symbols that reflect her very left values.
The quilt information is wonderful. I remember reading something by a childrens author that illustrated that beautifully.
Posted by Marina-Trilobyte on 2006-02-09 08:09:49
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I think the problem with mainstream feminism, just like mainstream anything, is that it tends to be controlled, inadvertantly or not, by the people in power. and the people that are in power, or less restricted, in the feminist movement are middle and upper class white women.
Unfortunately, attempts to address this have a great tendency to end up alienating the groups they're trying to reach out to. It's very difficult to genuinely understand someone else's truth and the misunderstandings call for a lot of patience.
And for better or worse, activism tends to either be a leisure activity or a necessary activity. So there is a great gap between the people involved in political movements.
Posted by xuli on 2005-03-04 11:51:06
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Thanks for posting that review! It's been a few years since I've read Manifesta!, and I'm not about to claim that it was the be-all, end-all of feminist reading material (I excitedly bought the book, and ended up selling it on Amazon.com). At the same time, I think the author of the review has an axe to grind with feminism (well, that's pretty explicit with the sentence "I tend not to like feminist writing as a whole", isn't it?). I mean, I don't understand the point of having someone hostile to feminism do a review of a feminist book, you know? Usually, with non-fiction book reviews, you have someone equipped to assess the book's contribution to its field -- someone who understands the field and is capable of understanding the critical debates within it. I don't find that to be the case with this review writer (I mean, she claims to know a lot about feminist writing/history, and then claims that a big problem with feminism is "man-hating" -- the most simplistic characterization of feminism imaginable!)
She raises a few good points: Manifesta! is gimmicky, it claims to offer a comprehensive view of feminism but it isn't particularly well-researched, comprehensive or scholarly. OK -- so what? I would not use Manifesta! to teach an Introduction to Women's Studies in a university setting, nor would I cite it in a scholarly paper or article on feminism. But I would totally give it to a young woman I'm mentoring, use it to introduce my little sister or young cousin to feminism, something like that. It seems to me like the author of this review is asking the book to be something it's not, and that isn't fair. The book should be assessed on its own terms.
And accusing the authors of man-hating? I'm sorry. That's a tactic that's been used to bait feminists since Susan B. Anthony, and it's boring. The anti-feminists just need to think of something new. There's a big difference between hating patriarchy, or hating the social construction of gender in our culture which puts women into certain narrow roles and puts men in to certain other narrow roles, and hating men. It's just not the same thing. If anything, feminism benefits men: How many men in the world don't fit into the narrow, socially-constructed category of ideal masculinity? They need feminism too, even if they stand to lose some level of unearned privilege from it.
With that said, I think the author of the review brings up two valid points:
* Inga Muscio. I'm sorry, I do have an axe to grind with Inga Muscio. I think her ideas are often dangerous to the feminist movement. She has an essentialist conception of gender, and her writings on abortion are dangerously close to anti-choice. It did annoy me that the writers of Manifesta! chose to give her so much credibility, because her writings are not the best example of feminist writing. At all.
* Racism. I agree that feminism needs to really take a long, hard look at itself on this question. Some kinds of feminism have been very good on race; many have not. Many feminist movements/groups/waves have incorporated token lip service to the concerns of women of color and working-class women without fully incorporating their perspectives, and that is a real problem that feminism needs to address. (Of course, it's a real problem in society in general.) Just as one example: I was shocked, reading recent threads here and on Glitter about the so-called Fourth Wave of feminism, to find that commonly-accepted understanding of feminism's waves is that the First Wave was the suffragists, the Second Wave was the women of the 1970's who made so many strides in ending employment discrimmination, passing Roe v. Wade, etc., and that the Third Wave is thought to be Riot Grrrl and other 1990's young/punk feminism. I've always thought of the Third Wave of feminism being launched when women of color like Barbara Smith, Cherrie Moraga, Gloria Anzaldua and the Combahee River Collective published their critiques of the racism of the Second Wave in the early 1980s. They wrote some amazing books (This Bridge Called My Back and All the Blacks Are Men, All the Women Are White, But Some of us Are Brave are the two big ones), and really took the first step in having race, class and sexuality incorporated into feminist perspectives in a sustained and substantive way. While Riot Grrrl was important to me personally as a teenager, I think that the work of these women was much more important to the sustained power of the movement as a whole, and it does upset me that their work continues to be given token lip service within the movement as a whole. Their work enriched the movement in a very important, powerful way. It does bother me that Riot Grrrl is presented as more important than this important turn in Manifesta!
So that's my two cents on the whole thing. Man, I can't be concise about anything! Sorry.
Posted by anthrogirl on 2006-02-16 09:01:29
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It is interesting to note that as a 36 year old woman I was in the wake of the feminist movement and crafts, cooking and anything that was overtly "feminine" was struck from my education. I had no home ec or any other form of teaching on these things. I am grateful for that actually because I was allowed to do many other things in school that weren't offered to the generation before me. And now I am able to find craft/womens art on my own and in my own way.
Also, I find that my daughter (15) is more able to express her very left thoughts in craft more so then I am. I have a "what would they think" moment and she doesn't care what they think. She expresses it in stitching words, or using symbols that reflect her very left values.
The quilt information is wonderful. I remember reading something by a childrens author that illustrated that beautifully.
http://goodwolve.blogs.com
In a way, I was very lucky. My high school did actually teach cooking (it had been all girls up until the year I entered, and so both the boys and girls took cooking class). My mom and dad had started me on cooking early though, and my mom had a sewing machine. I do too, but I haven't used it in years. I need to dig it out this weekend to finish a project- hope I can remember how to use it.
I crochet on the subway. The other day I saw another crocheter, and I smile. Yesterday in my mythology class we were talking about women and textiles, and I passed around a bootie I had made and explained how I had dyed and crocheted the wool myself. I wanted my students to understand that even in ancient Greece, women had power- pride and excellence are not just expressed on the battlefield.
I've found that while I have 'what would they think' moments, they don't happen vey often. Two reasons why- because I'm old enough now to have some confidnece in myself, and because by growing up when I did, which gave me a web of invisibility (it often happens that way when you are part of a minority group, and back then black ideas of beauty and style didn't often appear inthe mainstream press), I didn't feel like anyone would really notice what I did anyway. It sounds similar for your daughter, in that she's not self-conscious.
Here's a link to 'Show Way'. It's a great book, and not just for children. It was so good it made me cry.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0399237496/sr=8-1/qid=1140102222/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-3981127-4604806?%5Fencoding=UTF8
Posted by soapandwater on 2004-12-26 12:12:35
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I guess "feminism" as a word still works because women still make up half (a little over half, I think) of the population. At the very least, you know, there should be equality in that. That's why, I THINK, "feminism" still does its job.
Whether or not feminists choose to take on other things (like racism, classism, etc) is up to them, but by confronting all the various forms of oppression, you are able to free women more and more.
I mean, if there's a lower class person of color being told by the government that if she gets married to some abusive asshole, she'll get more money, well-- maybe that's when more than one thing needs to be evaluated to further accomplish the goals of feminism.
The feminist movement had for a long time neglected to include gays, trans, etc, and for that, I think the movement suffered.
I do think there are certain things that define feminism, despite what some people might argue. I think you can definitely say a lot of feminism is about choice, but a lot of people have manipulated that into, "Oh, I CHOOSE to believe that getting a facelift and being skinny is my way of expressing feminism. I CHOOSE to barter sex for power with my husband."
If THAT'S feminism nowadays, then maybe a new word needs to be created because I'm not buying that (and a lot of women do, probably some reading this thread and getting highly irritated.)
I think it's a good question. And I was relieved when I saw it because I was like, "OH NO. Mindshare can't POSSIBLY be asking for definitions of feminism." And you weren't.
Posted by aubrigail on 2005-01-07 13:08:10
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Wow this thread puts so many thoughts in my head that I don't know where to start...
first of all, I think Feminism is still a useful word, but as it's grown to emcompass more issues and viewpoints, it's getting harder to define and view as a group. It's hard to say "Feminists want...." beyond equal rights because there are so many different issues (some of us want it to be easier to work outside of the home, some of us want to feel valued by society even if we decide that staying at home is what we want to do) which brings me to the other things I've been thinking about...
Just the other day I was remembering an Oprah show where working mothers and stay at home mothers were AT EACH OTHER'S THROATS...attacking each other (verbally/emotionally) and making generalizations...It was awful...and it got me thinking why in the HELL do we do this? and it seems to happen a lot (even seems to be happening here to some degree)
It's like either way you lose...if you stay at home, you're undervalued for the work you do, some people will assume that you're stupid (I have a very intelligent friend who battles this) and some people will generalize that you're lazy or rolling back the feminist movement...
and then if you work, you don't get to see your kids as much as you'd like, you may get attacked for being "selfish" or not being a good enough mother, some people may try to make you feel guilty...
and then after we've all been sufficiently beaten up over our choices (or circumstances) then all that societal crap spills out and we turn it on each other. I don't know what we can do about it other than put ourselves in other people's shoes...yeah its not right to assume the working mothers feed their kids only junk food, but how much crap has Boheme-Anne gotten for choosing to stay at home? Is she reluctant to call herself a feminist because she's had feminists tell her that she's made the wrong decision? Or that she feels like feminism doesn't really include her because she enjoys taking on a more "traditional" role?
I just think there's someting wrong when women don't feel like they can call themselves feminists, because as women we should all feel comforatble using that term to describe ourselves because for me at least, Feminism means believeing in the equality to live the life I choose and do what I want (bake cakes or play football or run a huge company)
Really, equal pay and all are important issues, but I don't think we're going to get anywhere until women stop cutting each other down (whether or not it's happening here, it is DEFINITELY happening in the real world) and start valuing each other and recognizing the challenges that we share regardless of whether we're working or staying at home or having children or not having children or cooking wonderful meals or living on Ramen....
Posted by TemperTantrum on 2004-07-19 18:18:26
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Feminism needs to quit being such a dirty word. I believe in equality for women. I'm a feminist.
Sometimes, feminism can be kind of limiting, and historically the feminist movement(s) have been seen as white, straight and middle-class, and that needs to change. So, while I can appreciate the problems with various feminists groups/movements/doctrines, I don't want to throw out the baby with the bathwater.
That's my less than two cents as I am kinda cracked out on Benadryl for my awful awful mosquito bites.
Posted by TemperTantrum on 2004-07-19 18:17:22
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Feminism needs to quit being such a dirty word. I believe in equality for women. I'm a feminist.
Sometimes, feminism can be kind of limiting, and historically the feminist movement(s) have been seen as white, straight and middle-class, and that needs to change. So, while I can appreciate the problems with various feminists groups/movements/doctrines, I don't want to throw out the baby with the bathwater.
That's my less than two cents as I am kinda cracked out on Benadryl for my awful awful mosquito bites.
Posted by kangarookid on 2004-07-21 10:51:35
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I was born a feminist.
I will die a feminist.
I get a little tweaked with it sometimes...like this morning reading an article in Bitch basically saying that I'm failing the feminist movement by raising my children myself instead of paying someone to do it for me and that in doing so I am not working.
Just because I choose to breastfeed my children and am not contributing to some huge mega-conglomerate capitialist-pig of a formula company like Ross Labs or Nestle doesn't fucking mean I'm not feeding my kids. Food is food and work is work. If you pay to eat or grow your own...OR if you pay to have someone keep your kids or you raise them yourself.
If I pay someone to keep my children, isn't that person working? Why is it not working when I do it myself? That's some fucked up logic there. I don't care what wave you're riding.
Way to denigrate! Bring down your fellow woman! Woohoo! There's some feminism in your eye!
Dammit.
This whole notion is exactly why my grandmother refused to call herself a feminist even though she was one through and through. I am a feminist, but I get tired of the bullshit. I am a feminist, but I refuse to characterized solely by that belief system. I am a feminist, but that is not the entirety of me.
I am a woman with a full and enriched life who is and has loved well, has earned well, has learned well, has fought well, has and does live well and I believe that all women (all people!) should be able to do the same thing. I believe that we should be able to choose our lives rather than have them forced upon us because of our gender. I believe that the choices we make should be respected whether we are wiping butts or writing theses. To do anything else is distinctly un-feminist. And it turns my stomach....and pisses me off.
Posted by craftytricks on 2004-12-15 14:18:23
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I really believe that being a woman and a feminist doesn't need a definition, there are no set rules.
I agree, very much so. Without strict definitions and rules, the term 'feminism' can bring a whole lot more to the table.
Also, I think it's crucial when thinking of the feminist movement to remember that not all feminists are public feminists. It's good and it's very important to have public feminists to organize events and start discussions and make their voices heard. But I think the private feminists, the ones who find their happy balance in their homes or with their family or with their work, may just be the real backbone to any sort of feminist movement 'revolution.' When I think of an actual acceptance of a new domesticity, I don't see it happening because of marches or defiance or shaking our fists at men. I see it starting in the private sphere with a division of chores or a flexible work schedule or a local craft fair. If each woman were to embrace and live her own definition of feminism, think of how far the movement would progress.
