Is Porn Bad for You?

[blanc]

I'd like to explain something C2W about this

"All of them say quite plainly that they were raped, abused, prostituted and otherwise violently coerced into having sex against their will by their fathers, stepfathers, uncles, stepbrothers and pimps, sometimes for pornographic purposes. One of them also says explicitly that she was enslaved and imprisoned, and I take it as granted that the other two were as well. I don't doubt that any of them are telling the truth, or that there are many women whose truth they represent. They were not injured by pornography. They were injured by men who committed multiple violent and sexual criminal offenses against them and -- presumably -- got away with it, as many violent sexual criminals who prey on their dependents do. "

The practical situation of rape prior to and for pornography is usually seamless. Pornography, that first rate money spinner for organised crime, does provide the funds to work the miracle of keeping hidden from public view and from justice the sacrifice of many, many people - mainly women and children. How many? How many acts available on internet porn sites are criminal? Do you know, does anybody know? Can anyone reliably determine, by looking alone, all of which are criminal and all of which are not? Naively, when I first began to become aware of what has been happening for so long now, I thought the information I had would easily be sufficient to locate the films made with the suffering of the child victims I was particularly concerned about. 3 separate law enforcement officers, all quite senior, one Norwegian, one British, one American, and all concerned on a regular basis with these crimes, put me straight about this. The precise details of the room, the wardrobe with the contrast beading, the bookshelves, the position of the beds, windows, doors, the colour of the carpet and the rug covering the blood stain, not a lot of help. I thought I must have hit paydirt with a photo of an original, one off garment used in one of the scenarios, I was even more sure I had when one of the victims got some tailor made soft porn spam about it sent to her private email after the (corrupt) police force dealing with this was informed about its existence, but even that was no help because although they showed it at an international conference of law enforcement officers to see if anyone had come across it, the answer was basically the same - with thousands of new images hitting the net continuously, no-one could recall this one. Remember Wonderland? Just one of the many much publicised busts of exchangers of paedophile pornography - which actually did not manage to root out more than a handful of perpetrators. I saw some of the faces of the children, just a few hundred of them. Is that enough? There are no reliable stats, no reliable research into the connection between pornography and the criminal assaults and murder which sustain it because, for one thing, there's just too much of it, and too few people who care enough to do anything about it.



I guess its the difference in viewpoint between those who would want to learn what meat does for you by asking the guy munching on a burger and those hearing the poor cow screaming in the slaughterhouse.

[Stephen Morgan]

This is the one statement she makes that is worth considering, because there is much-too-much truth in it -- but tragically, by this time, Dworkin has so offended the ears of nearly half the population, some of whom might otherwise be sympathetic to what she does say that is of value, that she becomes more of a curse to her own argument (by way of her outlandish exaggerations, mis-characterizations, and outright lies) than she would be if she had not even opened her mouth in the first place.

"Almost half"? Oh, so women couldn't be offended because it's impossible for them to feel empathy with men, is that what you're saying? OR are their tiny brains just incapable of recognising hateful bullshit, is that your position? Because as I see it, c2w is female and wintler2 is male, and it's clear who is more supportive of Dworkin. You horrible misogynist.

[vanlose kid]

*

hmmm, seems i unwittingly made quite a faux pas posting the Michael Moorcock interview with an intro by Andrea Dworkin.

was going to reply (or react, perhaps) c2w's first post yesterday but ran into the glitch, now it's gone, but i still want to put down my two cents worth on some of the responses to my post, if i may.

first though, from memory, c2w said that a "libertarian quoting Andrea Dworkin must surely be a sign of the end times". funny thing is i had no idea who Andrea Dworkin was until last night, when i stumbled on the interview on my semi-regular "wonder what Michael Moorcock is up to these days?" round of the internet. (he's working on a Doctor Who book it seems.) and Michael Moorcock (Jerry Cornelius etc., yes, him) is a fairly well known (left) libertarian (i.e. anarchist) and i figured that he was not a problem, or not the problem, so i looked up Andrea Dworkin. turns out, according to her wiki page, she's one too. (this is yesterday.)

so, i thought, well, i just posted two pieces involving two libertarians, and me being one myself, how is that a sign of the end times and the end of western civilization? cause i really couldn't see much cause for alarm in what i posted. and the only reason i posted them is because i happened to remember this thread while reading them. besides, if a libertarian posting the words of libertarians is a sing of the end times then the world must have ended a while ago seeing that i started and have been posting to a thread exclusively on and by and about libertarians etc.

that was as far as i got. glitch.

now, i don't have the history and experience that others on here have with Andrea Dworkin and all that she is held responsible for, justly or not, so, i'll excuse myself for having raised the spirit of fascism here (though i don't really see it) and just remark on a few things.

*****

It's a shame that C2W's comments on Andrea Dworkin apparently got scrubbed in the tech-glitch yesterday.

Dworkin was an extremist whose ideas were taken up by moralist authoritarians who proceeded to censor and destroy material and silence voices from the gay and lesbian community, with Dworkin's approval and cooperation.

As far as her adding to a reasoned, adult debate on 'pornography' she should be remembered as an intellectual failure and reactionary whose ego and narrow-mindedness did much more harm than good. She became a friend to the fascists.

I remember well the toxic effect she had on campuses in the 80's. It really did get as low as 'All men are rapists (or all sex involving a penis is rape) vs. All feminists just hate men.'

So even if she moved the wheel forward and intensified the debate, she became an agent of hatred and mistrust, a book-burner, and ultimately a pawn of the Reaganites.

I had added a comment in suport of C2W's comments. The logical consequences of Dworkin's work, at least according to her intellectual descendants, is that anything having to do with a penis is evil. And because of that, gay men are particularly evil. I have observed that many post-Dworkin radical feminists are implicitly anti-gay-male.

on this: i don't think you can fault e.g. Ghandhi or MLK (not that i'm comparing Dworkin to them, so please don't make that your come back) for the misuse of their ideas or actions by others, especially those wholly opposed to them in spirit and substance, can you?

was she really "an intellectual failure and reactionary whose ego and narrow-mindedness did much more harm than good [who] became a friend to the fascists"? i have no idea.

and "...the toxic effect she had on campuses in the 80's. It really did get as low as 'All men are rapists (or all sex involving a penis is rape) vs. All feminists just hate men." can't attest to that, but even if i could, how many times hasn't one heard the toxic effect of so-and-so only to later realize that what was claimed and fought for in the name of so-and-so turned out not to have much to do with the so-and-so so often invoked as to be completely unrecognizable and probably abhorrent to the so-and-so so invoked. is this the case here? i don't know. it could be. the so-and-so in question here, Dworkin, seems to say as much in the interview. then again, she may be the lying two-faced friend of fascists that she is said to be.

and this: "The logical consequences of Dworkin's work, at least according to her intellectual descendants, is that anything having to do with a penis is evil. And because of that, gay men are particularly evil. I have observed that many post-Dworkin radical feminists are implicitly anti-gay-male."

i don't think that follows. not that i'm exactly sure what the claimed 'logical consequences' are built on or constitute, but i'm sure none of that follows from what i read and posted, unless the logic is pulled right out of the air, but then anything follows from anything. what's more, for people who think that anything follows from anything, whatever premises work, Dworkin's, Descarte's, even Jesus'.

and i'm sure Dworkin's last "husband":

"feminist writer and activist John Stoltenberg when they both walked out on a poetry reading in Greenwich Village over misogynist material. They became close friends and eventually came to live together.[27] Stoltenberg wrote a series of radical feminist books and articles on masculinity. Although Dworkin publicly wrote "I love John with my heart and soul"[28] and Stoltenberg described Dworkin as "the love of my life",[29] she continued to publicly identify herself as lesbian, and he as gay. Stoltenberg, recounting the perplexity that their relationship seemed to cause people in the press, summarized the relationship by saying "So I state only the simplest facts publicly: yes, Andrea and I live together and love each other and we are each other's life partner, and yes we are both out."[27]

Dworkin and Stoltenberg were married in 1998; after her death, Stoltenberg said "It's why we never told anybody really that we married, because people get confused about that. They think, Oh, she's yours. And we just did not want that nonsense."[29]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrea_Dw ... toltenberg

would disagree. of course it's possible that he too was a misguided, reactionary, intellectual failure, friend of fascists, and self-hating gay man with a penis, who knows? anything's possible. he did, after all, write a book called "Refusing to Be a Man: Essays on Sex and Justice, "Why I Stopped Trying to be a Real Man," [3] and The End of Manhood: A Book for Men of Conscience." [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stoltenberg]

i just don't find it likely, personally.

*****

Insults and smears and blaming, how banal, wake me when somebody addresses her arguments.

While some of her arguments are well-reasoned, many of Andrea Dworkin's arguments can credibly be described in exactly that way: "insults and smears and blaming." Too bad, too -- had she done less insulting and smearing and blaming throughout her career, she might be remembered more universally as one who took bold positions in favor of the dignity and rights of women and less for her horrid mis-characterizations of men, which served to undercut the value of her efforts on the whole.

"In this society, the norm of masculinity is phallic aggression. Male sexuality is, by definition, intensely and rigidly phallic. A man's identity is located in his conception of himself as the possessor of a phallus; a man's worth is located in his pride in phallic identity. The main characteristic of phallic identity is that worth is entirely contingent on the possession of a phallus. Since men have no other criteria for worth, no other notion of identity, those who do not have phalluses are not recognized as fully human."

-- Andrea Dworkin, "The Rape Atrocity and the Boy Next Door," a speech, March 1, 1975, State University of New York, Stony Brook (published in Our Blood, ch. 4, 1976)

This isn't so much an "argument" as it is an example of someone who opened her mouth one day, and vitriolic nonsense fell out of it.

SPLAT...

Why is so much of that "nonsense"? Because so much of it is simply not true. And it's "vitriolic nonsense" because these untrue statements form a caustic lie that not only eats away at any hope for a full understanding of the male gender, but also undermines her own credibility and therefore any reasonable case from then on that she hopes to make.

"A man's identity is located in his conception of himself as the possessor of a phallus."

Irredeemable rubbish. I am a man, and my identity is not "located" in my conception of myself as the possessor of a torso, a head, a pinky, or a "phallus" -- my identity is rooted in the whole of my being, and the attempt to limit me to this is an unforgivable slur -- each and every bit as unforgivable as similar such moronic limitations, based on gender, are to women.

If this amounts to Andrea Dworkin's understanding of "a man's identity," then she simply doesn't understand the male identity. This is a gross generalization, at the very best; certainly nothing upon which to hang an "argument." But, don't worry, it gets even worse.

Having already made an error, Andrea Dworkin then compounds that error in order to produce Dworkin's own special blend of gibberish.

"...a man's worth is located in his pride in phallic identity."

Horseshit. If I lost my penis in an accident tonight or to cancer next month, my worth as a man would remain.

I am not my penis nor am I my testes, and anyone who tries to limit or mis-characterize me using that kind of puerile buffoonery -- while also claiming, rightly, that women should not be limited by similar sorts of reductionist claims -- is more of a hypocrite than she realizes: she is perpetuating a similar kind of pseudo-intellectual violence that she claims to be against.

"The main characteristic of phallic identity is that worth is entirely contingent on the possession of a phallus. Since men have no other criteria for worth, no other notion of identity..."

"Men have no other criteria for worth"?! A sweeping statement, to be sure -- and surely also: a stunningly stupid one.

Andrea Dworkin doesn't know what the hell she's talking about here.

"...those who do not have phalluses are not recognized as fully human."

This is the one statement she makes that is worth considering, because there is much-too-much truth in it -- but tragically, by this time, Dworkin has so offended the ears of nearly half the population, some of whom might otherwise be sympathetic to what she does say that is of value, that she becomes more of a curse to her own argument (by way of her outlandish exaggerations, mis-characterizations, and outright lies) than she would be if she had not even opened her mouth in the first place.

And that's one of the many problems with Andrea Dworkin: in many ways, she was her own worst enemy.

reading though that, once i got to the exegesis of quotes lifted from the main quoted passage, i could kind of see what Simulist was getting at. but then i went back to the main quote again:

"In this society, the norm of masculinity is phallic aggression. Male sexuality is, by definition, intensely and rigidly phallic. A man's identity is located in his conception of himself as the possessor of a phallus; a man's worth is located in his pride in phallic identity. The main characteristic of phallic identity is that worth is entirely contingent on the possession of a phallus. Since men have no other criteria for worth, no other notion of identity, those who do not have phalluses are not recognized as fully human."

-- Andrea Dworkin, "The Rape Atrocity and the Boy Next Door," a speech, March 1, 1975, State University of New York, Stony Brook (published in Our Blood, ch. 4, 1976)

and i realized, or remembered, that this is not a biological, scientific, or essentialist argument. it's a cultural one. "In this society..." is not a universal generalization, it's a particular claim about a particular culture's particular way of seeing, understanding, defining the concept "man". and it does make sense. it's actually quite accurate.

so, does Dworkin think, believe, hold, that all men are like this? well, what is she doing talking to Mike Moorcock? why did she marry John Stoltenberg?—"she was a crazy, man-hating, GBLT betraying fascist, that's why!" oh, ok, that explains everything. sorry i asked.

that's about it for now. i might post more later, i might not. it doesn't really matter that much.

hi, blanc. hi all.

edit: formatting and typos.

*

[vanlose kid]

*

ps: two things. 1) i have to confess i kind of trust Mike Moorcock's nose. (love his books, too, so.) 2) just found this and thought i'd post it. she can defend herself:

Andrea Dworkin is antisex.

FALSE. Her early fiction is especially rich with narration about both lesbian and heterosexual lovemaking--for example, "a simple story of a lesbian girlhood" and "First Love."

Andrea Dworkin believes "Coitus is punishment."

FALSE. This line is said by a fictional character in her novel Ice and Fire. The character is paraphrasing Franz Kafka.

Andrea Dworkin is antilesbian and lives with a man.

A HALF-TRUTH. She has lived since 1974 with the writer John Stoltenberg, whose essay about living with Andrea appeared in Lambda Book Report in 1994. They have both been out for more than two decades. In a 1975 speech to a Lesbian Pride Week rally, Andrea called her love of women "the soil in which my life is rooted."

Andrea Dworkin believes that battered women have the right to kill their batterer.

TRUE. She said so in a 1991 speech to a conference about women and mental health, and she said so again, right after O.J. Simpson was acquitted on criminal charges, in an opinion piece about Nicole Brown Simpson for the Los Angeles Times.

Andrea Dworkin believes women are superior to men.

FALSE. She not only rejects this view but has publicly confronted other feminists who believe it, as she explains in "Biological Superiority: The World's Most Dangerous and Deadly Idea."

Andrea Dworkin believes that all intercourse is rape.

FALSE. She has never said this. She sets the record straight in a 1995 interview with British novelist Michael Moorcock. And in a new preface to the tenth-anniversary edition of Intercourse (1997), Andrea explains why she believes this book continues to be misread:

[I]f one's sexual experience has always and without exception been based on dominance--not only overt acts but also metaphysical and ontological assumptions--how can one read this book? The end of male dominance would mean--in the understanding of such a man--the end of sex. If one has eroticized a differential in power that allows for force as a natural and inevitable part of intercourse, how could one understand that this book does not say that all men are rapists or that all intercourse is rape? Equality in the realm of sex is an antisexual idea if sex requires domination in order to register as sensation. As sad as I am to say it, the limits of the old Adam--and the material power he still has, especially in publishing and media--have set limits on the public discourse (by both men and women) about this book [pages ix-x].

Earlier in her life, Andrea Dworkin prostituted.

TRUE. In an autobiographical essay written for the Contemporary Authors reference series, Andrea writes of a time in her life, beginning in her late teens, when "I fucked for food and shelter and whatever cash I needed." She cites a letter she wrote in reply to the author John Irving, published in The New York Times Book Review May 3, 1992, and in that letter she describes a time when, "homeless, poor, . . . sexually traumatized, I learned to trade sex for money. I spent a lot of years out on the street, living hand to mouth." That experience, according to this letter, is part of what informs the commitment behind all her writing: "With pornography, a woman can still be sold after the beatings, the rapes, the pain, the humiliation, have killed her. I write for her, in behalf of her, I try to intervene before she dies. I know her. I have come close to being her." In a speech given in October of the same year, she again publicly identifies with prostituted women: "...the premises of the prostituted woman are my premises."

Andrea Dworkin is antiabortion.

FALSE. She is a longtime supporter of NARAL and Planned Parenthood, politics she learned from her mother, as she tells in the interview with Michael Moorcock. But in her book Right-wing Women, Andrea sharply criticizes the male-dominated political left for promoting "abortion on male terms, as part of sexual liberation," rather than as self-determination for women.

Andrea Dworkin is an "essentialist"--she believes, for instance, that men are biologically driven to dominate.

FALSE. From her very first book, Woman Hating (1974), Andrea has said that gender is a social lie, and she has explicitly rejected the notion that "men" and "women" exist in nature. "It is not true that there are two sexes which are discrete and opposite," she says in a speech given in 1975. And in a chapter published in 1981, she mourns the tragedy of the socialization that male children endure ("How does it happen that the male child whose sense of life is so vivid that he imparts humanity to sun and stone changes into the adult male who cannot grant or even imagine the common humanity of women?").

Andrea Dworkin got an antipornography law passed in Canada.

FALSE. While it is true that in 1993 the Supreme Court of Canada changed Canada's criminal statute against pornography in a decision called Butler, Andrea in fact opposed the feminist lobbying efforts that led to this court decision--as a public statement about Canada makes clear--because she does not believe in obscenity law.

Andrea Dworkin's own books have been censored due to feminist anti-pornography efforts in Canada.

FALSE. As the same public statement explains, several of Andrea's books were once detained for inspection by Canadian Customs officials but under procedural guidelines that were in effect for years before 1993 and have been unaffected by the Butler decision. (The books then passed routinely into Canada.)

In a debate with Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, Andrea Dworkin flipped him the finger.

FALSE. That is not her debating style. The photograph of the two them in Alan Dershowitz's autobiography, The Best Defense, actually shows Andrea making a characteristic gesture for emphasis. Unfortunately the full record of what really transpired during their 1981 debate at Radcliffe College has been suppressed--by Mr. Dershowitz himself. He has refused to permit The Schlessinger Library for Women, which sponsored the debate, to distribute the tape recording. But Andrea's opening remarks are now available in the Andrea Dworkin Online Library.

American Civil Liberties Union president Nadine Strossen, in her book Defending Pornography, tells the following story:

The late John Preston, a gay activist and writer, illustrated Andrea Dworkin's long-standing antipathy toward any expression of male sexuality, including gay male sexuality, by recounting her actions during the early 1970s when he was director of the Gay House, Inc., in Minneapolis:

Dworkin used to run a lesbian discussion group in the center. One of her favorite antics back then was to deface any poster or other material that promoted male homosexuality. "THIS OPPRESSES WOMEN!" she'd write all over the place....

THE STORY IS FALSE. Preston's original newspaper article (published in the Boston Phoenix) claims Andrea Dworkin was in Minneapolis in 1971. But at that time she actually was living in Amsterdam as a battered wife, as she recounts in an autobiographical essay written for the Contemporary Authors reference series. She later escaped and moved to New York City. She went to Minneapolis for the first time in fall 1983 to teach a semester at the University of Minnesota. While there, she was invited to address a conference of 500 men. That speech was later published as "I Want a Twenty-Four-Hour Truce During Which There Is No Rape."

Against many lies spread about her by the American Civil Liberties Union over the years, Andrea has long tried to raise "a real debate about the values and tactics of the ACLU," as she writes in "The ACLU: Bait and Switch."

Andrea Dworkin believes that rape, battery, prostitution, and pornography are violations of women's civil rights.

TRUE. Feminist organizing against rape, battery, prostitution, and pornography is the theme of many writings available in the Andrea Dworkin Online Library. A good place to start is the extensive table of contents for Letters From a War Zone, which includes many speeches she gave to Take Back the Night rallies, including "The Night and Danger," about the relation of violence against women to racism.

http://www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/dworkin/LieDetect.html

embedded links in the original. take care all. peace.

*

[compared2what?]

Okey-doke. Limiting rebuttal strictly to the on-topic parts:

Michael Moorcock: Having worked for porn publishers and knowing the trade pretty well, I felt your 1981 "Pornography: men possessing women" offered clear insights into what made me uneasy about porn. Like you, I am an anti-censorship activist, but I didn't like what porn "said". Did you begin with the view that porn is effective propaganda against women?

Andrea Dworkin: Like many women, I think, my life was different from my understanding. I didn't come to feminism until I was in my mid-20's. It's hard for younger women now to understand that women my age didn't have feminism as a movement or an analytical tool. I understood Vietnam right away. I understood apartheid. I knew prisons were bad and cruel, but I didn't understand why the male doctors in the Women's House of Detention essentially sexually assaulted me, or even that they did. I knew they ripped up my vagina with a steel instrument and told dirty jokes about women while they did it. I knew they enjoyed causing me purposeful pain. But there was no public, political conception of rape or sexual assault. Rape rose to being a political issue only when it involved false accusations made by white women against black men.

I prostituted on the streets for several years. I had no political understanding of that, nor even of my own homelessness or poverty. I was battered--genuinely tortured--when I was married, but I thought I was the only woman in the world this ever happened to. I had no political understanding that I was being beaten because I was a woman, or that this man thought I belonged to him, inside out. I came to pornography, which I had both read and used, just as I came to fairy-tales: to try to understand what each said about being a woman. There was the princess, the wicked queen or witch; there was O, there was the Dominatrix. I had somehow learned all that, become all of them; and figured I'd better unlearn some of this shit fast or I was going to be dead soon but not soon enough.

I once heard a pimp say he could turn any woman out but no one could make her stay on the streets. But what happens when you find the inside worse than the outside? What happens when the marital bed with your revolutionary lover/husband is worse than any two-second fuck in any alley? I was a believer in sexual liberation, but more important I had believed in the unqualified goodness of sex, its sensuousness, its intensity, its generosity. I've always loved being alive. I've no interest in suicide, never have had. The battering destroyed me. I had to decide whether I wanted to live or die. I was broken and ashamed and empty. I looked at pornography to try to understand what had happened to me. And I found a lot of information, about power and the mechanisms by which the subordination of women is sexualised. I want you to understand that I didn't learn an ideology. For me, it's been a living journey. I began to examine the use of force in sex, as well as the kind of sadism I'd experienced in prison. I had so many questions, why do men think they own women? Oh, well, they do; here are the laws that say so; here's how the pornography says so. Why do men think women are dirty? Why is overt violence against women simply ignored, or disbelieved, or blamed on the woman?

I read all I could and still found the richest source of information on women's lives was women, like me, who wanted freedom and were willing to fight for it. But a big part of the fight was facing facts; and facts had a lot to do with what men had done to us, how men used us with or without our own complicity. In pornography I found a map, a geography of male dominance in the sexual realm, with sex clearly defined as dominance and submission, not as equality or reciprocity.

I agree that such a map can be found there, figuratively speaking. However:

(a) Maps don't lead to the configuration of real terrain. The configuration of real terrain leads to maps. A map might very well include features that accurately represent the enforced dominance of one group of people over another, for sure. If they couldn't, there would be no maps of Texas. But if there were no maps of Texas...Hmm. Let me think. Well. Texas would still be there.

(b) By her own account, in this interview and elsewhere, fairy tales and porn are just two variations on one story. That's actually a much more valid and interesting argument than metaphorically framing it that way does much to reveal, imo, but I say that to give credit where due not to criticize. I mean, it's my paraphrase, not hers. And fair's fair.

My point (also raised in different terms by Ellen Willis) is more that if you concede that (which Dworkin does), you would either have to explain how taking down porn would take down the whole narrative justification for male dominance, or you would also have to take down fairy tales. And that's assuming, for the sake of argument, that you can actually eliminate the terrain by burning the map. Which you can't. In fact.

So. Whatever. Porn can be viewed as a representation of male dominance in the sexual realm. Though not, imo, exclusively or globally. That's not "as male dominance in the sexual realm," but as a representation of it. Am I getting through here? It can be viewed as representing one aspect of a real problem. What then shall we who seek to address that real problem do?

Michael Moorcock: After "Right-Wing Women" and "Ice and Fire" you wrote "Intercourse". Another book which helped me clarify confusions about my own sexual relationships. You argue that attitudes to conventional sexual intercourse enshrine and perpetuate sexual inequality. Several reviewers accused you of saying that all intercourse was rape. I haven't found a hint of that anywhere in the book. Is that what you are saying?

Andrea Dworkin: No, I wasn't saying that and I didn't say that, then or ever. There is a long section in Right-Wing Women on intercourse in marriage. My point was that as long as the law allows statutory exemption for a husband from rape charges, no married woman has legal protection from rape. I also argued, based on a reading of our laws, that marriage mandated intercourse--it was compulsory, part of the marriage contract. Under the circumstances, I said, it was impossible to view sexual intercourse in marriage as the free act of a free woman. I said that when we look at sexual liberation and the law, we need to look not only at which sexual acts are forbidden, but which are compelled.

North Carolina became the last state to criminalize spousal rape in 1993. Marital rape exemptions were abolished in the UK in 1991.

Shockingly recent as both those dates are, this interview occurred in 1995.

Just by the by.

Michael Moorcock: What do you say to committed feminists who disagree with your approach to pornography and say porn is merely one manifestation among many of a problem with deeper roots?

Hey, that's ME!

Andrea Dworkin: I say solve the problem you think is more urgent or goes deeper. Pornography is so important, I think, because of how it touches on every aspect of women's lower status: economic degradation, dehumanisation, woman hating, sexual domination, systematic sexual abuse. If someone thinks she can get women economic equality, for instance, without dealing in some way with the sexual devaluation of women as such, I say she's wrong; but I also say work on it, try, organise; I will be there for her, as a resource, carrying picket signs, making speeches, signing petitions, supporting lawsuits for economic equality.

Thanks!

But if she thinks the way to advance women is to organise against those of us who are organising against sexual exploitation and abuse, then I say I don't respect that; it's horizontal hostility, not feminism. Women willing to let other women do the so-called sex work, be the prostitutes, while they lead respectable professional lives in law or in the academy, frankly, make me sick. I concentrate my energy, however, on uniting with women who want to fight sexual exploitation, not on arguing with women who defend it.

Hey, that's a STRAWMAN!

What about the committed feminists who disagree with your approach (implicitly because) they maintain that porn is merely one manifestation among many of a problem with deeper roots that your approach to pornography not only does nothing to eradicate but in some ways drives still deeper into the ground? Who do not organize against you or anybody else in any way, apart from publicly expressing their disagreement with you in an organized format, complete with the organized reasoning and evidence in support of their position, and stuff like that?

What do you say to them?

Michael Moorcock: You have been wildly and destructively misquoted. I've been told that you hate all men, believe in biological determinism, write pornography while condemning it, have been censored under the very "laws" you introduced in Canada and so on. I know these allegations have no foundation, but they're commonly repeated. Do you know their source?

Andrea Dworkin: Playboy, Penthouse, Hustler and lobbying groups for pornographers. Some of the lobbying groups call themselves anti-censorship, but they spend so much time maligning MacKinnon and myself that it is hard to take them seriously. And it seems to be only defending pornography that brings them out. I would define illiteracy as the basic speech problem in the US, but I don't see any effort to deal with it as a political emergency with constitutionally based remedies, such as lawsuits against cities and states on behalf of illiterate populations characterised by race and class, purposefully excluded by public policy from learning how to read and write. Fighting MacKinnon and me is equivalent to going to Club Med rather than doing real work.

Well....Since that is pretty much what you said to them, I can't do anything besides let it stand in all its fact-free and non-responsive glory. But I'm not happy about it, and would have preferred it if you had addressed the real criticisms that were raised by real men and women whose real objections to your approach to pornography were based on their real commitment to principle.

May you rest in peace.

Michael Moorcock: What's your position on free speech?

Andrea Dworkin: I don't think the British understand US law. Here, burning a cross on a black person's lawn was recently protected as free speech by the Supreme Court. It's obviously a big subject, but the First Amendment, which keeps Congress from making laws that punish speech, doesn't say, for instance, that I have a right to say what I want, let alone that I have a right to say it on NBC or CBS. After I have expressed myself, the government isn't supposed to punish me. But women and people of colour, especially African-Americans, have been excluded from any rights of speech for most of our history. In the US it costs money to have access to the means of speech. If you're a woman, sexual assault can stop you from speaking; so can almost constant intimidation and threat. The First Amendment was designed to protect white, land-owning men from the power of the state. This was followed by the Second Amendment, which says, ". . . and we have guns". Women and most blacks were chattels, without any speech rights of any kind. So the First Amendment protects the speech of Thomas Jefferson, but has Sally Hemmings ever said a word anyone knows about? My own experience is that speech is not free; it costs a lot.

True enough, though somewhat less than current in some regards. And oddly not responsive to the reams of criticism of your approach to pornography that remarked on its actual diminution of First Amendment freedoms as they presently stand under law.

But still. True enough.

[compared2what?]

*

ps: two things. 1) i have to confess i kind of trust Mike Moorcock's nose. (love his books, too, so.) 2) just found this and thought i'd post it. she can defend herself:

Andrea Dworkin is antisex.

FALSE. Her early fiction is especially rich with narration about both lesbian and heterosexual lovemaking--for example, "a simple story of a lesbian girlhood" and "First Love."

Andrea Dworkin believes "Coitus is punishment."

FALSE. This line is said by a fictional character in her novel Ice and Fire. The character is paraphrasing Franz Kafka.

Andrea Dworkin is antilesbian and lives with a man.

A HALF-TRUTH. She has lived since 1974 with the writer John Stoltenberg, whose essay about living with Andrea appeared in Lambda Book Report in 1994. They have both been out for more than two decades. In a 1975 speech to a Lesbian Pride Week rally, Andrea called her love of women "the soil in which my life is rooted."

Andrea Dworkin believes that battered women have the right to kill their batterer.

TRUE. She said so in a 1991 speech to a conference about women and mental health, and she said so again, right after O.J. Simpson was acquitted on criminal charges, in an opinion piece about Nicole Brown Simpson for the Los Angeles Times.

Andrea Dworkin believes women are superior to men.

FALSE. She not only rejects this view but has publicly confronted other feminists who believe it, as she explains in "Biological Superiority: The World's Most Dangerous and Deadly Idea."

Andrea Dworkin believes that all intercourse is rape.

FALSE. She has never said this. She sets the record straight in a 1995 interview with British novelist Michael Moorcock. And in a new preface to the tenth-anniversary edition of Intercourse (1997), Andrea explains why she believes this book continues to be misread:

[I]f one's sexual experience has always and without exception been based on dominance--not only overt acts but also metaphysical and ontological assumptions--how can one read this book? The end of male dominance would mean--in the understanding of such a man--the end of sex. If one has eroticized a differential in power that allows for force as a natural and inevitable part of intercourse, how could one understand that this book does not say that all men are rapists or that all intercourse is rape? Equality in the realm of sex is an antisexual idea if sex requires domination in order to register as sensation. As sad as I am to say it, the limits of the old Adam--and the material power he still has, especially in publishing and media--have set limits on the public discourse (by both men and women) about this book [pages ix-x].

Earlier in her life, Andrea Dworkin prostituted.

TRUE. In an autobiographical essay written for the Contemporary Authors reference series, Andrea writes of a time in her life, beginning in her late teens, when "I fucked for food and shelter and whatever cash I needed." She cites a letter she wrote in reply to the author John Irving, published in The New York Times Book Review May 3, 1992, and in that letter she describes a time when, "homeless, poor, . . . sexually traumatized, I learned to trade sex for money. I spent a lot of years out on the street, living hand to mouth." That experience, according to this letter, is part of what informs the commitment behind all her writing: "With pornography, a woman can still be sold after the beatings, the rapes, the pain, the humiliation, have killed her. I write for her, in behalf of her, I try to intervene before she dies. I know her. I have come close to being her." In a speech given in October of the same year, she again publicly identifies with prostituted women: "...the premises of the prostituted woman are my premises."

Andrea Dworkin is antiabortion.

FALSE. She is a longtime supporter of NARAL and Planned Parenthood, politics she learned from her mother, as she tells in the interview with Michael Moorcock. But in her book Right-wing Women, Andrea sharply criticizes the male-dominated political left for promoting "abortion on male terms, as part of sexual liberation," rather than as self-determination for women.

Andrea Dworkin is an "essentialist"--she believes, for instance, that men are biologically driven to dominate.

FALSE. From her very first book, Woman Hating (1974), Andrea has said that gender is a social lie, and she has explicitly rejected the notion that "men" and "women" exist in nature. "It is not true that there are two sexes which are discrete and opposite," she says in a speech given in 1975. And in a chapter published in 1981, she mourns the tragedy of the socialization that male children endure ("How does it happen that the male child whose sense of life is so vivid that he imparts humanity to sun and stone changes into the adult male who cannot grant or even imagine the common humanity of women?").

Andrea Dworkin got an antipornography law passed in Canada.

FALSE. While it is true that in 1993 the Supreme Court of Canada changed Canada's criminal statute against pornography in a decision called Butler, Andrea in fact opposed the feminist lobbying efforts that led to this court decision--as a public statement about Canada makes clear--because she does not believe in obscenity law.

Andrea Dworkin's own books have been censored due to feminist anti-pornography efforts in Canada.

FALSE. As the same public statement explains, several of Andrea's books were once detained for inspection by Canadian Customs officials but under procedural guidelines that were in effect for years before 1993 and have been unaffected by the Butler decision. (The books then passed routinely into Canada.)

In a debate with Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, Andrea Dworkin flipped him the finger.

FALSE. That is not her debating style. The photograph of the two them in Alan Dershowitz's autobiography, The Best Defense, actually shows Andrea making a characteristic gesture for emphasis. Unfortunately the full record of what really transpired during their 1981 debate at Radcliffe College has been suppressed--by Mr. Dershowitz himself. He has refused to permit The Schlessinger Library for Women, which sponsored the debate, to distribute the tape recording. But Andrea's opening remarks are now available in the Andrea Dworkin Online Library.

American Civil Liberties Union president Nadine Strossen, in her book Defending Pornography, tells the following story:

The late John Preston, a gay activist and writer, illustrated Andrea Dworkin's long-standing antipathy toward any expression of male sexuality, including gay male sexuality, by recounting her actions during the early 1970s when he was director of the Gay House, Inc., in Minneapolis:

Dworkin used to run a lesbian discussion group in the center. One of her favorite antics back then was to deface any poster or other material that promoted male homosexuality. "THIS OPPRESSES WOMEN!" she'd write all over the place....

THE STORY IS FALSE. Preston's original newspaper article (published in the Boston Phoenix) claims Andrea Dworkin was in Minneapolis in 1971. But at that time she actually was living in Amsterdam as a battered wife, as she recounts in an autobiographical essay written for the Contemporary Authors reference series. She later escaped and moved to New York City. She went to Minneapolis for the first time in fall 1983 to teach a semester at the University of Minnesota. While there, she was invited to address a conference of 500 men. That speech was later published as "I Want a Twenty-Four-Hour Truce During Which There Is No Rape."

Against many lies spread about her by the American Civil Liberties Union over the years, Andrea has long tried to raise "a real debate about the values and tactics of the ACLU," as she writes in "The ACLU: Bait and Switch."

Andrea Dworkin believes that rape, battery, prostitution, and pornography are violations of women's civil rights.

TRUE. Feminist organizing against rape, battery, prostitution, and pornography is the theme of many writings available in the Andrea Dworkin Online Library. A good place to start is the extensive table of contents for Letters From a War Zone, which includes many speeches she gave to Take Back the Night rallies, including "The Night and Danger," about the relation of violence against women to racism.

http://www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/dworkin/LieDetect.html

embedded links in the original. take care all. peace.

*

Hey VK --

I made a coherent argument against her real position that did not slander, insult, or otherwise play bullshit rhetorical games with her or anybody else, as I might have done by, for example, dragging in almost an entire fucking page of arguments with her that nobody on the thread was making.

Did you happen to miss that?

Also, since you yourself have now reintroduced the point:

How to you reconcile empowering the state to penalize sexual expression it doesn't like with libertarian values and principles?

I'm all ears.

Take care yourself.

[AhabsOtherLeg]

I like "Ice and Fire", but I don't like Andrea Dworkin. This is not an actual contribution to the thread in any way, I realise, but it is true.

I actually think Ice and Fire is one of the most memorable novels I've ever read. It is very, very right about things, and also very wrong. Above all, it is well-written. She should have stuck to fiction, where simply being well-written is enough. She kind of did stick to fiction, I suppose, but to no one's benefit, as things turned out.

Anyway, Ice and Fire is an impressive and useful literary work, and will be remembered and revalued for a long time to come. In my opinion.

[vanlose kid]

*

Hey VK --

I made a coherent argument against her real position that did not slander, insult, or otherwise play bullshit rhetorical games with her or anybody else, as I might have done by, for example, dragging in almost an entire fucking page of arguments with her that nobody on the thread was making.

Did you happen to miss that?

Also, since you yourself have now reintroduced the point:

How to you reconcile empowering the state to penalize sexual expression it doesn't like with libertarian values and principles?

I'm all ears.

Take care yourself.

hey you, didn't mean to piss you off. and no, i didn't miss it. when i pop on here i'm usually playing hooky, so i can't always get to everything. sorry. and yes, you did do what you say you do. besides, i didn't "[drag] in almost an entire fucking page of arguments with her that nobody on the thread was making", not in my view anyway. some of the points made in that last bit i posted from here site did in fact address some of the points taken up by others in my post previous to that. did you miss that? i don't think so. you rarely miss anything.

as for this: "How to you reconcile empowering the state to penalize sexual expression it doesn't like with libertarian values and principles?"—i don't? i don't have to. i'm not AD.

what i first posted made sense to me (the two—2—pieces i posted first in this thread). that doesn't mean that i condone or accept or support or defend each and every word and action of Dworkin's, nor do i need to, nor am i obliged to, really.

i also think, and i may be wrong, that to a certain extent you among others are conflating pornography as AD is using the term with all and everything that can be placed under that term, and not taking into account what AD specifically means when she uses the word. i think she's pretty clear on this, also in that last bit of "almost an entire fucking page of arguments with her that nobody on the thread was making".

i mean, i don't think she wants her own books (the literary stuff) or stuff like Nabokov or Joyce burned. but then again i think you know that. so ... i don't know. would it help to say the porn industry? some parts of the porn industry? what Mike Moorcock says about "what porn says"? you draw the lines. i don't and can't so far see that AD was against freedom of expression. then again, maybe i just can't see what you can?

peace.

*

edit: formatting and typos.

ps: maybe we need to define our terms?

*

[compared2what?]

I'd like to explain something C2W about this

"All of them say quite plainly that they were raped, abused, prostituted and otherwise violently coerced into having sex against their will by their fathers, stepfathers, uncles, stepbrothers and pimps, sometimes for pornographic purposes. One of them also says explicitly that she was enslaved and imprisoned, and I take it as granted that the other two were as well. I don't doubt that any of them are telling the truth, or that there are many women whose truth they represent. They were not injured by pornography. They were injured by men who committed multiple violent and sexual criminal offenses against them and -- presumably -- got away with it, as many violent sexual criminals who prey on their dependents do. "

The practical situation of rape prior to and for pornography is usually seamless. Pornography, that first rate money spinner for organised crime, does provide the funds to work the miracle of keeping hidden from public view and from justice the sacrifice of many, many people - mainly women and children. How many? How many acts available on internet porn sites are criminal? Do you know, does anybody know? Can anyone reliably determine, by looking alone, all of which are criminal and all of which are not? Naively, when I first began to become aware of what has been happening for so long now, I thought the information I had would easily be sufficient to locate the films made with the suffering of the child victims I was particularly concerned about. 3 separate law enforcement officers, all quite senior, one Norwegian, one British, one American, and all concerned on a regular basis with these crimes, put me straight about this. The precise details of the room, the wardrobe with the contrast beading, the bookshelves, the position of the beds, windows, doors, the colour of the carpet and the rug covering the blood stain, not a lot of help. I thought I must have hit paydirt with a photo of an original, one off garment used in one of the scenarios, I was even more sure I had when one of the victims got some tailor made soft porn spam about it sent to her private email after the (corrupt) police force dealing with this was informed about its existence, but even that was no help because although they showed it at an international conference of law enforcement officers to see if anyone had come across it, the answer was basically the same - with thousands of new images hitting the net continuously, no-one could recall this one. Remember Wonderland? Just one of the many much publicised busts of exchangers of paedophile pornography - which actually did not manage to root out more than a handful of perpetrators. I saw some of the faces of the children, just a few hundred of them. Is that enough? There are no reliable stats, no reliable research into the connection between pornography and the criminal assaults and murder which sustain it because, for one thing, there's just too much of it, and too few people who care enough to do anything about it.

I appreciate and share your feelings. I'm not sure what part of what you quoted me as saying above or anywhere else on this thread led you to believe otherwise. I was saying, and not for the first time, that I'm absolutely opposed to all rape, all sexual abuse, all enslavement, all torture, and the use of all violent, coercive and exploitative force.

You seem to be saying that rape-not-committed-for-pornography is categorically a lesser offense than rape-that-is-committed-for-pornography. And you also seem to be saying that rape-not-committed-for-pornography is merely a predicate act that precedes its inevitable seamless transition to rape-that-is-committed-for-pornography.

Please correct me if that's wrong. But on an interim basis, since the only one other reason for drawing a distinction between rape-prior-to-transition and rape-for-pornography that I can think of at all would be some kind of free-standing objection to pornography on non-rape-related grounds that you haven't made, I'm going to assume that you are at least saying that rape-for-pornography can be more traumatic than rape-not-for-pornography.

If so, I can't and don't argue with what you're saying.

However, the least that you really do seem to be saying is:

* that all rape-for-pornography is more traumatic than all rape not-for-pornography

* that all rape-not-for-pornography naturally progresses to rape-for-pornography; and

* that all or most pornography depicts real acts of rape or -- at a minimum -- cannot be proven not to

I object to the first on the grounds that it minimizes the trauma of rape and maximizes the trauma of coerced participation in pornography in a way that obviously might have some comforting or therapeutic value for survivors of it, but equally obviously might merely serve to reinforce their trauma when endlessly, repeatedly and emphatically presented as an omnipresent, ever-increasing and ongoing phenomenon of incalculable proportions to which all men with an internet connection are contributing. Which is how you present it.

I object to the second on the grounds that it's not true and also on the grounds that it suggests that rape is a lesser offense than rape-for-pornography, which I find as unacceptable as I do the suggestion that spousal rape is a lesser offense than rape outside of marriage. Which, incidentally, is not just a suggestion but a matter of law in more than half the states in these United.

And I object to the third on the grounds that if there's a constructive reason to think or assert it that's objectively helpful to victims and survivors rather than a rhetorical convenience that allows those who avail themselves of it to vacillate infinitely between the implicit conflation of rape and pornography and the not-so-implicit condemnation of those who question the validity of such an implication as engaged in the strawman tactic of pointing to a non-existent conflation that somehow -- though seemingly paradoxically -- reflects their blindness to the fact that pornography really, really isn't a victimless crime. Which, of course, it isn't. Because it's not a crime. Rape is. Though.

I have one other thing to say. But it's so important to me that I'm going to dedicate a single post exclusively to saying it.

Needless to say, I very much look forward to hearing your response to the substance of the points I've raised above on the terms in which I raised them.

Thanks.

[compared2what?]

*


i also think, and i may be wrong, that to a certain extent you among others are conflating pornography as AD is using the term with all and everything that can be placed under that term, and not taking into account what AD specifically means when she uses the word.

As far as I alone am concerned, I am completely confident that I know exactly what she places under that term, as a result of having been comprehensively and thoroughly familiar with her work on the subject for more than twenty years. So yes. You may be and are wrong.

i think she's pretty clear on this,

And you base that on what exactly? Having just stumbled across a softball Q&A Michael Moorcock did with her in 1995, plus some or all of the part of the introduction to one of her books in which she compares herself to Frederick Douglass, who -- as you may or may not recall -- opposed slavery and not minstrel shows?

I mean, I too think she's pretty clear on that. Exceedingly clear. Crystal clear. And yet, we seem to have a very different understanding of what she clearly and tirelessly advocated.

i mean, i don't think she wants her own books (the literary stuff) or stuff like Nabokov or Joyce burned. but then again i think you know that. so ... i don't know. would it help to say the porn industry? some parts of the porn industry? what Mike Moorcock says about "what porn says"? you draw the lines. i don't and can't so far see that AD was against freedom of expression. then again, maybe i just can't see what you can?

Either address the arguments I made or stop addressing me as if they had less bearing on my position than her not having intended to have her own books banned does.

Thank you so very much. And peace to you too. I do always enjoy your pretty ways.

edit: formatting and typos.

ps: maybe we need to define our terms?

*

I've defined mine. But in the event that you ever get around to quoting or responding to any substantive points I've raised, please let me know if you have any questions about their meaning.

[compared2what?]

I'd like to explain something C2W about this

[snip]

I guess its the difference in viewpoint between those who would want to learn what meat does for you by asking the guy munching on a burger and those hearing the poor cow screaming in the slaughterhouse.

I don't quite follow you.

How is this...

All of them say quite plainly that they were raped, abused, prostituted and otherwise violently coerced into having sex against their will by their fathers, stepfathers, uncles, stepbrothers and pimps, sometimes for pornographic purposes. One of them also says explicitly that she was enslaved and imprisoned, and I take it as granted that the other two were as well. I don't doubt that any of them are telling the truth, or that there are many women whose truth they represent. They were not injured by pornography. They were injured by men who committed multiple violent and sexual criminal offenses against them and -- presumably -- got away with it, as many violent sexual criminals who prey on their dependents do.

...like asking a guy who's munching on a burger to teach you what meat is, and this...

The practical situation of rape prior to and for pornography is usually seamless. Pornography, that first rate money spinner for organised crime, does provide the funds to work the miracle of keeping hidden from public view and from justice the sacrifice of many, many people - mainly women and children. How many? How many acts available on internet porn sites are criminal? Do you know, does anybody know? Can anyone reliably determine, by looking alone, all of which are criminal and all of which are not? Naively, when I first began to become aware of what has been happening for so long now, I thought the information I had would easily be sufficient to locate the films made with the suffering of the child victims I was particularly concerned about. 3 separate law enforcement officers, all quite senior, one Norwegian, one British, one American, and all concerned on a regular basis with these crimes, put me straight about this. The precise details of the room, the wardrobe with the contrast beading, the bookshelves, the position of the beds, windows, doors, the colour of the carpet and the rug covering the blood stain, not a lot of help. I thought I must have hit paydirt with a photo of an original, one off garment used in one of the scenarios, I was even more sure I had when one of the victims got some tailor made soft porn spam about it sent to her private email after the (corrupt) police force dealing with this was informed about its existence, but even that was no help because although they showed it at an international conference of law enforcement officers to see if anyone had come across it, the answer was basically the same - with thousands of new images hitting the net continuously, no-one could recall this one. Remember Wonderland? Just one of the many much publicised busts of exchangers of paedophile pornography - which actually did not manage to root out more than a handful of perpetrators. I saw some of the faces of the children, just a few hundred of them. Is that enough? There are no reliable stats, no reliable research into the connection between pornography and the criminal assaults and murder which sustain it because, for one thing, there's just too much of it, and too few people who care enough to do anything about it.

...more like hearing the screaming of the cows and acting to the extent of one's capacity to end the infliction of the pain that causes them to scream?

And if you can't answer that question, how about these:

Did you fail to notice that the reasons I've repeatedly given for my objection to opposing pornography as a rape-reduction strategy is that it doesn't reduce the prevalence of rape, which is a crime the reduction of which I take much too seriously to just blithely disregard whether the position for which I'm advocating is at all likely to reduce it or not?

If so, how on earth did you fail to notice them so very, very many times?

And if not, what on earth are you trying to insinuate about my putative deafness to the screaming of the cows?
_______________

And finally.

blanc:

I ask you, and not for the first time, to stop suggesting that I support, defend, contribute to, minimize or overlook acts of rape, torture, abuse, coercion and exploitation of any kind.

Further, I demand that you stop suggesting that I've ever said a word against the extant laws under which the production, consumption and distribution of child pornography are already criminal acts, per se, as they should be.

I appreciate the depth and breadth of your feelings, as I've said repeatedly. But I do not agree with your arguments, for reasons I've explained repeatedly, while disagreeing with them.

I'd regard it as a favor if you returned the courtesy. But if you can't, you can't. That's fine. Either way, though:

Stop attributing vile and reprehensible beliefs and positions to me that I've never expressed or owned.

I know you can do it.

Cheers.

[compared2what?]

This is the one statement she makes that is worth considering, because there is much-too-much truth in it -- but tragically, by this time, Dworkin has so offended the ears of nearly half the population, some of whom might otherwise be sympathetic to what she does say that is of value, that she becomes more of a curse to her own argument (by way of her outlandish exaggerations, mis-characterizations, and outright lies) than she would be if she had not even opened her mouth in the first place.

"Almost half"? Oh, so women couldn't be offended because it's impossible for them to feel empathy with men, is that what you're saying? OR are their tiny brains just incapable of recognising hateful bullshit, is that your position? Because as I see it, c2w is female and wintler2 is male, and it's clear who is more supportive of Dworkin. You horrible misogynist.

I pretty much said exactly what Simulist did in one of the posts-that-is-no-more -- ie, that I agree with some of what she says in isolation, but know too much about what else she said and did for my agreement with her on a few isolated points to make me overlook everything else.

She did say a lot of things that were hostile to men. I think you'd kind of be stretching a semantic point by insisting that the remarks to which you object were meant to convey much more than that.

To be fair. As thou art.

[semper occultus]

...may I suggest a pause in the midst of close-quarter combat to observe a brief moment of comic reflection on the occasion of Dworkin being interviewed by a Mr Moor-cock....


thankyou...you may resume....

[Searcher08]

...may I suggest a pause in the midst of close-quarter combat to observe a brief moment of comic reflection on the occasion of Dworkin being interviewed by a Mr Moor-cock....


thankyou...you may resume....

Indeed
And also the fact that the board crashed shortly after I posted a picture of an Annunaki female, labelled as a hamster. Coincidence? I think NOT.

[Stephen Morgan]

...may I suggest a pause in the midst of close-quarter combat to observe a brief moment of comic reflection on the occasion of Dworkin being interviewed by a Mr Moor-cock....


thankyou...you may resume....

Just a game bird, generally shot by members of the aristocracy. Moorcock, not Dworkin.