I don’t know what the feminist reaction to this post will be, but it won’t get out of my head, so I had to write it out. I’m interested to hear.
I’m not a big personal fan of Andrea Dworkin’s writing, but I appreciate her contributions to feminism and her work as a radical thinker. When she died in April, 2005, I read a couple dozen obituaries and blog posts that celebrated her life and learned more about who she was as a woman and activist. The Guardian released “Through the Pain Barrier,” reportedly her last piece of writing, completed just a month before her death. I was excited to hear that the topic was her experience with disability, and I couldn’t wait to see what the woman whose writing and speaking style had been described as “apocalyptic” might say about disability and civil rights.
I was disappointed.
Her account of her osteoarthritis, double-knee replacement and the years of troubled rehabilitation and pain afterward is deeply personal, as is typical of many Dworkin essays. She begins by blaming her osteoarthritis on a 1999 rape in a Paris hotel.
Doctors tell me that there is no medical truth to my notion that the rape caused this sickness or what happened after it. I believe I am right: it was the rape. They don’t know because they have never looked.
I do believe horrific experiences and emotional pain can contribute significantly to a person’s health, but I wince at the general notion that a common condition needs to be attributed to personal crises. Impairments happen. God doesn’t cause them and they exist without need for any form of moral explanation, whether it blames the person or makes them a victim of someone else’s moral flaws. Needless to say, I’m uncomfortable with the way Dworkin begins.
Dworkin’s treatment for her worsening knees follows what I understand to be a typical pattern of drugs, cortisone shots and finally knee replacement surgery. I don’t envy her or the senior citizens I know who’ve had this treatment or are in the midst of it. Despite various setbacks, the people I know personally who have been through this recovered their mobility after the surgeries, though they did experience the basics of what Dworkin describes rather dramatically here:
I still don’t know what he did to me but I came to the conclusion that the operation was barbaric, involving as it did the sawing out of the arthritis, which meant sawing through bones. It was like being kneecapped, twice, or having one’s knees and bones hammered and broken into bits. After the operation I was in a nightmare of narcotics and untouchable pain. There were morphine shots. I asked for them and got them often. Even morphine shots in the upper arm hurt.
I had a hallucination but it is still real as rain to me. I was in Virginia Woolf’s house and I was happy. But “they” wanted me to go down the stairs. I can’t, I begged, I can’t. My hospital bed was at the top of the stairs and I was afraid that they were going to push me down. I saw the steep decline of the steps. I couldn’t get over my visceral fear of falling or being pushed or being turned over from the bed down the flight of steps. I kept experiencing my bed as being on the edge of a precipice.
I agree that the operation seems “barbaric” and thinking about it gives me the willies, but I dislike how Dworkin makes these personal experiences of a common procedure out to be extraordinary. All serious surgeries cause pain, and heavy-duty painkillers do cause hallucinations. I violently beat up a sock puppet in one fentanyl-induced hallucination last November for reasons I can’t explain. After back surgery at age 16, I imagined my hospital bed was in a basement hallway and I’d been abandoned there. It took repeated reassurances from nurses and my hospital roommate to convince me I was safe and stop me from hollering for help. My grandmother saw spiders all over the walls once. These hallucinations are normal, though as individual as dreams, and are not proof of anyone’s suffering or victimization.
I relate well to Dworkin’s descriptions of physical and occupational rehabilitation, including the weird and often purposeless tasks required in OT:
Rehabilitation also includes so-called occupational therapy: throw a ball around in a circle; put round pegs in round holes; stand up, arms on a table, and read a page of a magazine; water a plant; play checkers or cards; and the pièce de résistance, cook and serve a simple meal.
And the sexism she notes of caregiver expectations upon returning home I saw, as well:
On discharge, social services are provided. My male partner is not expected to be a care-giver.
I have no experience of the “pain management centres” she describes, but they do sound tedious. I’m simply stunned by the potent mix of painkillers she says they kept her on.
Curly eventually puts me on Percocet, fentanyl patches and methadone. I am on these drugs for nearly two years. I become slightly indifferent to the awful pain. My speech slurs and my memory is impaired.
Fentanyl is dangerous for any length of time, I was told. The patches Dworkin used prompted an FDA advisory in 2005. I was weaned from fentanyl injections after a few weeks in ICU and I missed it terribly at first. You may recall fentanyl was the painkiller mixed with heroin or cocaine that was responsible for dozens of deaths this past spring.
Dworkin’s three-story New York residence disturbs me greatly. Not that she didn’t move somewhere more accessible — I know how difficult that can be. But did she really spend years crawling up and down three floors of steps between kitchen, bathroom and shower? I find that intolerable, and either unbelievable or lacking in creativity or… something. Adapt, Andrea. Adapt! Bathe in the kitchen or pee in the shower or something. Spare yourself some pain. If there are any triumphs of adaptation Dworkin does discover for herself, she never mentions them.
I remain ambivalent about the descriptions of her leg braces and the humor and pathos there. It doesn’t seem as though she accepts her body for what it is, and I had hoped for more from the woman who made no accommodations to expectations of feminine beauty or style. Depression rules her state of mind:
I can’t bear it or accept it. I reject the extent of my disability. I find myself in a silent rage that stretches over weeks. I am utterly exhausted by my incapacity. I am worn out from walking. I am sick of physical therapy.
She lacks perspective on what a “little humiliation” is too:
I keynote a conference on the Holocaust. The organiser picks me up. She is driving a truck. I try to climb up into it. She physically pushes me under my ass without permission, all the while talking to me in baby talk, put your tooshie there, keep your cute little fanny there. I turn to her and say, I am disabled, not stupid. A friend throws a party for me in Washington. I ask how many steps there are to the apartment. He doesn’t know. I assume he will get back to me. John and I go to the party. There are three flights of steps. I can’t get to the party being given for me. We could have given it in another venue, the friend says the next day. It cuts. I go to a bar and need to use the rest room. The men’s is filthy, the bartender says; the women’s is two flights up. I use the dirty one. I go to a new movie theatre that has elevators and disability bathrooms but the polished stone of the floor is so slick that my crutches cannot safely navigate it. I am walking with a friend who suddenly looks at my crutches and says, you don’t want to be this way the rest of your life, do you? Her repulsion is barely masked. I feel unutterably alone.
While some of these encounters are minor, the party in her honor that she could not even attend seems a big frustration and failure of her friends to me. Three flights of steps overlooked when the guest of honor used leg braces and crutches — it seems unconscionable.
The last several paragraphs hold promise as she turns to public access and the ADA, though most of my disappointment lies here. She acknowledges that:
Only a determined policy of public access can help to mitigate the loneliness. One needs to be able to enter buildings; have a cup of coffee; go to a restaurant, the theatre, cinema or a concert; attend school; go to lectures or readings; use public transport, bathrooms, hotel showers; go to museums and sporting events and political rallies. One needs equal opportunity in employment. One needs to be integrated into the world, not separated from it; yet one has special needs, ones that able-bodied people rarely consider. The low consciousness of the able-bodied increases alienation.
She praises the accessibility the law has provided for her in public places, and gives credit for this to juries awarding high punitive damages to plaintiffs, which is not untrue but significantly misrepresents the successes and history of the ADA in the courts. There is no indication at all that more needs to be done or that the law is perpetually under fire in the media and from Republicans in Congress.
So that wraps up my ungenerous critique. Admittedly, I’m generally uncomfortable with Dworkin’s emotive writing style. And I’m uncomfortable with any telling of the crip experience that has even a whiff of the “why me?” stereotype of disability as drama. I’ve seen too many disease-of-the-week, inspired-by-a-true-story, whine-until-some-nondisabled-person-snaps-you-out-of-it sagas on TV and film to be comfortable with any reinforcement of that tale.
And the last time anyone really famous was given big media attention for their disability, it was Chris Reeve on Barbara Walters talking about how he had wished himself dead and how his purpose in life was now to find a cure for paralysis. When he died a decade after his paralyzing injury it was widely reported that the cause was sepsis from bedsores and that such problems were an understandable killer of any quad. In truth, Reeve died from a violent reaction to a medication, and while he had been dogged by infections he was sitting in his wheelchair at a hockey game earlier on the day of his death, something no person with a dangerous sore on his butt would ever do.
It took Reeve the better part of a decade as a disabled person to start speaking about the basic civil rights we all deserve, though he spoke publically about other issues all the time. My expectation that Dworkin would stir the pot for disability rights was unrealistic and bound to disappoint. Disability isn’t an identity anyone embraces overnight, and some obviously impaired people never accept it.
And beyond that, becoming politicized about the social treatment of disabled people also doesn’t come easily. For most, there’s no discussion around the dinner table about the day’s humiliations with others who’ve experienced the same. The disability rights movement was largely started in the U.S. by a generation of people who caught the polio virus and were institutionalized together and perceived the injustice of their collective treatment because of this. Most crips don’t experience this kind of community unless they seek it out. Not Reeve, not Dworkin, not me.
Dworkin had nothing remotely “apocalyptic” to say about disability. If she’d lived another 20 years that may or may not have changed. Her last piece of writing is not at all political despite its mention of the ADA — because her mention of the ADA was completely uncritical. It’s just a personal piece, quintessentially Dworkin, really. And the sad truth is that any newly disabled person (or newly accepting of the identity) is not ever speaking politically about disability rights unless they say they are, celebrity or not.
Crossposted at The Gimp Parade
“And how is it a “rallying cry” to tell women that if they are raped, their feminist life-partner and feminist doctor won’t believe them? How is it a rallying cry to tell women that it’s pointless to even consider calling the police, or identifying their attackers? How is it a rallying cry to tell men that drugging women is a “foolproof” way to rape them?”
It’s telling the TRUTH. That is what happens to women who have been raped, to children who have been raped, to men who have been raped. Instead of railing against Dworkin and accusing her of “concocting a bizarre story” why aren’t you talking about masculinist culture in which things like this are done to women and children all the time? You seem to want it both ways, you are arguing that she was raped so she should have done x, y or z but at the same time you think her story is too “bizarre” to be believed. Which is it? You seem to have all angles for attack covered. You do know that some rape crisis centres don’t actively advise rape victims to go to the police because of the treatment they receive. Each victim of rape should be able to deal with her experience in her own way without being criticised for it, and that includes writing a piece about it for a national newspaper if that’s what she needs to do.
For some women — far too many women — yes, it is the truth. Some women will be disbelieved by their partners, and by their doctors. And yes, maybe it’s Dworkin’s truth as well — that was raped in exactly the way that she describes, and that her partner and her doctor disbelieved her. Yes.
But it’s not true, as Dworkin claimed, that to drug a woman and rape her and bite her and cut her is a “foolproof” crime, one that a hotel’s staff could commit “hundreds of times with virtually no chance of getting caught, let alone having anyone be able to make a legal case in any court of law.”
And it is true that there are a myriad of resources — resources that the feminist movement created — available to women who have been raped. And even if we acknowledge that Dworkin may have had reasons not to avail herself of those resources, we can still ask why she didn’t, in her essay, even acknowledge that they existed.
Are we to believe that Dworkin had no friends or political allies who supported her after she was raped? She mentions none. (Are we to believe that she had no friends or political allies who supported her in her disability? She mentions none.)
If Dworkin’s friends and allies doubted her account of her rape, then I don’t think those of us who never knew her can be sure her account was accurate. And if some of her friends and allies did support her, then I think it’s fair to say that by excluding that fact from her story she misrepresented her experience — and misrepresented it in a harmful way.
You know out of the low blows that have been directed at Andrea Dworkin here, one of the lowest is using John Stoltenberg’s reaction to her rape against her. He has stated that the reason he was doubtful, wasn’t that he didn’t believe her but that he didn’t want it to be true, he wanted to find another explanation for her injuries and her feelings. He did what someone who is close to a person naturally does, and tried to protect her. Of course in the end he couldn’t protect her because the horror had happened and she had been raped. He has stated that he believes she was raped, so I hope you are going to stop using him as a prop for your attacks on her.
Why does she have to talk about her friends in her account of her rape? I’ve never heard of this requirement before – that friends and relatives must get a look-in else we accuse the story-teller of misrepresntation. These criticisms are bizarre, I’ll say that.
As for this –
“But it’s not true, as Dworkin claimed, that to drug a woman and rape her and bite her and cut her is a “foolproof” crime, one that a hotel’s staff could commit “hundreds of times with virtually no chance of getting caught, let alone having anyone be able to make a legal case in any court of law.””
You’re wrong and she’s right – there is “virtually no chance [of rapists] getting caught”. Have you any idea the extent to which rapists get away with rape? I’ve already quoted the 5% conviction rate in the UK of reported rapes (in addition to the fact that the vast majority of rapes are unreported). I think you are living in some kind of fantasy land about rape and what actually happens to rape victims.
As a matter of interest Blue, how did you come across this piece? It’s quite an old one.
In the days following her death, several sites I visited and read mentioned an upcoming publication of the piece. She died April 9, 2005, and I believe The Guardian put it online around the 23rd.
Why did you decide to comment on it now?
I suppose what I’m saying is that it seems a bit odd to criticise it now as it was her first piece on disability politics, she was incredibly ill, dying in fact as Pony points out, and even if your criticisms are fair, how do they help anyone, she’s not going to be able to go any further in that work as she died a month after she wrote it.
Because her message, in each of these essays, is “If this happens to you, you will be alone. You can’t keep it from happening, and if it happens nobody will help you. You won’t even be able to help yourself.” That is the fundamental “truth” that she is trying to express.
And I don’t believe her. I don’t believe that she was as alone as she claims — either in the aftermath of her rape, or in her disability. More to the point, I don’t believe that a person who is raped or a person who becomes disabled has to be alone, has to be powerless.
I’m not saying that nobody who is raped winds up alone and abandoned. Yes, many people who are raped are let down by their friends or families or communities, or by the legal system, or by the feminist organizations that have been created to help them. Yes, some people — too many people — are abandoned after rape. (Or after becoming disabled.)
But most of the people who are abandoned do not have the resources that Dworkin had. She owned a three-story building in a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood — it’s worth asking why she crawled up and down stairs every day for years instead of moving to an apartment, or at least performing some accessibility renovations. She was one of the most prominent feminists in the world — it’s worth asking why she couldn’t find a gynecologist who would treat her with respect in the aftermath of a rape.
I believe that Dworkin believed she was speaking for women who are abandoned, women who have no resources. But I suspect that in her zeal to speak for the voiceless, she may have misrepresented her own experience.
And this, finally, is why — I think — it’s so hard to talk about her. Because she believed she was speaking important truths. In many respects she was speaking important truths. But unfortunately, I think she probably misrepresented some facts on the way to telling those truths, and those misrepresentations sometimes wound up being significant.
“And this, finally, is why — I think — it’s so hard to talk about her. Because she believed she was speaking important truths. In many respects she was speaking important truths. But unfortunately, I think she probably misrepresented some facts on the way to telling those truths, and those misrepresentations sometimes wound up being significant.”
STOP calling her a liar. Seriously, stop it right now. You have no idea what she represented or misrepresented. You have absolutely no right to set yourself up as a judge on what happened to her. She knows what happened to her, as every woman knows her own experience. This nit-picking away trying to undermine her is awful. Sexism is the reason why everybody in the world seems to think that they know better about what happened to a woman that the woman herself. It’s incredibly abusive.
Are you going to take it back about what you said about John Stoltenberg? Or are you going to carry on your merry way and ignore the fact that you’ve distorted his response in order to bolster your false position against Dworkin.
I’m done. I’ve said what I have to say on that topic.
Both Dworkin and Stoltenberg have said that he had serious qualms about her story for a long time. He has characterized it as “looking for alternate explanations,” and said that “she experienced that as my not believing her.” But yes, he did eventually come to accept her account of the rape.
Delphyne has said most of what I would have said had I responded which I almost did yesterday, but thought better of it. I liked what you said in one of your first comments, Delphyne:
It’s fair to criticise this piece on its merits or otherwise as a piece of disability rights activism or politics, but don’t pretend it doesn’t match up to radical feminist writings which you weren’t that impressed with in the first place.
So much of what is in this thread just seems like it mostly has to do with — again, some more, still, but whatever — discrediting Dworkin because… because why. Because she was human, I guess. Not a goddess. Not perfect. Not even alive any more, for that matter, gone to her grave, where we are all going to go one day. There seems to be this ongoing interest in discrediting Andrea by exploring all the ways her writings and acts might just have been “inconsistent,” or even (or maybe hopefully or gleefully) :::hypocritical:::. Because of course nobody here or anywhere ever acts or behaves or thinks in ways which are inconsistent or hypocritical, no, no. Everyone’s feminist execution is impeccable and flawless.
I think, as delphyne has said, that both radical feminism and Dworkin have been and continue to be fundamentally misunderstood here. Delphyne expressed that perfectly, and I can’t add anything to it. But I will say this: Dworkin was a writer. Writing was her life’s work. One thing pretty much all writers do is, they process their experiences in their writing as they are having them. I am a writer, too. I often have the experience of not really knowing how I even feel about a thing until I begin to write about it. Even when I write about something, and begin to make sense of whatever it is I am writing about, my first writings will be just the beginning of an ongoing process of working out my ideas. There will be more writings, more processing, more making sense of things. I have often had the experience of someone grabbing me by the metaphorical collar and saying, in so many words, “But didn’t you write this and yay over here last year?” Well, yeah, I did. I’m a writer. I write everything. I write my whole entire life and have for decades, everywhere I can write it. But what does what I wrote there have to do with what I’m writing here right now? No one can ever be shut up to what they said or wrote at any given moment of their life, but particularly not a writer, who has dedicated herself *to* writing for all of her life. All we can say about this essay is, this was Andrea Dworkin, beginning to make sense of these experiences she described. She wrote about being oppressed as a woman for almost 40 years. She lived as a woman and girl for 58 years. Her writings reflected her increasing radicalization as a woman and her ongoing process, thought, analysis, critique. She had been disabled for a comparatively short period of time. Had she lived to write more about her disability, her writings would have reflected, again, her ongoing process. What sense does it make to grab at this one essay she published on this subject and attempt to compare it with 40 years of writing and activism on women’s issues?
I posted the article Blue linked to to my boards shortly after Dworkin’s death and then posted a few of my responses as follows:
****
My favorite parts:
“The sidewalk is heavy with pedestrian traffic. They are so unselfconscious, these normal walkers. They have different gaits; they move effortlessly; each dances without knowing it. I used to be one of them. I want to be again.”
***
“I learn three rules in my occupational therapy classes: never hold on to anything that moves; if it rains or snows, stay inside, even if that means cancelling doctors’ appointments (to those medicalised this is nearly profane); and kick the cat – if a cat curls up in front of your feet, kick it away. I learned to use my crutch to kick the cat. I will go to hell for this.”
***
“Doctors tell me that there is no medical truth to my notion that the rape caused this sickness or what happened after it. I believe I am right: it was the rape. They don’t know because they have never looked.”
***
“I am supposed to lock it when I walk and unlock it when I want to sit. The brace is worn under my pants leg so no one can see it. Each manipulation is distinct: in public locking it makes me look as if I am masturbating, and unlocking it makes me look as if I am fondling my thigh.”
HA!
***
“John had been told that I was dying. I forgot that in hospitals when one is dying, nurses abrogate the rules. John was allowed in after visiting hours; nurses would pull the curtain around my bed and let him lie with me. This was my happiness.”
***
What a writer, goddamn it, the woman was amazing.
http://www.womensspace.org/Feminism1/423.html
******
I think as these quotes evidence, this was an essay in which Andrea was beginning the long process of making sense of her situation. This wasn’t a scholarly essay or an editorial or even an opinion piece. It was a lament, it was mourning, it was rage, above all it was so very, very human, complete with joking and self-deprecation and allusions to her deep love for her husband. How bizarre, in this context, to chide her for the “less than political” content of the piece, as though she isn’t allowed to write anything that is not political. By the same token, how bizarre, in this context, to chide her as though everything she wrote were not political in the most deeply personal, and honest, and powerfully moving, and therefore radically feminist, of ways.
If someone would like a list of all of the ways that Andrea Dworkin’s beliefs and behaviors were “inconsistent” at any point in time, hell, I could provide a lengthy list. Everybody here who is honest can provide a lengthy list of his or her own inconsistencies, hypocrisies, and so on at various points in his or her life. We all have them. So what? I will never provide any such laundry list about Dworkin, and one reason is, she never laid claim to any sort of perfection, to perfect consistency, or to anything remotely superhuman. That being so, what’s up with these ongoing attempts to discredit her as though she had? Dworkin’s writings changed the world in large part because she was willing to write with absolutely scrupulous honesty about what it means to live as a woman in this world. And because she took the risks, and the hits, women take when we just lay it all out there, sparing nothing. It’s really, really hard for anyone to argue with the truth of women’s lives. Women’s truth-telling is powerful. For this truth telling she will always be hated, and so these attempts to discredit her will continue wearyingly and tiringly on, because the truths that Andrea Dworkin spoke about her life, about women’s lives, are truths most people just really do not want to hear.
Pony, I’m sorry for the treatment you’ve received here. You didn’t deserve it. I’d have come in to support you, but honestly, Dworkin being dead now, especially, I can hardly bring myself to hang around anywhere where her blood — even though she no longer has any — appears to be in the water. Her work, her life, her writings speak for themselves and will continue to. They really don’t need any defense (which is not to say I fault you for trying, good on you for it.) But if they do seem to be under attack, my experience is, defenses of her work will fall on deaf ears.
Heart
So you aren’t going to own up to the fact that you took Stoltenberg’s natural desire for the rape not to be true, and tried to twist it into “proof” that even those closest to her didn’t believe her – a complete misrepresentation of what actually happened on your part? You’re doing a bit of projecting here, Brooklynite, if we are talking about misrepresentations.
I hope that you never suffer a serious and injurious attack and then find when you tell people what happened to you, instead of offering you sympathy and support, they nit-pick at your story like self-appointed Hercule Poirots, accuse you of misrepresention because you forgot to mention your friends and question in depth your follow-up actions and responses.
Dworkin told Stoltenberg that she’d been raped. For some time after that, he didn’t believe that she had been. He’s subsequently characterized that doubt as being motivated by a desire to believe that the rape hadn’t occurred, but the fact remains that he doubted what she said had happened to her.
False claims of rape are extremely rare. And there’s nothing approaching proof that Dworkin’s claim was false, so I’ll say again that I don’t know. I don’t know whether she was raped.
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“For some time after that, he didn’t believe that she had been.”
He didn’t want to believe that she had been. There is a substantial difference. I’ve been in a room where he explained his reaction. What an appalling circustance that he is put in the position of having to justify and explain himself because people like you have taken his humane reaction and twisted it into a weapon to attack Dworkin.
“I don’t know whether she was raped.”
And this shouldn’t even matter, except for the fact that the criminal justice system and juries are populated with people with attitudes exactly like yours – who will scrabble for the smallest fact in an attempt to undermine a victim’s claims. What a horror that our patriarchal system gives callous people the opportunity to set themselves up as self-appointed investigators, judges and juries rather than as one human being sympathising with another’s plight.
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Delphyne: If you are aware of it you must therefore be aware that this piece is in the Dworkin tradition, so why are you complaining here that this piece doesn’t match up to it? I don’t understand. You took the view of an anti-feminist man that her work was “apocalyptic” and when this piece of writing wasn’t (which it wouldn’t be, because he was incorrect in the first place) you use it as a stick to beat Dworkin with. Wouldn’t it have been better to say “I don’t like Andrea Dworkin’s work and this is more of the same, this time on the subject of disability”.
I would like to say that for all your complaints that Dworkin wasn’t doing enough for disability politics, you should note that this, her very last piece of political writing before she died, was on exactly that.
I guess it’s worth repeating: I didn’t get much from Dworkin’s writing style but I appreciated her radical thinking and contributions to feminism. You know, the substance of what she wrote. I said that upfront to be fair, but it shouldn’t be mistaken for disliking the woman or her work.
And we definitely disagree that this was a writing for disability politics. It is political in the vein of all Dworkin’s work (which is why I expected more) but it must be feminist politics then, because what she wrote doesn’t contribute to disability rights unless it’s examined like we’re collectively doing here.
Why did you decide to comment on it now?
Because it’s not too close to her death or the anniversary of it. I’ve been writing this in my head for a year and a half.
Heart: She had been disabled for a comparatively short period of time. Had she lived to write more about her disability, her writings would have reflected, again, her ongoing process.
Pony and Delphyne have said this too, but this pretends that the obvious stages of living with a disability eventually lead to political activism about disability and disability rights. As I noted at the end of my essay, it’s unfair to put that on anyone and assume they will push the cause. Ever. Why would my hope to find it in this essay be more aggregious than your expectation that she would eventually meet all our needs if she’d only had the time?
>Hey Brooklynite just called a rape victim a liar
No she didn’t, and that’s really nasty.
You can believe someone is hurt, in pain, sure, maybe was raped again, and -still- think, “this story is very odd.”
You can believe someone’s EMOTIONAL truth and still say, “sweetie. this isn’t quite making sense. talk to me.”
not because one is attempting to judge whether this will stand up in a court of law; because one is concerned about the person’s mental health.
yeah, we all know that she was raped a number of times; we also know that PTSD does funny shit with your head sometimes as well, and perhaps combined with physical deterioration and who knows what…
well, whatever, she’s dead now, yes. duly sanctified.
this is a particularly important distinction considering that no one here is a lawyer; and this case was never legally prosecuted (that i am aware of)
granted that once the story’s out on the public stage the chances of this happening with any sort of gentleness have just gone out the window. no doubt she experienced Stoltenberg as just another traitor or something.
And yeah, what happened to Dworkin in the aftermath was -also- nasty, there’s no question. She put out her story on the world stage; she got attacked by people with an axe to grind. No doubt. She also got some concerned sympathy from a number of people (including, as mentioned, Stoltenberg) who thought that there might be another problem here.
it’s terrific that y’all are so loyal to this one woman, i must say. great, she’s a hero and an inspiration. it still doesn’t mean she’s you know a deity, worth attacking anyone who ever -dares- to criticize or even question -anything- about her.
and for people who are all “believe the woman! respect the woman’s truth and pain!” Blue’s been treated rather shittily right here, i must say.
Dworkin’s writing style was part of her politics and, as Heart says, because she was a writer a great deal of her activism was actually her writing. It’s not possible to separate out the two – her style and politics. This is what she says about the way she chose to write:
“I’d like to take what I know and just hand it over. But there is always a problem, for a woman: being believed. How can I think I know something? How can I think that what I know might matter? Why would I think that anything I think might make a difference, to anyone, anywhere? My only chance to be believed is to find a way of writing bolder and stronger than woman hating itself–smarter, deeper, colder This might mean that I would have to write a prose more terrifying than rape, more abject than torture, more insistent and destabilizing than battery, more desolate than prostitution, more invasive than incest, more filled with threat and aggression than pornography. How would the innocent bystander be able to distinguish it, tell it apart from the tales of the rapists themselves if it were so nightmarish and impolite? There are no innocent bystanders. It would have to stand up for women–stand against the rapist and the pimp–by changing women’s silence to speech. It would have to say all the unsaid words during rape and after; while prostituting and after; all the words not said. It would have to change women’s apparent submission–the consent read into the silence by the wicked and the complacent–into articulate resistance. I myself would have to give up my own cloying sentimentality toward men. I’d have to be militant; sober and austere. I would have to commit treason: against the men who rule. I would have to betray the noble, apparently humanistic premises of civilization and civilized writing by conceptualizing each book as if it were a formidable weapon in a war. I would have to think strategically, with a militarist heart: as if my books were complex explosives, minefields set down in the culture to blow open the status quo. I’d have to give up Baudelaire for Clausewitz.”
And I still think that writing about disability and connecting that personal experience to a wider context as she did in this piece is political. I think the problem here is a difference in ideas about what politics actually is, so it’s probably not worth me trying to argue the point any further.
>Sexism is the reason why everybody in the world seems to think that they know better about what happened to a woman that the woman herself. It’s incredibly abusive.>
Yes indeed. It truly is.
Funnily enough, that actually extends to situation BESIDES rape and domestic violence as well.
I mean, Blue made it very clear that she’s putting this critique (and it is truly a mild criticism in my book) of a piece of the woman’s -writing- in the context of HER experience.
And you could, you know, get past the fact that OMIGOD THE IDOL’S BEING ATTACKED!! ALERT ALERT to, you know, noticing Blue talking about herself, with some god forbid empathy even;
or you could just keep on rabbitting about how much -luckier- Blue is than, i don’t know who -are- we actually talking about here? the dead author whom nobody here actually knows? …and picking and picking at -her,- her age, her this, her that.
And, believe it or not, it is actually okay in most circles to criticize the -written work- of an author who is no longer living; if it weren’t, there’d be no such thing as a fucking English department.
and, y’know, hate to be blunt here, but it’s not as though people saying even nasty shit about Dworkin (which no one did in this topic, frankly) is going to make her, like, more dead, you know it?
On the other hand, the other women who are posting -right here in this thread- ARE alive, DO have feelings, and CAN be communicated with. Assuming of course that this is what you actually wish to do.
>Lesson 1 in feminism – believing women about what they say has happened to them at the hands of of men is a radical act.>
I like the qualifier, always. Tell me something: what about what they say has happened to them at the hands of other women? Is that Lesson 2? Or is that just part of another textbook altogether?
Hint, hint: “believe the woman.”
Blue in this very topic:
>Well, so far I been told my having been disabled longer than Dworkin makes me overqualified to say anything about Dworkin’s writing. I’ve been told I’m arrogant because I use a wheelchair, because I’m poor enough to qualify for federal and state aid, because that aid pays for people who show up at my home to help me, because I fit the offensive stereotypes of March of Dimes childhood icons of disability, because my form of disability is too male-oriented and privileged, and because I’m not currently dying or dead. None of the above is worth responding to except to say that a lot of it is based on erroneous assumptions about my life and is flat-out inaccurate.
What I take issue with is the implication that I’m not an acceptable woman or feminist because of my particular life experiences.>
And the response to this is?….
I agree with Sally, by the way.
…and Q Grrl, and Wheelchair Dancer; and i strongly disagree that Pony does not owe anyone an apology.
Then again, we all have our own take on who’s being coddled for what; ultimately that would be the hosts’ call.
“She also got some concerned sympathy from a number of people (including, as mentioned, Stoltenberg) who thought that there might be another problem here.”
OK, this is my last post to this thread. Stoltenberg BELIEVED her. He didn’t want for it to be true, he wanted to find any other reasons for what happened to her, but he BELIEVED her.
This nonsense that you are insinuating that her supporters thought she was suffering from mental problems is just that, nonsense. A number of “feminists” (they definitely deserve the scare quotes), lined up in the media to accuse her of lying (“concocting a story”) but her friends, supporters and colleagues and basically anybody else with an ounce of humanity believed her. She hated those “feminists” for what they did to her, for accusing her of being a liar, I know because I heard John Stoltenberg talk about it and I got the impression he hated them too.
Concerned sympathy my ass. Next time you see someone who has been violently attacked and you tell them it was all in their head and didn’t really happen, see what reaction you get. It has nothing to do with concern and sympathy and everything to do with cold-hearted callousnss.
Funny that believing a woman when she says she was raped and admiring her political writing and activism, now means we’re sanctifying her. Anybody would think you were trying to discredit radical feminists, BD.
Delphyne: FWIW, I like that quote.
Right on, Blue. :)
Fine. I take your point wrt Stoltenberg. O.K.
Taking it away from that specific case: I actually take mental health quite seriously, and do not care for the phrase “it’s all in your head,” because I don’t think that that does justice to real problems. Take PTSD: is that “all in someone’s head?” Well, no: it’s post-*traumatic* stress injury. But it certainly qualifies as mental as well as physical and concrete; and the political and legal realities are -not- the only important realities here.
And no, delphyne, I don’t think that’s what “anyone” would think, point of fact. I think that people are more important than the bloody ideology, yes. -any- bloody ideology.
iow, there are in fact other possibilities besides “she’s telling the gospel truth,” “she’s lying,” and “she’s crazy.” Perhaps not as would stand up in court; but for the most part, when we have these discussions, we’re not -in- court.
And it is also possible to criticize aspects of someone’s work and even say “this story was strange” without it being an “attack” of the person, the work, and every damn woman who’s ever liked her. As has been said in this thread; she’s the most popular/well-known feminist in the world, is Dworkin; and yet certain people act as though she’s both personally known and in dire need of protection whenever anyone says anything that suggests anything less than outright reverence. I find this weird, yes. Especially when no such cautions are taken about some of the actual ordinary women posting in the thread.
I did see attacks in this thread; but from where I sit the target wasn’t Dworkin. This is what’s bothering me.
My problem with Blue’s criticism is that it comes off as disengenuous. Before it can be believed that she is disappointed in Dworkin’s essay, which is her main point, it would have to be shown that she was ever impressed by Dworkin, which I sincerely doubt.
oops Heart already made this point:
Okay I’m new with the blockquotes. Let me try again:
Heart wrote:
Now me:
And Delphyne also suspected that Blue hasn’t read much of Dworkin.
The crucial question of the underlying credibility of the post has been ignored by Blue, and the comments were seriously derailed when brooklynite opened the door for Belledame to start a discussion about whether or not Dworkin was really raped like she said she was.
Thank you.
The truth is that in general (i.e. not only feminists, radical feminists, dead radical feminists, or Dworkin in particular, but EVERYONE) we are often surprisingly inaccurate in our memory. Lots of people get royally pissed off about this when it gets applied to them in an isolated situation, but it’s not an indictment of Dworkin. Even eyewitness reports, for example, are notoriously inaccurate. The face that a victim swore they’d never forget does, sometimes, get forgotten. And so on. Lawyers learn this early on: Witnesses are not really all that accurate.
I actually know nothing about the dworkin rape case. So I’ll use the same assumptions I use for pretty much everyone else: She’s probably not lying, she’s probably pretty accurate in her overall report, and she’s probably gotten a few of the details wrong–maybe more than a few–in an entirely nonmalicious way.
Lawyers run into this all the time.
p.s. whathappened to preview?
drifting into thread-hijack-land:
Dworkin’s work in “Our Blood” was just plain groundbreaking – the discussion of the “real” vs the “true” absolutely shook me to my foundation. I find that particular book, and much of her other work, brilliant beyond question.
This does not stop me from wondering if she was at any point in her life mentally ill, in addition to physically ill, and whether such mental illness (if any) informed her politics and her writing to any observable extent.
And if so, when we read her work, should we adjust for mental illness? Or should we consider it (whatever mental illness as may have existed) simply part and parcel of the radical experience of her life as she lived it?
Said John Stoltenberg in a March 11, 2006 interview:
“Germaine Greer said the best way to remember Andrea would be to really engage her work. ”
so – is this discussion not an engagement?
Please consider that there is a long history of discrediting feminists by calling them crazy. That’s all I’ll say because I don’t think we should be pulled into such a base discussion of a writer’s “mental health” instead of looking at the work on its merits. No one should in defending their mental health, it only makes the accusers valid.
I get what you’re saying, saltyC, but I’m not at all trying to imply that if she were mentally ill she’d be unqualified to comment on issues of importance. The fact that others (those who equate feminism with insanity) do so ought not limit our discussion here.
I’m saying – when one discusses Andrea Dworkin and disability, is it helpful to consider how mental illness (if any) could have affected her work?
In so doing, I’d be more worried about how the “mentally-ill-people-are-more-creative” myth would influence my thinking on the subject.
>I’m not at all trying to imply that if she were mentally ill she’d be unqualified to comment on issues of importance. The fact that others (those who equate feminism with insanity) do so ought not limit our discussion here.>
Thank you.
And for the record, it was not my intention to open that can of worms, although in hindsight i should have known better; silly me to think i could actually make such a comment round these parts without it turning into what it turned into.
As far as how -impressed- Blue might or might now have been with Dworkin before: how is this relevant?
As far as how familiar with her work she may or may not be: well, we already have one staunch defender of AD who’s just said openly she hasn’t read much of her at all (Pony); yet no one seems terribly concerned about her weighing in on not only the woman’s writing but the woman’s character. More curious to me is that several other staunch Dworkin defenders don’t seem to have a problem with the weighing in on the characters of women posting -here,- based on very little evidence indeed, except for the fact that they seem to be attacking (if anyone else is even inclined to call it that) sacred cows.
I’m not sure what “looking at the work on its merits” means when we’re talking about autobiographical writing.
maybe it’s a question best answered by generations to come, and not by us.
slip
The question of whether mental illness informs her work to any extent, I mean.
Certainly there’s no question that she was a brilliant writer. But yeah: merits as what, exactly? I am assuming we’re not just talking about the quality of the writing, here.
As usually, when BD enters a thread it becomes character assassination.
I would have to give too much of my personal disability history here than I am willing to do (since BD seems intent on following me around and making oblique references to it, from the time I, regrettably, did mention it (which others have been too honourable to repeat or comment on) in order to explain. But if you read my posts here, and not from the same perspective the original post was made here, that is a disengenuous opportunistic slam at someone, you will see I am primarily, (if not always) speaking from the perspective of illness, incapacity and disability.
BD, please read my post to see why Blue’s prior assessment of Dworkin is relevant, I made it abundantly clear.
Brooklynite, reading writing on its merits means the same thing whether it is autobiographical or not. It means accepting the reliability of the author and judging the writing itself. The way people do for Nietzche, if that makes it easier for you. (because he’s male) (PS he really was crazy)
Now saying you are “adjusting your reading” based on the author’s state of mental health, and then turning around and saying you’re adjusting up (insane creative artist myth) rather than down (crazy people don’t see reality for what it is) strains credulity, as the kids say.
“Now saying you are “adjusting your reading” based on the author’s state of mental health, and then turning around and saying you’re adjusting up (insane creative artist myth) rather than down (crazy people don’t see reality for what it is) strains credulity, as the kids say. ”
oh wow. I am not communicating clearly today, obviously. (not like I set the bar real high for myself anyway…)
I didn’t think I was making a value judgment in any way, when I said “adjusting for”. I didn’t think I was adjusting “up” or “down”.
Please pardon my muddled thinking, which is obviously interfering with me making my point.
Here are some examples of what I mean by taking mental illness into account:
John Adams: statesman, political writer, influential in the establishment of the USA, all-around smartyboots – had depressive episodes throughout his life. I can’t help but wonder if our lives today would be different if Adams was a cheerful optimist, in perfect mental health (such as is ever possible), or was otherwise not wrestling with depression. One can also examine what having depression meant in the late 1700s, and see how that may have influenced his writings.
Or, if you like – Thomas Jefferson. One could say the same about his intellect and influence, and one could also say the same about his level of mental health. If he had been treated for what some say was bipolar disorder, who’s to say what effect that would have had on his (highly influential) writings?
Or Hunter S. Thompson. Or Sylvia Plath.
Is it possible to examine the effects that the author’s mental health has on the work, without making value judgments as to the worth of the work?
Maybe, maybe not. I’m asking. I don’t think it “strains credulity” to ask a question.
I don’t know anything about Nietzche. But if I uncritically accepted the reliability of every author I read, I’d quickly wind up flummoxed and stuck. To pick just the most obvious example, what are we supposed to do when two people writing about the same event describe it in ways that contradict each other?
More fundamentally, it seems to me that engaged reading is necessarily critical reading. I don’t think I could read a piece of serious writing uncritically and take anything of value away from it.
When I read one participant’s account of a disagreement, for instance, I don’t assume that the account is disinterested and wholly accurate. I consider, while I’m reading, whether the factual elements of the story ring true, and whether the writer’s interpretation of events seems plausible. I read the account in the context of whatever other information I may have about the writer, and of what I think I know about how the world works.
That’s, I think, what people who have spoken critically about Dworkin’s writing here have tried to do, each from our own perspective.
Oh come on, you’re not saying I’m against critical reading, are you? Puh-lease.
Calling a writer crazy is a cheap shot. And stigmas like madness stick to women amazingly well. There is a long history of discrediting women authors this way. Of the thinkers Antiprincess listed, only Sylvia Plath was one whose writing is seen in light of “mental Ilness”.
Another thing, none of us take Dworkin as gospel, I don’t idolize her. I just think she was a great thinker, and a monumental influnce, and really deserves more serious criticism than baseless slurs typically thrown at women authors.
I didn’t say don’t be critical.
But to confess I do sometimes judge an author’s work by his personal life. For instance William S Burroughs and Norman Mailer were both wife beaters out to murder their wives. (Burroughs succeeded, Mailer thankfully failed by a hair) and that colors my reading of their work.
But all I see here are slurs against soemone who genuinely cared about women. I do not idolize Dworkin, nor take her work as gospel, but as a profound thinker I think she deserves more serious criticism.
I don’t think that’s an accurate summary of what’s happened in this thread. And I stand by what I wrote about Dworkin over at The Gimp Parade:
You may disagree with that take, but I don’t think it can be dismissed as unserious.
>I don’t think that’s an accurate summary of what’s happened in this thread.
I agree. I do think Dworkin may well get more than her fair share of automatic dismissal, but that’s not what i read here.
per Nietzche–well, again: what does this mean? Because now what I’m hearing is the (traditional lit crit, perhaps) idea that what matters is the work itself; the context of who the author is or where s/he’s coming from shouldn’t factor.
i tend to not agree with this so much. or, well, it depends on what kind of writing it is, what the goal is (both of the writing and of the criticism). In Dworkin’s case, in general, it’s a bit trickier to separate the writer from her work in that she was so very much about “the personal is political;” it’s a bit different from, say, looking at the legal arguments of Catherine MacKinnon and determining whether they have (legal, practical) merit, for example.
but I mean: it’s one thing to say, ahhhh, that Nietzche, he was crazy, don’t even bother reading anything he has to say, or taking any of it seriously;
it’s another to say, look, when he says (however the famous phrase goes, paraphrasing), when you go to woman, bring your whip, bear in mind that this is a sickly man who’s lived in the house of his mother and sisters his entire life.
doesn’t make him saying it any less ew-y, or make it any more or less…well, again, this doesn’t really quite translate…believable? i mean, i believe he meant it, pretty much. do i believe it’s true (that women need a whip to keep us in line)? well, hello, no; but i don’t need to know the state of his mental health or background to decide that. it just gives me a bit more insight into the writing and the author, perhaps.
but, yeah, i don’t know; i think we’re talking apples and oranges and probably a bunch of other fruits as well, here.
SaltyC: My problem with Blue’s criticism is that it comes off as disengenuous. Before it can be believed that she is disappointed in Dworkin’s essay, which is her main point, it would have to be shown that she was ever impressed by Dworkin, which I sincerely doubt.
That’s rather hard to prove, isn’t it? Well, unless I spend some time retyping in old student paper excerpts, which I’m not inclined to do and would be unlikely to impress anyone who decided immediately that this was just an opportunity to slam Dworkin. I have no reason to spend my time slamming other feminists. I think the bulk of my work at my blog will show that to be true, for all people, not just feminists — it’s not my style. Beyond that, I have to say your scepticism of my integrity and genuine interest in looking at the disability issues Dworkin raises (and doesn’t) rather than just tearing her down is your problem. I can’t make you believe.
On Dworkin’s believeability. I hate to see that brought up. I don’t relate to or agree with various things Dworkin said in this piece. That’s a very different thing from not believing what she says is true.
I wonder how her work will be analyzed 100 years from now. Will someone discover new information that will allow her work to be discussed in a whole new light? Will future generations simply be able to reflect upon her work with a century’s worth of wisdom that we just don’t have?
I mean, it could be that AD “went” “sane”, could it not? and it will just take the rest of the human race a goodly while to catch up?
The truth is that in general (i.e. not only feminists, radical feminists, dead radical feminists, or Dworkin in particular, but EVERYONE) we are often surprisingly inaccurate in our memory.
Er, not quite.
Psychological studies have shown that we are inaccurate in our memories of things like, say, the color of the car involved in the hit-and-run accident, or the height of the man who was holding the gun. At least, we are sometimes suggestible when it comes to memories of these things.
We are not inaccurate in our memories of whether or not we consented to sex. Very young children can sometimes be manipulated into “remembering” things that don’t happen, but not adults (unless certain mind-altering drugs are used).
ftr, I don’t think anyone here is suggesting that (for example) AD had consensual sex with the men at the hotel; or that she wasn’t raped any number of times in the past.
I disagree.
We are accurate in terms of consent when it’s clear. If we remember shouting “No, stop!” we are generally right. Though even there you will find that sometimes people actually shouted “No, no, please stop!” or “No, don’t!” when they claim to have shouted “No, stop!” Really, memory is funny stuff.
We are less accurate when it comes to judging our own apparent consent, largely because we can’t be objective in judging our own appearance. I cannot tell you how many times in my life people have thought I meant/wanted one thing when I actually did not. Unfortunately, sex is not all that different.
I don’t want to side track this disability/feminism thread into a rape discussion. Conveniently, even before you replied I had started on a rape analysis series on my own blog; part 1 is here (with links to part 2.) You can respond there if you want.
Actually, the phenomenon of false “recovered memories” in adults is well-established, notably in the “satanic ritual abuse” cases of the 1980s. And I’m not just talking about recovered memories of having been abused — some of those cases, the accused came to believe that they themselves had, as adults, committed crimes which had in reality never occurred. Paul Ingram is one Google-able example of this.
Blue, great posts. Sorry this comment is is late, but I just saw this, and had to comment.
Pony writes: “Disabled children are the icons of disability. Why am I not surprised that Blue has so little awareness of what the rest of us experience?”
Pony, you are extremely able-bodiest and ignorant. You can’t be serious. Icons, huh? As a disabled child (boy), I mostly got the shit beat out of me, at home and everywhere else. Disabled children are far more likely to be abused, sexually and otherwise, than able-bodied children. Where are you getting this shit?
That is all.
Heart writes: “Pony, I’m sorry for the treatment you’ve received here.”
Unfuckingbelievable.
Blue writes about Pony’s comments to her : “Well, so far I been told my having been disabled longer than Dworkin makes me overqualified to say anything about Dworkin’s writing. I’ve been told I’m arrogant because I use a wheelchair, because I’m poor enough to qualify for federal and state aid, because that aid pays for people who show up at my home to help me, because I fit the offensive stereotypes of March of Dimes childhood icons of disability, because my form of disability is too male-oriented and privileged, and because I’m not currently dying or dead. None of the above is worth responding to except to say that a lot of it is based on erroneous assumptions about my life and is flat-out inaccurate.”
Blue, I am sorry for the treatment you have received here.
MrSoul, so glad to see you here. And thanks.
Yeah, the “icon” thing is particularly cruel.