Andrea Dworkin and the Long Sixties (Part I)
Andrea Dworkin and the Long Sixties (Part I)
Her Life and Work before the Sex Wars
Introduction
Amsterdam, 1972. At 26 years old, Andrea Rita Dworkin made a vow. She vowed that she would become a real writer and would use everything she knew to help women.1 Dworkin had been abroad in Europe when the Women’s Liberation Movement was beginning in the States, and though she was ultimately unable to witness the rise of the movement, she had managed to read some of the radical feminist literature which was coming out of it.2 It was Dworkin’s understanding, however, that something vital was missing from all that she read. She would later write about how “in 1972 what I knew was not a part of feminism: what I knew about male dominance and in sex or rape in marriage.”3 These topics were ones which Andrea was, unfortunately, closely acquainted with: she had just escaped an abusive marriage and was — at the time — being actively pursued by her batterer husband; in her childhood, she had endured the harsh realities of growing up as a girl in a man’s world, first being raped at the age of 9. Andrea’s ultimate goal in writing her debut book Woman Hating (1974) was, in her words, “to find out what happened to me and why.”4
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Dworkin’s life and activism offer a strong counterpoint to popular narratives of the Sixties as being defined solely by “Free Love,” a notion which her activism actively questioned (see “Renouncing Sexual ‘Equality’ ”). Additionally, her theorizing on gender and sex was radical even by today’s standards and prefigured — and, in its revolutionary potential, arguably even surpassed — some of the social constructionist views which are now popular.5 There are many reasons why we still can benefit from hearing Dworkin’s message, but it is for these reasons in particular that Dworkin is the radical we desperately need.
“Renouncing Sexual Equality”
Oppression begins where life begins, in the act of fucking, and revolution must begin in the same place, or it has not begun at all.
Andrea Dworkin, 1974 6
If Dworkin’s own vision of sex and society is extreme, we soon remember that so too is the context within which she writes.
Ariel Levy, 2006 7
This is especially about the boys of the Sixties, boys my age, who fought against the Viet Nam War. The flower children. The peaceniks. The hippies. Students for a democratic society. Weatherboys. Draft resisters. Draft dodgers. Draftcard burners. War resisters. Conscientious objectors. Yippies. We women fought for the lives of these boys against the war machine. They fight now for pornography. In demonstrations we said: “Bring the War Home.” The war is home.
Andrea Dworkin, 1977 8
“Norman Mailer remarked during the sixties that the problem with the sexual revolution was that it had gotten into the hands of the wrong people. He was right. It was in the hands of men.”
Andrea Dworkin, 1983 9
From the time she “entered the fray” of the Women’s Liberation Movement to end of 1975, the year when a Harper’s magazine cover story declared the Women’s Movement dead, Andrea Dworkin produced many speeches and writings in which she attacked what she termed the ‘male sexual model’. However, there were two works in particular which appear to represent her views on the matter most concisely: 1) “Renouncing Sexual ‘Equality,’ ” a speech she delivered at the National Organization for Women Conference on Sexuality in New York City on October 12, 1974; and, 2) Marx and Gandhi Were Liberals: Feminism and the "Radical" Left, a pamphlet which was originally published in 1974, but then subsequently republished by Frog in the Well in 1977. In these two works, Dworkin’s main goal appears to have been to explicate what exactly the male sexual model is, and why and how it must be combatted if women are to finally be liberated.
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The Male Sexual Model Defined
The male sexual model is defined by Dworkin as being “the basic model for patterns of dominance and submission which we characterize in the public sphere.”10 Implicit here is the idea that, to quote Virginia Woolf as Dworkin has, “the public and private worlds are inseparably connected; that the tyrannies and servilities of the one are the tyrannies and the servilities of the other[.]”11 It appears Woolf was anticipating the famous second wave theoretical contribution that the “personal” is, indeed, the political. This concept is precisely what Dworkin wants to draw the reader’s attention to and it is in fact why she ultimately chooses to begin her pamphlet Marx and Gandhi were Liberals by extensively quoting from Woolf’s book-length essay Three Guineas (1938). It is in a similar vein that, at the beginning of her speech “Renouncing Sexual ‘Equality,’ ” Dworkin details how that concept was first introduced to many in the Women’s Liberation Movement, naming Kate Millett’s Sexual Politics as being the book which “proved to many of us—who would have staked our lives on denying it—that sexual relations, the literature depicting those relations, the economic systems that fix the necessities of those relations, the religious systems that seek to control those relations, are political.”12 Everything, absolutely everything “that happens to a woman in her life, everything that touches or molds her, is political.” Additionally, there is no dimension in the fight for women’s liberation which is “abstract” as the struggle has touched women in every part of their lives. However, there is one area in which women have been touched by the struggle that was, and has since been, especially distressing to deal with: “that part of our human lives which we call ‘love’ and ‘sex’.”13
The part of our human lives which we term “love” and “sex” is where, according to Dworkin, the revolution must begin. Oppression, she writes, “begins where life begins, in the act of fucking and revolution must begin in the same place, or it has not begun at all.”14 This view is in sharp contrast to those held by “sexual radicals,” such as Wilhelm Reich and Hebert Marcuse, and supporters of the “Sexual Revolution” of the 1960s who saw these men as prophets.15 Unlike Reich and his ilk, who saw the repression of sexual intercourse as leading to political ills such as fascism, Dworkin held the belief that “oppression begins … in the act of fucking.”16 It is, in fact, the male sexual model itself, and not its repression, which is tied irrevocably to the patterns of dominance and submission—patterns which, in the public sphere at least, we rightfully view as tyrannical.17 It is a model which is, at its roots, based on a polarization of humankind into dualities such as man/woman, master/slave, aggressor/victim, and active/passive.18 This model is rather old—“now many thousands of years old.” and has its ultimate source in the system of oppression which feminists have termed “patriarchy.”19 Patriarchy, Dworkin informs us, is “that system of male-ownership which is the parent form of fascism.”20 There is even, in Dworkin’s view—as well as Woolf’s before her—a case to be made that the Führer (Adolf Hitler) and Il Duce (Benito Mussolini) are themselves “Husbands” of sorts, “violating without conscience the nations of women.”21 Patriarchy is like a perverse deity whose voice booms down from the heavens and says of fascism: “This is my beloved son, with whom I am well pleased.”22 Patriarchy, it is clear, is father to a million and one woes.
End of Part I
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Works Cited
Primary Sources
Dworkin, Andrea. Heartbreak: the Political Memoir of a Feminist Militant. Basic Books, 2002.
This is Andrea Dworkin’s “political memoir,” a description which is apt as, in between the threads that make up the canvas that is her life, she weaves in her radical and revolutionary politics.
Dworkin, Andrea, et al. Last Days at Hot Slit: the Radical Feminism of Andrea Dworkin. Semiotext(e), 2019.
This is an anthology of excerpts from Andrea Dworkin’s works spanning from a postcard written to her parents in 1973, all the way to an excerpt from a previously unpublished work entitled My Suicide (1999), which was written in the form of a suicide note and was later discovered by Dworkin’s partner, John Stoltenberg, in 2005 after her death. Together, these excerpts give the reader a solid impression of her body of work as a whole. Additionally, many of the works which are reprinted here are from works which are notoriously hard to find as they are no longer being printed. An invaluable resource for this study.
Dworkin, Andrea. Letters from a War Zone: Writings, 1976-1989. E.P. Dutton, 1989.
Dworkin, Andrea. Marx and Gandhi Were Liberals: Feminism and the "Radical" Left. Frog in the Well, 1977.
A provocative piece. It is an attack on the “male-dominated Left,” which Dworkin believed to have changed very little in regards to its problem with sexism. This essay is pivotal for understanding why Dworkin had issues with the capital ‘L’ Left.
“Dworkin on Woman Hating.” YouTube, YouTube, 19 Nov. 2019, www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lCPYDjQ1PA.
The first part of a 2-part YouTube video which reproduces for a more general (YouTube) audience an interview of Andrea Dworkin which was conducted in 1974, the year in which her debut nonfiction work Woman Hating was published by Dutton Press. In this part, Dworkin discusses her book Woman Hating and how it came about.
Wittig, Monique. The Straight Mind and Other Essays. Beacon Press, 2002.
Secondary Sources
Duberman, Martin. Andrea Dworkin: the Feminist as Revolutionary. The New Press, 2020.
The latest biography on the life of Andrea Dworkin. What is so special about this biography is that Martin Duberman, already well known for his work on moving pieces of gay history, personally knew Dworkin and thus is able to add a credibility to his work that few other biographers of her life can
Jeffreys, Sheila. Anticlimax: A Feminist Perspective on the Sexual Revolution. Spinifex Press, 1990/2011.
Works Cited
Dworkin, Andrea, et al., Last Days at Hot Slit: the Radical Feminism of Andrea Dworkin. Semiotext(e), 2019.
Duberman, Martin B. Andrea Dworkin: the Feminist as Revolutionary. The New Press, 2020.
Dworkin, Andrea. Heartbreak: the Political Memoir of a Feminist Militant. Basic Books, 2002.
Dworkin, Andrea, and Ariel Levy. Intercourse. BasicBooks, 2007.
Jeffreys, Sheila. Anticlimax: A Feminist Perspective on the Sexual Revolution. Spinifex Press, 1990/2011.
Wittig, Monique. The Straight Mind and Other Essays. Beacon Press, 2002.
Further Reading:
“Andrea Dworkin - Pornography's Roots in the 1960s.” YouTube, YouTube, 15 Jan. 2017, www.youtube.com/watch?v=ex9noFVe9Eg.
From a documentary entitled Pornography: Andrea Dworkin (also known as Against Pornography: The Feminism of Andrea Dworkin), this clip is of Andrea Dworkin explaining how she believes that the sort of pornography we see today has its roots in the 1960s. This clip is useful as it illustrates how pivotal the 60s were to shaping the environment in which the radical feminist movement (of which Dworkin was a part) would emerge.
“Dworkin on Sexuality.” YouTube, YouTube, 19 Nov. 2019, www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrgvn8zS_7A.
The second part of a 2-part YouTube video which reproduces for a more general (YouTube) audience an interview of Andrea Dworkin which was conducted in 1974, the year in which her debut nonfiction work Woman Hating was published by Dutton Press. The title here tells it like it is, this is an interview in which Dworkin discusses her views on various topics of sexuality.
Andrea Dworkin, Life and Death: Unapologetic Writings on the Continuing War against Women, (Free Press, 2002), pp. 22; cf. Dworkin, Heartbreak: the Political Memoir of a Feminist Militant, (Basic Books, 2002), pp. 121-125.
Martin Duberman, Andrea Dworkin: the Feminist as Revolutionary, (The New Press, 2020), pp. 57-58; cf. Dworkin, Heartbreak, pp. 118.
Dworkin, Life and Death, pp. 22.
Ibid., pp. 20.
Dworkin’s positions were arguably even more radical than those held by many more recent social constructionists (especially when compared to Queer Studies, where a Butlerian “subversion” approach to destabilizing gender exists in tension with the gender – and sex – abolition approach which Dworkin and others have taken; for more on these abolitionist approaches, see in particular Monique Wittig, The Straight Mind and Other Essays, (Beacon Press, 2002). Monique Wittig is perhaps the most exemplar of those who hold this position.
Andrea Dworkin, Marx and Gandhi Were Liberals: Feminism and the "Radical" Left, (Frog in the Well, 1977), pp. 6. This pamphlet was originally published in 1974, a fact which can be inferred from “Dworkin on Woman Hating.” YouTube, YouTube, 19 Nov. 2019, www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lCPYDjQ1PA.
Andrea Dworkin, Intercourse, (Basic Books, 2007), pp. xiii.
Andrea Dworkin, “Why So-Called Radical Men Love and Need Pornography” in Letters from a War Zone: Writings, 1976-1989, (E.P. Dutton, 1989), pp. 214.
Andrea Dworkin, Right-wing Women, (Perigee Books, 1983), pp. 88.
Dworkin, Marx and Gandhi Were Liberals, pp. 2.
Emphasis in original; Quoted in Ibid., pp. 1.
Andrea Dworkin, et al., Last Days at Hot Slit: the Radical Feminism of Andrea Dworkin, (Semiotext(e), 2019), pp. 79.
Ibid.
Dworkin, Marx and Gandhi Were Liberals, pp. 6.
Sheila Jeffreys, Anticlimax: A Feminist Perspective on the Sexual Revolution, (Spinifex Press, 1990/2011), pp. 99; In a blurb on the back of this edition, Andrea Dworkin describes Anticlimax as being a “rigorous, savvy contemporary intellectual history.”; Now, for a bit of background on Wilhelm Reich: Seeing the orgasm as the measure of health, Reich held that if orgasm was not experienced regularly by men (the male is the implicit subject in his model), then they would soon fall ill as a result. As lesbian feminist Sheila Jeffreys points out in her analysis of the sexual revolution, this was a clear continuation of past “hydraulic” sexological models. Reich, she observes, “took from Freud the hydraulic model and took it to extremes” (Ibid., pp. 100.). In this model, “a biologically given amount of sexual energy wells up and demands release” (Ibid.) If no orgasm occurred, then illness would, in Reich’s view, surely result. ‘Sex’ was the prescription Reich gave for this ‘ill’. He saw it as absolutely imperative that men have sex as often as possible, writing that “Nature … has arranged things so that a man in good health wants to have sexual relations on an average from once to three times a week” (Quoted in Ibid.). However, it was not just men’s health that Reich held to be a result of sexual repression; Reich went so far as to suggest that political ills such as fascism were a result of sexual repression (Ibid., pp. 100-101).
See note 15 for the sex radical Wilhelm Reich’s views on the causal relationship between sexual repression and fascism; Dworkin quote can be found in Marx and Gandhi Were Liberals on page 6.
Dworkin, Marx and Gandhi Were Liberals, pp. 2.
Dworkin, et al., Last Days at Hot Slit, pp. 80.
Ibid.; The radical French materialist feminist Monique Wittig traces this dualism back to the the first Greek philosophers, writing how “According to Aristotle, we owe to the Pythagorean school the division in the process of thought and therefore in the thought of Being. Then, instead of thinking in terms of unity, philosophers introduced duality in thought, in the process of reasoning” (emphasis my own - C.R.; Wittig, The Straight Mind and Other Essays, (Beacon Press, 2002), pp. 49.) The first table of opposites “which history has handed down to us” was recorded in Aristotle’s Metaphysics and was as follows: Limited/Unlimited, Odd/Even, One/Many, Right/Left, Male/Female, Rest/Motion, Straight/Curved, Light/Dark, Good/Bad, Square/Oblong (provided in Wittig, The Straight Mind and Other Essays, pp. 49-50). Of particular note are the dualisms of Right/Left, Male/Female, Light/Dark, Good/Bad which help us to see how the ideology of difference has so often provided a justification for the oppression of the sexes and the races (Ibid., pp. 20.); for more on the system of patriarchy which Dworkin describes, see her pamphlet Marx and Gandhi Were Liberals: Feminism and the “Radical” Left.
Dworkin, Marx and Gandhi Were Liberals, pp. 2.
Ibid.
This sentence is my own creation, but references Matthew 3:17 in the English Standard Version.