Andrea Dworkin: An Example of Injustice in Literary Academia

[Mark]

The late Andrea Dworkin, a radical feminist and a brilliant author and theoretician, wrote a book called Intercourse. She was immediately accused of having said that all sex is rape.

Anyone who actually read the book (I have, and there's a copy on my bookshelf) would know that isn't what she said. She said that sex which wasn't mutual and reciprocal, which consisted only of one person doing something to another rather than two people doing something together, was rape.

Dworkin explained that in male/female intercourse, the male penetrates the female and the female engulfs the male. This is, in mutual, reciprocal intercourse, usually simultaneous. But if the female is not an active partner and is simply penetrated by the male, even if the act is consensual, it is rape, not sex. In countries where young girls are given in marriage to older males, this may be the only kind of intercourse they ever experience. In patriarchal societies where females are expected to submit to males, it is not uncommon for any active participation in intercourse by the female (no less actual enjoyment of the act) to be considered improper and immoral. A female who actively participated in and enjoyed sex, would be considered a whore.

I had a long online argument about this with a male Orthodox Jewish Israeli settler. He insisted that all heterosexual sex was penetration of the female by the male. He was totally incapable of grasping the concept that the female might be the active partner or that the act could be mutual and reciprocal, rather than just the male penetrating the female. According to his beliefs, sex was something that males did to females, not something that males and females did with each other.

Not only was the false allegation that Dworkin had said that all sex was rape so widely propagated that Dworkin became the most hated female in the world, but it led to her being given a date rape drug and raped in France, an event that caused her to feel so deeply humiliated and depressed that she died not long afterward. As she was old, fat, and unattractive (Rush Limbaugh is an example of a male who was old, fat, and unattractive, and whose vilification of feminists didn't harm his career), and as she was unconscious during the act (she woke up to find herself in such a position that it was obvious she had been raped even though she had no memory of it), the rape was apparently due to anger by ignorant males who believed the lies and thought they were getting revenge on a feminist who'd said that all sex was rape. What was done to her was exactly what she'd written about--there was nothing mutual about it. The rapists hadn't wanted to have sex with her, they wanted to fuck her over and they did.

Many highly respected authors and academics and even some self-proclaimed feminists repeated the lie without ever reading the book. Very few copies were sold.

In most cases, anyone who critiques a book in such a way as to make it obvious that they hadn't actually read the book, would not be considered to be a respected or reliable teacher or academic. A student who did that probably wouldn't get a passing grade.

In this case, I know of nobody whose academic career suffered because they repeated something that wasn't true in criticizing a book that they obviously hadn't read. Some even claimed to be admirers of Dworkin and eulogized her after her death, while continuing to repeat the lie.

That's okay. Life isn't fair and nobody ever said that it was. But I reserve the right to remain pissed off about injustice, however weird it may make me seem.

[Mark]

Thanks, Curt.

I was able to access and print out the first fred, but I haven't finished reading it.

Usually my words disappear into the ether. I don't trust publishers. I fully believe that by putting an anonymous blurb on the book's jacket that misstated the premise of Intercourse, it was the publisher who was responsible for the false meme that turned out to be disastrous for Andrea Dworkin. I've looked at self-publishing, but my one attempt to turn a few pages into a .pdf file failed miserably and that was the only type of file they'd accept. That was a few years ago, and there are probably other and better self-publishing sites around by now, so I should check again. Anyway, there are very few places I can post, and in most cases I failed to download what I'd written before I was banned, so my words were lost, at least to me.

I found Pan's post at the end of the second fred (I read his post, but only skimmed the fred), and of course I couldn't have seen it because I'd been banned. It is indeed an excellent post (other than assuming I'd read something I'm unfamiliar with), and supportive of what Pan assumed to be my position. Apparently DoubleHelix first deleted my posts when I was banned, and then put some of them back later on to show why I'd been banned. I had asked to be able to download the topics, but I don't think I had time and I couldn't have downloaded posts that were deleted when I was banned, so I'm very grateful that you've made this available to me. I had simply assumed that my posts had been deleted forever and I had no way of knowing otherwise.

In printing out the second fred, my computer seems to have messed up, as what is only one page online, appears to be 61 pages in the printer setup and pages 14 through 42 came out blank,

Now I'll have to look for the previous fred, "Can Music Be Evil?" Okay, found it, but Kwadwo's post from that fred that I'd copied to the gender fred, is no longer in the music/evil fred, not even in the section removed to flames. What Pan took to be my "request" was actually my response to Kwadwo's post. And Kwadwo's post was a way of attacking me for something I'd said in an earlier fred, which I can't find, but was probably a discussion with Mizz Grizz. Not having been there, Pan didn't see the thing develop, and key posts in previous freds appear to have been permanently deleted.

I'm going to a talk by Bill Fletcher from the Black Commentator this afternoon, but I'll try to sort through this when I get back.

Yes, Curt, due to something I had posted on SC, I was invited to RBC when only DoubleHelix and Kwadwo were there, I invited you, Sept. 3, 2005, according to the "joined" stats, and we started posting a lot of stuff and more people were invited and it grew. Gosh, if only Double & Kwad had known a little more about me, none of us would be here today. According to Pan, Kwad tried to compensate for that later on by asking people for personal information online and it didn't go over too well. ;)

Okay, seeing that Pan compared me to Andrea Dworkin, I'm honored and flattered. But rather than making a request based on having read a book, I learned things the hard way, by personal experience. In my Censorship in Cyberspace response to an attack on me in 2001, I tried to take people through some of my background and how I came to solve some complex equations, rather than just presenting them with the answers and the logic.

Teaching is HARD.

I think my favorite quote is: "I freed a thousand slaves, I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves.” --Harriet Tubman

Tubman sometimes led slaves to freedom at gunpoint when they were afraid to travel on. I don't have that much courage or that much love of people and of freedom.

For me, it is almost as if, in trying to be a better slave, I accidentally slipped my shackles and found myself free. At first I didn't know what had happened, but I slowly began to figure it out and I've been trying to explain it to others, with very little success, ever since. Maybe it can't be taught and it's more like science fiction--some other reality that can only be reached accidentally. I just see all these people with shackles and I keep saying, "Hey, you don't really have to wear those things," and they say, "Whaddya crazy? Of course we do! You think we'd be wearing shackles if we didn't have to?" and then they tell me to get lost.

[pan]

Just as was true with the original SC, I was a second generation member of the original RBC so I missed a lot of the formation of the culture of the site and sometimes found myself a little bewildered by references made to past members and past conversations.

I remember being extremely confused by the Gender II fred (not having read what led up to it) as there were several posts that seemed to be out of sequence and/or direct replications of others. I wrote DoubleHelix for clarification and he wrote that he reposted several from the previous fred. He made no mention of you being banned.

Kwadwo withdrew from the site as his health deteriorated. I wonder if he is still alive.

Teaching is HARD.

I sometimes despair that I have made no impact whatsoever on my students - especially when the ones who start to show that they are actually getting it turn around and become part of the Borg anyway.

[Mark]

Okay. I'm pretty sure that the stuff that led up to it was mostly deleted. I know for sure that one post was deleted, because I did a search for the words out of it that I had copied to the gender fred, and only the copy showed up, not the original.

Anyway, to carry the "shackles" analogy a bit further, I do tend to overreact when well-meaning helpful people come along and say, "Oh, you poor thing, you seem to be missing your shackles. Let me get you some." I know they're well-meaning and just want to be helpful, but life is so much lighter without the darned shackles that my survival instinct kicks in and I go into fight or flight mode even if the ones they're trying to fit me with are solid gold with diamonds and rubies.

[Mark]

Okay, I finished reading through the old RBC gender freds. It seems hopeless. There are references to what was posted previously, and odd bits copied over, but the original posts do seem to be missing. I know what happened on the WELL and on many other websites and forums, and it was always the same sequence of events, so I can puzzle out what happened on the old RBC, but I'm not sure anyone else could.

Pan, I'm going to start a topic on pronouns, so you can I can discuss our differences. Anyone else interested (and who happens to have the time) can jump in, of course. Not a private discussion, but hopefully leading to something of a better understanding between me and Pan.