Repost: Saying Something Nice About Andrea Dworkin

[I’ve decided to start a series of reposted posts from 2002. These will all be posts that were accidentally lost from the archives at some point, and so haven’t been online for many years. I’ll be editing the posts as little as I can stand, apart from occasional footnotes added at the time of reposting.]

[The following was originally posted September 8, 2002, about 2 and a half years before Andrea Dworkin died in April of 2005.]

I noticed that someone had found my blog via a google search for "Dworkin liberal blog." Which wouldn’t be worth noting, except that the searcher turns out to have been Ted Barlow. Ted’s irritated that Glenn Reynolds used Andrea Dworkin to argue that the right is more fun: "I mean, which would you rather have, wild sex and high living or Andrea Dworkin and a spare lifestyle relieved only by an affected moral superiority?" Ted very capably points out how inane Glenn’s logic is (read Ted’s post to see it). In addition, Ted writes:

I am sick of being saddled with Andrea Dworkin. Andrea Dworkin serves two functions in modern political discourse: liberals either ignore her or denounce her, and conservatives either ignore her or use her to tar feminists/ liberals as anti-sex fundamentalists. To prove my point, I did a little experiment: I did a Google search for "Dworkin liberal blog" in an attempt to find one liberal blogger saying something nice about Andrea Dworkin.

To my surprise, the nicest thing Ted found was me, in this post, pointing out that Dworkin (for all her other faults) never said that terrorism was "an appropriate response," as another blogger had implied. As Ted accurately says, my post was neither a denouncement or an endorsement of Dworkin.

(Hey, have you ever noticed that Dworkin is a "leading feminist" whenever the righties and anti-feminists use her as a weapon against feminists; but conveniently forget her existence when claiming that no prominent feminist criticized Clinton? In any case, Dworkin is not a liberal, so using her to attack liberalism is just silly.)

As for Dworkin… I’m not a fan. When talking with other feminists, I’ve often criticized Dworkin, and in particular Dworkin’s proposed anti-porn law (written with law prof Catherine MacKinnon). But I have no desire to criticize Dwokin in a non-feminist space; what’s the point? As Ted correctly says, outside of feminist circles, no one agrees with Dworkin, and almost no one takes her seriously.

Which is a shame, because it reflects the marginalization of radical feminist thought. Radical feminists – and I’m not one – have done a lot of good for this culture. Without radical feminists, almost no one would know about domestic violence, and the nationwide network of shelters and resources to help victims would not exist. Without radical feminists, the government would still measure rape in their annual crime survey by asking "has anyone ever attacked you in any other way?," and spousal rape would be legal in most of the U.S.A.. Without radical feminists, sexual harassment would be acceptable. Without radical feminists, the nationwide network of resources to help rape victims would not exist, and date, acquaintance and spousal rape – which is to say, the majority of rapes – would be invisible. Radical feminists were the first to point out that equality before the law is a long way from substantive equality – an analysis that has spread through all of feminism, to such an extent that most feminists now forget that it was ever a radical feminist position. ((In hindsight, I’m not sure it’s correct to say that radical feminists were the first to point out this distinction. Regardless, in my opinion radical feminists did more to develop and propagate this insight than any other group of feminists.))

Unfortunately – due, in part, to Andrea Dworkin’s leadership – radical feminism pushed itself into irrelevance in the 1980s, by focusing most of its activism and energy on an unconstitutional and divisive anti-porn law (radical feminist Susan Brownmiller, who is not a Dworkin fan, describes how this happened in her memoir In Our Time). As a result, although radical feminist thought remains active and relevant in academic feminist circles, no one outside of that group is paying much attention anymore. And the split in feminism – between "anti-porn feminists" and "free speech feminists" – is still lingering (and weakening feminism) today.

Hindsight’s always 20-20.

It’s too easy to focus on what Dworkin’s gotten wrong while ignoring what she’s gotten right. For example. I admire the currently-fashionable liberal critique of Saudi Arabia’s sexism, and I hope the concern for Saudi women’s rights is more than a pretext for partisan attacks on Bush (the way Bush’s concern for Afghan women was no more than a pretext for invading Afghanistan). But let’s remember that Andrea Dworkin got there 25 years before they did:

I hear on newscasts that Mr Carter was enchanted by Saudi Arabia, that he had a wonderful time. I remember that Mrs Carter used the back door. I remember that the use of contraceptives in Saudi Arabia is a capital crime. I remember that in Saudi Arabia, women are a despised and imprisoned caste, denied all civil rights, sold into marriage, imprisoned as sexual and domestic servants in harems. I remember that in Saudi Arabia women are forced to breed babies, who had better be boys, until they die.

I believe most liberals are sincere in their commitment to women’s rights and sex equality. But too many liberals now castigating Bush for US support of Saudi Arabia were silent when Clinton was in office. And too many liberals seem willing to support an anti-choice Democrat for President (hey, if the Dems nominate Kucinich, and if the Greens nominate McKinney, think of what a boost for the Green Party that would be!) ((Yes, I did later become a Kucinich supporter, but not until after he had switched to being pro-choice.)) There are about a zillion ways I think Andrea Dworkin is wrong – but I know her passion for women’s rights and sex equality has nothing to do with partisan politics, and is not contingent or negotiable. I admire the hell out of that.

(UPDATE: Ted Barlow responds.).