Read Online Female Chauvinist Pigs by Ariel Levy - Free Book Online
Authors: Ariel Levy
Tags: Politics & Social Sciences, Social Sciences, womens studies, gender studies, Popular Culture, Feminist Theory
Ads: Link
twice vetoed by the mayor of Minneapolis, but Dworkin and MacKinnon were subsequently summoned by the conservative city council of Indianapolis, Indiana, which was eager to rid their city of smut and wanted the antiporn feminists’ help. The city council and the Republican mayor of Indianapolis, William Hudnut, were opposed to core feminist goals like abortion rights and the ERA, but Dworkin and MacKinnon felt so outraged by what they viewed as pornography’s assault on female dignity that they joined forces with the conservatives anyway.
Dworkin was a former prostitute who had been beaten by her husband and sexually assaulted by doctors when she was taken to the Women’s House of Detention in New York City in 1965 after participating in a march against the Vietnam War. In 1995, she told the British writer Michael Moorcock, “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.” The ordinance she’d crafted with MacKinnon was signed into Indianapolis law in 1984. Soon thereafter, the law was deemed unconstitutional and overturned by federal courts. But many feminists never forgave Dworkin and MacKinnon—and, by association, all antiporn feminists—for getting into bed with the right wing. To them, it symbolized exactly the kind of termagant moralism and prudery they felt were corrupting their movement.
“Suddenly, pornography became the enemy…sex in general became the enemy!” says Candida Royalle, a sex-positive feminist then, a director of adult films geared to female viewers now. “The women’s movement, in a way, was starting to be co-opted. I think the MacKinnonites and the Dworkinites definitely moved in at that point. And remember, Dworkin is the one who said intercourse is an act of rape, inherently an act of rape.”
Royalle is not alone in interpreting Dworkin’s work this way; both Playboy and Time magazine have cited this idea as hers. Dworkin for her part has said this is not a message she intended to convey. In the preface to the tenth anniversary addition of her book Intercourse, she wrote about why an imaginary (male) reader might mistakenly think she was saying all intercourse is rape:
[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.
I don’t think Dworkin is being quite fair here. The bias against her work also has something to do with people being put off by her extremist proclamations. Consider this snippet from an article she wrote called “Dear Bill and Hillary” for The Guardian (London) in 1998:
Bill Clinton’s fixation on oral sex—non-reciprocal oral sex—consistently puts women in states of submission to him. It’s the most fetishistic, heartless, cold sexual exchange that one could imagine…I have a modest proposal. It will probably bring the FBI to my door, but I think that Hillary should shoot Bill and then President Gore should pardon her.
This was more than Candida Royalle had bargained for. She had first gotten involved with the women’s movement in her late teens, when she attended consciousness-raising workshops in the Bronx and organized free clinics where
Dworkin was a former prostitute who had been beaten by her husband and sexually assaulted by doctors when she was taken to the Women’s House of Detention in New York City in 1965 after participating in a march against the Vietnam War. In 1995, she told the British writer Michael Moorcock, “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.” The ordinance she’d crafted with MacKinnon was signed into Indianapolis law in 1984. Soon thereafter, the law was deemed unconstitutional and overturned by federal courts. But many feminists never forgave Dworkin and MacKinnon—and, by association, all antiporn feminists—for getting into bed with the right wing. To them, it symbolized exactly the kind of termagant moralism and prudery they felt were corrupting their movement.
“Suddenly, pornography became the enemy…sex in general became the enemy!” says Candida Royalle, a sex-positive feminist then, a director of adult films geared to female viewers now. “The women’s movement, in a way, was starting to be co-opted. I think the MacKinnonites and the Dworkinites definitely moved in at that point. And remember, Dworkin is the one who said intercourse is an act of rape, inherently an act of rape.”
Royalle is not alone in interpreting Dworkin’s work this way; both Playboy and Time magazine have cited this idea as hers. Dworkin for her part has said this is not a message she intended to convey. In the preface to the tenth anniversary addition of her book Intercourse, she wrote about why an imaginary (male) reader might mistakenly think she was saying all intercourse is rape:
[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.
I don’t think Dworkin is being quite fair here. The bias against her work also has something to do with people being put off by her extremist proclamations. Consider this snippet from an article she wrote called “Dear Bill and Hillary” for The Guardian (London) in 1998:
Bill Clinton’s fixation on oral sex—non-reciprocal oral sex—consistently puts women in states of submission to him. It’s the most fetishistic, heartless, cold sexual exchange that one could imagine…I have a modest proposal. It will probably bring the FBI to my door, but I think that Hillary should shoot Bill and then President Gore should pardon her.
This was more than Candida Royalle had bargained for. She had first gotten involved with the women’s movement in her late teens, when she attended consciousness-raising workshops in the Bronx and organized free clinics where
Similar Books
