I have just rediscovered Andrea Dworkin through my dd......

[Hakluyt]

... and realised where I got many of my ideas from! Reading her in the 70s was like having the light turned on in my brain. She even anticipated "cool girls"- “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 model exists to entice counterfeit female sexual revolutionaries, gullible liberated girls, and to serve the men who enjoy them.”

"Men who want to support women in our struggle for freedom and justice should understand that it is not terrifically important to us that they learn to cry; it is important to us that they stop the crimes of violence against us."

I loved Andrea Dworkin. I mentioned her to some younger women recently and they looked completely blank, which i thought was sad. That is a great line of hers Hakluyt. Her book on porn was brilliant.

Do you know that all her works can be downloaded free here?

I find some her stuff to be difficult to read, but she is always insightful.

RIP Andrea

She was bloody brilliant.

this is timely

feministcurrent.com/11440/maligning-andrea-dworkin-in-death-amounts-to-little-more-than-misogyny/

"I don’t believe rape is inevitable or natural. If I did, I would have no reason to be here. If I did, my political practice would be different than it is… Have you ever wondered why we [women] are not just in armed combat against you? It’s not because there’s a shortage of kitchen knives in this country. It is because we believe in your humanity, against all the evidence."

I am on my phone and don't know how to link but there are some cracking quotes from "Pornography" that absolutely sum up how I feel about it.

I'm just really discovering her (beyond a passing mention during my degree).

^ Discovering in the sense of me finding out and learning.

As I said- I remember how I felt reading her as a young woman. She was so ....transgressive..it was fabulous. I remember how shocking her words were.

I was about to post what AnyFucker has just said- that some of her writing in "Pornography" summed up exactly what I feel about it, but hadn't articulated very well until I read her work.