The Baffling Case of Andrea Dworkin by Susie BrightA couple of weeks ago, Andrea Dworkin published the most extraordinary story in TheGuardian (UK) in which she says she was raped last year in a Parisian hotel. She gives adelirious account of the events that followed--- her devoted partner John Stoltenbergdisbelieving her, her father dying, a hospital stay that cost the use of her legs, physicaldisfigurement, and more.Her description opens in a hotel garden, at age 52, where she sat drinking Kir Royalesand reading a text on French Fascism. The next thing she knew, the bartender and hisserving boy had drugged her champagne, and brutally, brutally raped her.By the time you finish reading it, you know she has finally completely lost her mind.If anyone had predicted such a story to me, I might have shook my head, without a dropof sympathy, and dropped a couple choice words about karma. But instead, as I readAndrea's confession, tears came to my eyes.This is a woman who called for my "assassination" on previous occasions-- because of my association with what she regards as the grrl-cabal of neo-femme-pornographers. Butmy personal image in her eyes is insignificant. She's had a much bigger effect on me, andon my generation of women, than I've ever had on her.Plenty of my peers would say that they are utterly cold to any misfortune that might befall her." Just think of all the lives she's threatened, warped, and terrified," they remindme. "Canada is still reeling, " my partner interjects.Yes, it's true, a whole body of Canadian law--- North American is more like it--- is stillspinning from her inspirations, which defined pornography as "rape culture" and made itgrounds for a genuine civil complaint- a tool that women could use to address abuse andexploitation. AnyWoman could come forward to say, "That picture is hurting me, thesewords are not protected if they shame me. I can get you in trouble for being dirty, becauseit's anti-woman." Not so surprisingly, Dworkin's rhetoric was hijacked by every politician and pundit whoever recognized a good black leather menace when they saw one. From Tipper Gore toJerry Falwell, both liberals and the right wing found solace in her rhetoric, suggestingthat women were righteous (sexless) and men were savage (sex-full) .The contradictions between Dworkin's brilliance and her lunacy have always gottenunder my skin. How can she have inspired such remarkable sensitivity about gender-directed violence, and at the same time, generated such double-standard conclusions? I'mnot the least bit surprised that she devotes her web site to insisting that she's beenmisunderstood- that she doesn't really hate men or sex, or free speech. I don't think she

does, either... but I have been exasperated with her naiveté about why these smoky cloudsof 'misunderstanding" keep puffing up from her little bonfire. Her latest missive fromLondon not only portrays the male character as evil and incomprehensible, it indeed projects a disintegrating paranoia about every single person in her milieu.For many people, the whole anti-porn campaign waged by Dworkin ( and CatherineMacKinnon) is ancient history--- just another boring, boomer, feminist harp. Since 1994,the students I meet on my college lecture tours often say they don't know her, whichwould have been unthinkable in any classroom during the two previous decades.vYet their ignorance provides no pardon from the Dworkin legacy. Anyone who's ever been bitten by the statement "Pornography is degrading to women"-- or "Pornography isthe theory, rape is the practice"-- is someone who has been touched by Dworkin's imprint.They should be curious about her. As much as personalities have always been suppressedin the culture of the women's movement, it's essential to understand who, exactly, madethis rhetoric the coin of the land.Dworkin, as veteran observers know, is usually depicted as a shrill fatty. It's painful toread mainstream media coverage of her, because they insist that her entire reputation can be distilled to a lack of fashion sense, a fatal lack of "femininity." I don't think there's afemale public figure alive who's been more castigated for their looks. It's frightening toconsider that, if she was slim and blonde ( like MacKinnon) she would actually be treatedin the diminutive; her views would be considered with at least a modicum of respect. ButI don't care how loud or fat she is, in fact those are probably two of my favorite thingsabout her, because they express her defiance.Andrea Dworkin is someone who, as an individual, defied and consequently changed theworld with her ideas. She's an original, and an unapologetic revolutionary. For all thosereasons, I have been deeply attracted to her.There was just one problem: Every time I put down one of her books, I was impressed byher passion, and by the risks she could take with her imagination--- and yet I was alsoconvinced that she was cracked. The more she attacked sexism, the more I feltimprisoned by her concept of sex itself. Her arguments for liberation folded in onthemselves, in a victimized dervish dance; they became just another bar and stripe in thecode of the double standard.Here is a social radical who s ruthlessly analyzed sex and society, but until this latesthealth crisis, she had refused ever to talk to a therapist, or even entertain a discussion of psychological motivation. She doesn't believe in such stuff; she ridicules it, which isremarkable, considering her effect on so many others' psychology! In all her morality plays, she has studiously avoided the unconscious. For her, the "shadow" life is alwaysliteral.My greatest and most ironic debt to Dworkin, is that she was the first intellectual tocritique pornography--- at all. Much to her vexation, I imagine, she inspired a whole new

generation of critics like me, who have looked at sex with a thoughtful and aesthetic eyewhich would have been considered just absurd in previous times.When academic puritans wring their hands and wonder why "pornography" is being"taught" in universities, they need to look no further than Dworkin's seminal work:Pornography; Men Possessing Women. For countless women's studies students, this textwas both our orgasmic introduction to pornography and our first deconstruction of it.Fine then- If she was going open Pandora's box, there was going to be a hundred after her who would revel in their own interpretations.Disagreeing with Dworkin on sex---vehemently--- practically defines the wave of feminists that came after her. You can't even discuss feminism without arguing Freud,Marx, and Andrea Dworkin. When she pinpointed "intercourse" itself as the structuralroot of gender dominance, she dared make an argument --- and man, can she make anargument--- that took all the cultural feminist sob-sister victimology, and tied it down to a post. Although it blew people's minds that she would wage a theoretical battle against thevery concept of "fucking", it was thrilling that she could push the liberal "womyn's"movement aside and draw such a line in the sand. Again, even though Dworkin's sex- positive critics blew a gasket over her book Intercourse, it did promote, in its subversiveway, the notion that penis/vagina sex was an overrated paradigm that needed to bedownsized.Everything about Dworkin results in these contradictions and unexpected interpretations.She sues Hustler magazine ... but not for degrading her with their pornography, but rather for calling her a lesbian. Yes, the average Joe thinks she's a lesbian, but she's lived withher man, John Stoltenberg , for 20+ years. Andrew and John give no explanations. Maybethey're as sick of identity labels as everyone else.Dworkin doesn't give masculinity one inch of breathing room in her arguments, but themost important person in her life was her father. Losing him, to my mind, is the catalystfor this entire unraveling in The Guardian. Men have always been mentors to Andreaintellectually, and that is how she first defines herself, as a revolutionary scholar. Shefinds most women to be hopeless inferiors to herself, academically-and frankly, by her standards, they are. She was trained to be a Jewish scholar of the most rigorous school,with all the attendant masculine platforms. When she has looked to other cultures for anew mental challenge, she has gone to the French, and to the haute couture of misogyny.The male focus of much of Dworkin's study and theoretical critique has been none other than that froggy macho brain-iac, the Marquis de Sade. As much as she rips De Sade, shehas been absolutely mesmerized by him, and she is probably the most expert historian of his work alive today. She is indeed a Francophile, a woman who is reviled for her "ugliness" and yet places the highest aesthetic standard on everything she looks at, writes,and reads. Look at where her latest attack takes place: she is reading French, in a protected garden, and she is taking in champagne with a sweet berry liqueur.