From: diana@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Diana Bental)
Newsgroups: alt.feminism
Subject: Re: Sexism: Defined
Date: 9 Sep 92 12:33:23 GMT
Reply-To: diana@aiai.UUCP (Diana Bental)
Organization: AIAI, University of Edinburgh, Scotland

Albert Lunde says:

>If I say something, it's my argument. I haven't read enough of Andrea
>Dworkin lately to give you a point by point summary of how our views
>differ.  You will clearly misunderstand me if you assume my views are
>connected to hers.  I've been reading feminst stuff for about 20
>years - that ought to give me time to put together some collections
>of ideas on my own.

Well, that's 4 up on me :-). But I have read a fair chunk of Dworkin's
writing - "Ice and Fire", "Mercy" (novels) and "Pornography"
(non-fiction): I've read interviews with her in the feminist and
mainstream press: and I attended a reading she gave.

>Yes, there are lots of feminist with different ideas. If they were
>all extremists I would have given up on them long ago.
>
>Let's see if I can hit some high points:

OK, point by point.

>- I am a man. Perhaps a little deviant from the norm ;) -- but this
>makes it less likely that I would accept a point of view that treats
>men as hopeless.  I don't evaluate feminists on how angry they are
>with men, but rather on whether their world view allows for the
>possibility men can change.

Actually, Andrea Dworkin does not consider men to be hopeless - though
some of her supporters seem to wish that she would. At the reading, a
woman in the audience expected her to agree that men were just
naturally violent rapists. Andrea Dworkin answered her quite sharply,
saying that if she didn't think that men could change, she wouldn't
bother to campaign.

>- I don't favor censorship as a solution to pornography -- I don't
>know anyone I'd trust as the censor even if there was a consensus as
>to what to censor. I would like to promote sex-positive erotica with
>different values than the erotic "tunnel-vision" thay characterizes
>much of mainstream pornography.  (In this I likely have more in
>common with Susie Bright or Betty Dodson than A. Dworkin.)

This is fair enough. Dworkin and McKinnon are trying to come up with a
formulation that would work even if implemented by sexist/anti-sex
courts. I'd say they don't have a cat's chance -- but I don't blame
them for trying. And it *has* been suggested (Spare Rib a few months
ago) that rules based on the Dworkin/McKinnon ordinance would at least
make a fairer, more rational and more liberal basis for censorship
than the UK's existing arbitrary and baroque obscenity laws. (Mind
you, so would almost anything :-)).

Andrea Dworkin is a good polemicist, a fascinating writer and an
interesting thinker, but she doesn't have the precision or the
cynicism needed for effective law-making.

I want to get another copy of "Pornography" (someone borrowed my copy,
then it disappeared) so it can sit on my bookshelf next to the latest
Susie Bright book. I like a lot of what both of them have to say, even
if they do hate each other's views, and even if they do both talk
nonsense occasionally (no I can't think of any offhand).

>- I am a social constructionist; I haven't looked at the details
>lately but Dworkin sounds like an essentialist.

No, she's not an essentialist at all -- more an infuriated humanist
(see e.g. "Mercy").

This mistake is easily made. The trouble is that Dworkin does not
offer precise distinctions or neat summaries of her arguments.
Instead she builds up her arguments over pages and pages, in sentences
that are often themselves pages long and that involve a lot of
emotion, a lot of context, a lot of association of ideas -- and a lot
of *irony*, which may not be locally flagged as such.  As a result,
quotes from her writings (at least quotes that are less 2 pages long
:-) ) are pretty useless as an indicator of what she really believes.

I found that to understand what Dworkin is really saying I had to read
the whole darned book and then thinking about it hard.  Her novels and
non-fiction are studies in the social construction of sexism and
sexuality.  There may of course be something of hers I haven't read
which expresses essentialist views, in which case I'd be fascinated to
know.

Even radical feminists eye up essentialism dubiously, seeing it as
potentially (or actually) anti-feminist.  A recent Trouble and Strife
(UK radical feminist magazine) commented that cultural/essentialist
feminism has provided the vocabulary for Robert Bly. One could go
further and say that it even provided a lot of the ideas -- all Bly
had to do was to change "bad" to "good" :-).

>- I believe in the existence of male privledge -- which in our
>society grants unjustified advantages to men as a group. I do *not*
>think it is an absolute, which should be considered to be the most
>important factor in every situation. Because I consider sexism a
>relative factor I will tend to keep bringing in other considerations
>which you may well regard as muddying the waters. ;)
>
>I think it is politically silly and theortically shaky to rank
>oppressions and claim that all other oppressions derive from and are
>secondary to sexism -- which distingushes my view from one definition
>of "radical feminism".

Andrea Dworkin doesn't do this in anything I've read or heard her say.
The ideas behind her writing are quite subtle despite her OTT prose
style.  For instance, in "Ice and Fire" she explores some ways in
which women collude in their own sexual oppression by men.

Her writing describes the *connections* between sexism, racism and
poverty. She does not place them into a hierarchy but explores how,
say, poverty exposes women to sexism in ways that richer women are
protected from (e.g. in "Mercy").  Similarly, "Pornography" examines
the way that racism is used and propagated in commercial pornography.
"Mercy" deals with some of the conflicts of priorities in campaigns
for racial equality and sexual equality but without ever suggesting
that racial equality is less important.

I don't know exactly what you mean by sexism being a "relative
factor". Dworkin does not question that sexism exists in different
forms and different degrees in different societies.  She *does* insist
that when sexism exists it is always significant but then, so does
Alice Walker. What kind of feminist would either of them be if they
didn't?  Andrea Dworkin and Alice Walker have both written about how
racial and sexual politics can be pitted against one another to the
detriment of all concerned, with different emphasis but no fundamental
disagreement.

"Hierarchies of oppression" went out of fashion among radical
feminists several years ago, partly for the reasons you give, partly
under the influence of internationalist feminism.

As for whoever it was who said that people may prefer Gordon Fitch's
views of feminism to Dworkin's, I may perhaps be waspish and suggest
that it would help if people knew what Dworkin's ideas were before
they make the decision. And yes, I really am afraid that it *does*
mean reading her books since her views seem to be reported with
unerring inaccuracy in much of the press and all of the net.  I do my
best, but there's only one of me and I have a thesis to write on an
unrelated topic.

Diana
================================================================

Diana Bental,                      JANET: diana@uk.ac.ed.aisb
Dept of Artificial Intelligence,   ARPA:  diana@aisb.ed.ac.uk
University of Edinburgh.           UUCP:  ...!ukc!aisb.ed.ac.uk!diana
Newsgroups: alt.feminism