Feminists Lose Bitter Icon

Tuesday, April 12, 2005

Andrea Dworkin, a radical feminist who crusaded against the evils of pornography and violence against women died Saturday at the age of 58.

Dworkin wasn't exactly the most attractive woman; as one writer wrote on her passing: "She was the stereotype of the Millie Tant feminist made flesh - overweight, hairy, un-made-up, wearing old denim dungarees and DMs or bad trainers - and thus a target for ridicule."

But she isn't reviled because of the way she looks, even though she purposely avoided the hygiene rituals such as shaving and conditioning women these days take part in to appeal to others…you know, things that men do to. Like most feminists, it was her attitude -- especially towards men -- that was so appalling.

"Pornography is a celebration of rape and injury to women; it's a kind of union for rapists, a way of legitimizing rape and formalizing male supremacy in our society." She said that pornography is both a cause of male violence and an expression of male dominance, that women who enjoy porn are harming women, and that lesbian porn is self-hating. Women who worked in porn wounded themselves as well as every other woman as a result of men watching it.

Never mind that criminologists have universally dismissed the theory that pornography is the catalyst in male aggression against women, it was a belief Dworkin wasn't going to give up and one she took to the grave.

Unless you actually believe pornography fills us men up with sadistic ambition to torture women, it's hard to rationally understand why feminists would have a problem with it. That a woman could become rich just for taking part in an act that is otherwise acceptable in society but for money, is empowering, even if not respectable.

Feminists argue that pornography is degrading to women, yet it's members of the other sex you will find sneaking into filthy adult video stores and spending untold amounts of money for sexual release. It's men who remove themselves from society to the confines of their FAVORITES folder where you could only imagine what sites are bookmarked between photos of the the kids.

And it's not like you have to be attractive to make bread using your body; an industry that is open only to porn stars and strippers. Prostitutes do it all the time. Only women (usually the most undesirable) can walk the busy streets of the inner city and make money for spending just a few minutes with a desperate man. Now let's talk about degrading.

Dworkin even took her fight to the institution of marriage: "Like prostitution, marriage is an institution that is extremely oppressive and dangerous for women."

If that's supposed to influence women against getting married, where they could be subjected to the sexual desires of the impure husband, it wasn't a very good one as Mrs. Dworkin died a married woman.