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samue_l's review against another edition
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced
2.75
To read this book, for the male gaze, would be to stare directly into the sun.
And it is a book every man should read, because men ought to be confronted with the reality of their status with regard to intercourse—privileged, possessive, and in power through several very real, yet to many men vague and trivial, dimensions of our culture, legislation, and society. This is not a comfortable reality, for anyone who acknowledges it. Nor is it nebulous, if you take the time to engage thoughtfully with the text. But I can only write this reflection as someone with that status, so certainly my views will be colored differently than those of the author and any reader who does not identify as straight and cis and man. And the thing about this status retained by straight cis men is that, in most cases, they personally have done nothing active to obtain it. We only perpetuate it, oblivious to our position, by acting as agents of the status quo.
Dworkin exhibits to the reader's abhorrence the violence of normal behavior. She isn't talking about acute violence such as an instance of battery, although that too lies under the canopy of abuse. No, Dworkin speaks of hybrid warfare, waged and raged against women and their bodies on civil, cultural, historical, and inter-and-intrapersonal planes, as well as the physical. She deconstructs the interaction we call sex and shows us its qualities. And underneath the fervor is a complicated, abject brutality. Whatever your opinion of the text, her message is clear: fucking's fucked up. Our conceptions of intercourse have been constructed by forces that overlay our thinking, and our thinking directs our behavior. And it doesn't take the sharpest knife in the kitchen to stab a 20th Century history book in a place where humans behave in heinous ways.
The prose is as violent as the picture Dworkin paints with it. Literature, law, art, biography, and more, are all employed in demonstration of her thesis. She tears down whatever monument of thought you may harbor involving intercourse, and instead of erecting a more ideal conception, she leaves you to lie with the ruins. Intercourse really is an immense project, and while I did crave more elucidation throughout the book, I found it difficult not to admire Dworkin for the work she did here, as it forced me to very seriously consider a new perspective that I otherwise wouldn’t, and probably does for every other reader too.
And it is a book every man should read, because men ought to be confronted with the reality of their status with regard to intercourse—privileged, possessive, and in power through several very real, yet to many men vague and trivial, dimensions of our culture, legislation, and society. This is not a comfortable reality, for anyone who acknowledges it. Nor is it nebulous, if you take the time to engage thoughtfully with the text. But I can only write this reflection as someone with that status, so certainly my views will be colored differently than those of the author and any reader who does not identify as straight and cis and man. And the thing about this status retained by straight cis men is that, in most cases, they personally have done nothing active to obtain it. We only perpetuate it, oblivious to our position, by acting as agents of the status quo.
Dworkin exhibits to the reader's abhorrence the violence of normal behavior. She isn't talking about acute violence such as an instance of battery, although that too lies under the canopy of abuse. No, Dworkin speaks of hybrid warfare, waged and raged against women and their bodies on civil, cultural, historical, and inter-and-intrapersonal planes, as well as the physical. She deconstructs the interaction we call sex and shows us its qualities. And underneath the fervor is a complicated, abject brutality. Whatever your opinion of the text, her message is clear: fucking's fucked up. Our conceptions of intercourse have been constructed by forces that overlay our thinking, and our thinking directs our behavior. And it doesn't take the sharpest knife in the kitchen to stab a 20th Century history book in a place where humans behave in heinous ways.
The prose is as violent as the picture Dworkin paints with it. Literature, law, art, biography, and more, are all employed in demonstration of her thesis. She tears down whatever monument of thought you may harbor involving intercourse, and instead of erecting a more ideal conception, she leaves you to lie with the ruins. Intercourse really is an immense project, and while I did crave more elucidation throughout the book, I found it difficult not to admire Dworkin for the work she did here, as it forced me to very seriously consider a new perspective that I otherwise wouldn’t, and probably does for every other reader too.
hedgefundhogmanager's review against another edition
5.0
One of the most powerful books I have read, using art, law, and culture as mirrors. Looking into Dworkin's mirrors, I simultaneously felt ashamed, liberated, wrongly aroused, validated. To be sure, having the lived experience of being a woman helps with accepting the premise here, that sexist oppression is rooted in intercourse, a somewhat radical premise because it was thought that oppression was rooted in e.g. lack of voting rights, or lack of representation in the workforce. (Her critics who dismiss this work as "all sex is rape" only prove her point about what people entrenched in patriarchy think about women, and what women are for, as she writes.)
I was moved to tears several times by her incisive prose, and her power to discriminate BS from the reality of being a woman, both of which touched me deeply. I am touched that she was writing for women like me; me, someone who was still sleepwalking in a patriarchy until very recently. Her death in 2003 deeply saddens me, because I am now indebted to her, with no way to pay back the debt.
I was moved to tears several times by her incisive prose, and her power to discriminate BS from the reality of being a woman, both of which touched me deeply. I am touched that she was writing for women like me; me, someone who was still sleepwalking in a patriarchy until very recently. Her death in 2003 deeply saddens me, because I am now indebted to her, with no way to pay back the debt.
katnissevergreen's review against another edition
5.0
"There is no physical distance, no self-consciousness, nothing withdrawn or private or alienated, no existence outside physical touch. The skin collapses as a boundary - it has no meaning; time is gone - it too has no meaning; there is no outside."
irisfilipaafonso's review against another edition
4.0
absolute fucking brilliant book that approaches how gender inequality and cishet penetrative intercourse (and the way women experience it not only in bed but throughout their lives) are always related to each other in some way, giving beautiful literary and historical examples that pull you in and illustrate her points very clearly.
bacchicecstasy's review against another edition
3.75
Can't lie, the first few chapters didn't hit for me and it was kind of a slog....but chapters 6-9 were so so impactful and so relevant to today
dashadashahi's review against another edition
4.0
I’m glad they reprinted this book and the forewords do a great job of laying out just how much Dworkin and her work have been misinterpreted. While this isn’t my favourite book by her, it’s less punchy and intense, it’s still a worthwhile read. While not all sex is rape so much sex is about replicating and reinforcing power dynamics between the genders and this needs to be examined if we, as women, are to be truly freed from male domination.
gloomyboygirl's review against another edition
3.0
Not as good as Woman-Hating to me as it was largely making the same point just with different arguments the whole time and, for me, some of the arguments were too similar so it felt repetitive. But it definitely kept up with making me think. I can finally see how Dworkin girlies end up TERFs given how intense her argument against Joan of Arc being read as trans is (though, on some level I agree with her reasoning). I still think it's clear that bioessentialist language being uses 30 years ago shouldn't be seen as a map to today's gender landscape (especially given in her other works she's somewhat trans inclusive).