What are your thoughts on this Andrea Dworkin quote?

[EatsBrainsAndLeaves]

I love this quote. Wondered what women here thought about it?

""It is not in becoming a whore that a woman becomes an outlaw in this man's world; it is in the possession of herself, the ownership and effective control of her own body, her seperateness and distinctness, the integrity of her body as hers, not his.

Prostitution may be against the written law, but no prostitute has defied the prerogatives or power of men as a class through prostitution. No prostitute provides any model for freedom or action in a world of freedom that can be used with intelligence and integrity by a woman; the [happy hooker] model exists to entice counterfeit female sexual revolutionaries, gullible liberated girls, and to serve the men who enjoy them" ~ Andrea Dworkin, 'Right-Wing Women'"

Btw, I am absolutely sure that using 'class to cover an entire sex' is exactly what Wollstonecraft means. She uses the phrase 'the class of women'. If unnamedfemaleprotagonist is lurking she'll say more, she's well up on this.

Wowser, when anyone wants to know what "derailment" or "whataboutthemenz" means, we can just point them to this thread!

In response to the original quote, I think it can be applied not just to prostitution but to the pornified culture in general. I can remember thinking I was being pretty cool and subversive when I was younger, tottering about in my high heels and hotpants, feeling sure about myself, "empowered" some might say, but really I was just playing into the hands of the men/boys leching at me.

Fortunately that phase didn't last very long!! My poor mum, what she had to endure.....

@namechangeguy

Maybe this wasn't the best place to re-ignite a previous debate.

Indeed it wasn't, hence the deletions. We ask members to argue the post, not the poster
Thanks so much
MNHQ

Can we have the dig about 'real life' not 'cutting it' gone too, Olivia? I thought that was rather offensive.

'Come, foolish woman, and answer my manly questions, how dare you not be here when I demand!

Thanks for the manspalin about Marx, Wollenscraft and class LeithLurker.

Women exist as a political class. Period.

Any man blustering that they don't, needs to have a word with himself.

Women are a globally oppressed class who actually get their own bill of rights. Amazeballs!!

Morgan and Engels described women as the world's first oppressed class (think about division of labour, ownership of means of production, control of capital/resources). In fact they (and Marx) observed the social and economic hierarchy that existed between men and women as a framework for analysing socio-economic class. They saw the family system as a precursor to the property system.

Anyhoo, interesting though all this basic feminism may be, it might be nice to actually discuss the 'meat' of the quote.

I think this first bit is a brilliant analysis;

It is not in becoming a whore that a woman becomes an outlaw in this man's world; it is in the possession of herself, the ownership and effective control of her own body, her seperateness and distinctness, the integrity of her body as hers, not his

This is consciousness raising lightbulb moment stuff.

Or Wollstonecraft even. Don't know who Wollenscraft is!

I didn't know that about Engels.

But yes, I think the way she's saying that integrity, of whatever kind, only comes from being outside the law, is fascinating and disturbing. I wonder if it's less true, or getting less true, now? For example, she wrote that before marital rape was criminalized in England, so when she wrote it a woman's right to her bodily integrity in that situation was legally not protected, whereas now there is a law, which doesn't always provide protection in practice but does in theory.

What I'm coming round to asking is, do you think that we have to expect to keep consciously being 'outlaws' to the legal system? Or can we expect gradually to get more legal protections extended to us, so that eventually we're inside the law?

I was thinking how the legal system works on precedent, and whether it can ever continue to do that and become completely inclusive of women, or not?

Arguably prostitutes who keep their own monmey and work for themselves have more power and better feminist credentials than housewives providing sex and housekeeping and servile services in return for an allowance from their husband.

However I don't think her suggestion that women should not be able to use the one weapon they have which men don't (the abilility to sell sex because there is a male sexual deficit and men often have to pay and women don't) is particularly helpful.

(What a shame if in 2012 teenage girls are not reading or at least know of Mary Wollsteoncraft [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Wollstonecraft]] in the way we used to. We must make sure our daughters do.)

If it's arguable, I'd love to see someone do it, but I find it hard to believe! I've read a lot of your posts on the subject and never found it to be 'arguable' in the slightest.

I think Dworkin is not just talking about 'outlaw' in the sense of being out-with the law in a legal sense.

It's been a while since I read Right-Wing Women, but I think she is talking about how women are identified within patriarchy either as 'whores' or 'wives' - in other words, in relation to their relationship with men. And that the role of the 'wife' and the role of the 'whore' are two sides of the same coin.

She is saying (IIRC) that the woman who has ownership and control of her own body (and I think this is about childbearing and labour, not just sex) is an outlaw in the sense of being out of the system/power structures of patriarchy. Yes, these systems are bolstered by the actual law, in a legal sense, but I think she is looking at a bigger picture than that.

IMO she is using outlaw in a revolutionary sense. For example a lesbian separatist is an outlaw in the sense that they are as least accepting of The System as possible, but they are not doing anything illegal (although you would think they are, the way society/people react to this lifestyle - it is a fine line between outcast/outlaw IYSWIM).

No, I see that, I was just thinking about the legal aspect of it. Outlaw to me implies a lot more than just not being adequately protected by law, too.

But yes, I see what you mean about outcast/outlaw, and I like her choice of wording.

Xenia, I think Dworkin's analysis is that the 'wife' and the 'whore' are both in roles of female oppression.

I have dug out my copy of the book and this quote comes just a few sentences after;

Wife or whore: both are denied a human life, forced to live a female one. Wife or whore: intelligence denied, annihilated, ridiculed, obliterated, primes her to surrender?to her female fate. Wife or whore: the two kinds of women whom men recognize, whom men let live. Wife or whore: battered, raped, prostituted; men desire her. Wife or whore: the whore comes in from the cold to become the wife if she can; the wife thrown out into the cold becomes the whore if she must. Is there a way out of the home that does not lead, inevitably and horribly, to the street corner? This is the question right-wing women face. This is the question all women face, but right-wing women know it. And in the transit?home to street, street to home?is there any place, reason, or chance for female intelligence that is not simply looking for the best buyer?

Remember this is being written in 1978.

That sounds accurate. So you have women as madonna or whore but both just in their relationship to man and you have much admired batchelors and much maligned spinters and a suggestion women cannot be happy unless in relations to men and are totally defined by their relationships to men who in a sense own them and their children.

It was important in 1978. The issue is still important across most of the planet now and still relevant to many people and relationships in the UK.

Yes exactly.

Although Dworkin uses the word 'wife' on purpose I think - I mean rather than using the word 'madonna'. It isn't about madonna/whore complex - rather about 'whore' and 'wife' as being similar states of sexual, economic and intellectual oppression.

I just re-read the chapter the quotes are from and it is a searing piece of feminist analysis. It is called 'The Politics of Intelligence' - brilliant reading for anyone who thinks that feminists' use of the term 'the sex class' is somehow extreme or exaggerated.

No prostitute provides any model for freedom or action in a world of freedom that can be used with intelligence and integrity by a woman; the [happy hooker] model exists to entice counterfeit female sexual revolutionaries, gullible liberated girls, and to serve the men who enjoy them"

Definitely true, and the answer to all those who defend our increasingly pornified culture as 'empowering' women. There is nothing powerful or conferring of power in women selling themselves to men: the fact that a woman is relatively successful (in superficial ways) at negotiating the sexual roles patriarchy allows her just means she is good at commodifying herself.