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3.71 AVERAGE
3.71 AVERAGE
"one can be excited about ideas without changing at all. one can think about ideas, talk ideas, without changing at all. people are willing to think about many things. what people refuse to do, or are not permitted to do, or resist doing, is to change the way to think...to permit writers to use forms which violate conventions just might permit writers to develop forms which would teach people to think differently..."
The chapters on Chinese Footbinding and the witch hunts are most interesting, though more detailed histories could be found elsewhere. Its interesting as an introduction to certain feminist ideas and Dworkin, but more surface level than her later writing. The chapters on androgyny are genuinely quite odd, particularly the final chapter, given how Dworkin's ideas would develop (I think she later disavowed that chapter). Its certainly interesting to read her express belief in the redemptive power of completely unfettered sexual/erotic freedom given how skeptical she would become of this kind of thought. In terms of personal opinion I'm probably in between this version of Dworkin and later Dworkin.
The chapters on Chinese Footbinding and the witch hunts are most interesting, though more detailed histories could be found elsewhere. Its interesting as an introduction to certain feminist ideas and Dworkin, but more surface level than her later writing. The chapters on androgyny are genuinely quite odd, particularly the final chapter, given how Dworkin's ideas would develop (I think she later disavowed that chapter). Its certainly interesting to read her express belief in the redemptive power of completely unfettered sexual/erotic freedom given how skeptical she would become of this kind of thought. In terms of personal opinion I'm probably in between this version of Dworkin and later Dworkin.
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
fast-paced
Superbe ouvrage, quoique le chapitre sur les sorcières contienne des passages fort étranges ainsi que des erreurs historiques flagrantes.
J'ai particulièrement apprécié les pensées de Dworkin sur l'androgynie et la ponctuation. La date de publication doit cependant être gardée à l'esprit à la lecture.
J'ai particulièrement apprécié les pensées de Dworkin sur l'androgynie et la ponctuation. La date de publication doit cependant être gardée à l'esprit à la lecture.
challenging
dark
tense
fast-paced
informative
inspiring
reflective
challenging
informative
fast-paced
challenging
informative
reflective
I have a lot of thoughts, feels and reactions to this , so forgive me if this review rambles. The first thing I want to say about it is that it’s well written. Even at its ugliest it’s a pleasure to read. As she says in the intro, she didn’t want to write bullshit. At the end she complains that the editor insisted on punctuation and capitalization but allowed her to advocate bestiality, incest, LSD, etc. I am thankful for the punctuation and capitalization and whatever other work the editors did; I enjoyed reading this and I am often annoyed with the lack of editing in more recent publications.
Drugs. Thinking about Andrea Dworkin on drugs seems like a good starting point for various horror scenarios. It’s easy to imagine Dworkin not only having a really bad trip but also making everyone else miserable, but then, it must have turned out OK, thanks to whatever revolutionary possibilities Dworkin allowed herself to imagine in those darkest moments. You don’t need drugs to have a bad trip, and you don’t need drugs to imagine revolutionary possibilities but you need to imagine revolutionary possibilities if you don’t want to have a bad trip, once you recognize how fucked everything is.
The fairytales. If Dworkin were writing this stuff now, she’d still have to go after these fairytales the same way. Fifty years since this book, and really, hundreds of years since people first thought all these sleeping or dead princesses are a drag, and we still have to suffer the popularity of Disney, Twilight, and 50 Shades. Which goes right into the porn chapter. I think Dworkin has a reputation of being against having sex, against heterosexual sex, and the whole ‘sex-positive ‘ thing is, like, a reaction to Dworkin and her comrades. But obviously Dworkin is horny as hell and wishes there were erotic novels, photography, or whatever that wasn’t oppressive. She was hoping to find it in “Suck” magazine but it turned out to be more of the same. Later in the book, she hints that there are androgynous models for intimacy in the tantric traditions but she unfortunately doesn’t give them the kind of close reading she gave The Story of O.
The foot-binding chapter gave me nightmares. I am now constantly aware of my own feet. Absolutely the most disturbing subject. If you think the pandemic and climate emergency are overwhelming, know what foot-binding really meant and that it ended. So gruesome. I hope for everyone ‘s sake that foot-binding was never part of a Dworkin acid trip, but I fear, considering the fluxus like instructions at the start of that chapter that she did give it a whirl. Dworkin does not discuss what is sometimes called female genital cutting, and maybe if she had our collective rage might have ripped a hole in the cosmos. Foot-binding is so fucking wrong. Argh. Shudder.
The book winds up with a mix of subjects that in parts is far ahead of its time and in other parts, either wrong or not explained well enough. Consent is not possible with non-human animals. There are very good reasons for the incest taboo . While we’re at it, using the N-word as Yoko Ono does in that song is also problematic. But let’s allow Dworkin these excesses and look at the other taboos she attacks which are in fact today crumbling, namely, all those letters that come after L and G in the sexual “minority” acronyms. If you can time travel back to 1974 and say gender is not only socially constructed but also fluid, even biological differences are largely the result of social forces, the nuclear family is oppressive, and then draw conclusions from those realizations like, as long as we subscribe to these extreme gender-poles “straight” sex will be terrible... it’s massive. It is that rip in the cosmos that women’s rage opened.
Dworkin ‘s whole tone throughout is anarchic. The negative anarchy of Kafka, the anarchism of feminist consciousness raising groups, the explicit anarchism of Julian Beck, the anarchic tendencies of the so-called New Left, all weave their way through the whole work. Is this really the same author who fought for censorship and for harsher laws and sentences against sex work? Or is that also a misrepresentation of Dworkin, the way man-hating is?
Drugs. Thinking about Andrea Dworkin on drugs seems like a good starting point for various horror scenarios. It’s easy to imagine Dworkin not only having a really bad trip but also making everyone else miserable, but then, it must have turned out OK, thanks to whatever revolutionary possibilities Dworkin allowed herself to imagine in those darkest moments. You don’t need drugs to have a bad trip, and you don’t need drugs to imagine revolutionary possibilities but you need to imagine revolutionary possibilities if you don’t want to have a bad trip, once you recognize how fucked everything is.
The fairytales. If Dworkin were writing this stuff now, she’d still have to go after these fairytales the same way. Fifty years since this book, and really, hundreds of years since people first thought all these sleeping or dead princesses are a drag, and we still have to suffer the popularity of Disney, Twilight, and 50 Shades. Which goes right into the porn chapter. I think Dworkin has a reputation of being against having sex, against heterosexual sex, and the whole ‘sex-positive ‘ thing is, like, a reaction to Dworkin and her comrades. But obviously Dworkin is horny as hell and wishes there were erotic novels, photography, or whatever that wasn’t oppressive. She was hoping to find it in “Suck” magazine but it turned out to be more of the same. Later in the book, she hints that there are androgynous models for intimacy in the tantric traditions but she unfortunately doesn’t give them the kind of close reading she gave The Story of O.
The foot-binding chapter gave me nightmares. I am now constantly aware of my own feet. Absolutely the most disturbing subject. If you think the pandemic and climate emergency are overwhelming, know what foot-binding really meant and that it ended. So gruesome. I hope for everyone ‘s sake that foot-binding was never part of a Dworkin acid trip, but I fear, considering the fluxus like instructions at the start of that chapter that she did give it a whirl. Dworkin does not discuss what is sometimes called female genital cutting, and maybe if she had our collective rage might have ripped a hole in the cosmos. Foot-binding is so fucking wrong. Argh. Shudder.
The book winds up with a mix of subjects that in parts is far ahead of its time and in other parts, either wrong or not explained well enough. Consent is not possible with non-human animals. There are very good reasons for the incest taboo . While we’re at it, using the N-word as Yoko Ono does in that song is also problematic. But let’s allow Dworkin these excesses and look at the other taboos she attacks which are in fact today crumbling, namely, all those letters that come after L and G in the sexual “minority” acronyms. If you can time travel back to 1974 and say gender is not only socially constructed but also fluid, even biological differences are largely the result of social forces, the nuclear family is oppressive, and then draw conclusions from those realizations like, as long as we subscribe to these extreme gender-poles “straight” sex will be terrible... it’s massive. It is that rip in the cosmos that women’s rage opened.
Dworkin ‘s whole tone throughout is anarchic. The negative anarchy of Kafka, the anarchism of feminist consciousness raising groups, the explicit anarchism of Julian Beck, the anarchic tendencies of the so-called New Left, all weave their way through the whole work. Is this really the same author who fought for censorship and for harsher laws and sentences against sex work? Or is that also a misrepresentation of Dworkin, the way man-hating is?
first half was pretty good but the second half... anyways... dk what to rate this bc i dnf after 50%
challenging
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
doing so well until the incest .
Content Warnings
Graphic: Rape, Sexual violence