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3.99 AVERAGE
3.99 AVERAGE
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
medium-paced
Reading this was like breaking out of my chains, or precisely knowing that I was bound, even better that I was wearing my chains like an ornament, loved it beyond words.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Misogyny, Physical abuse, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Sexual harassment
Moderate: Xenophobia, Antisemitism
challenging
dark
funny
informative
reflective
medium-paced
challenging
dark
informative
reflective
tense
medium-paced
challenging
emotional
informative
reflective
medium-paced
I didn't finish this book because I was in the middle of like...4 other books, and had to return many back to the library. From what I did read though, this is a very good book. Andrea Dworkin had a very special way of analogizing the reality and then turning her words into a form of art, as it verbally was spoken (or written). She was able to demonstrate the raw realities of life for many people, while addressing the true reasons behind issues that are prevalent in our society, while also staying on task so well while doing it. This is an important read for anyone who has an issue with what objectifying really is, and how it's happening. It's affecting everyone in so many ways, many that people do not even consider. This book is worth taking the time for. I will resume my reading with it, sometime in the near future.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Rape, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Sexual harassment
Moderate: Addiction, Child abuse, Drug abuse, Emotional abuse, Physical abuse, Sexual content
challenging
dark
informative
slow-paced
Dworkin's style resembles a sledgehammer. Regardless of what you think of its argumentation, reading her still feels like taking a beating - and not at all an eroticised one.
A typical quality of her writing in this book is to take a pornographic image or piece of fiction and describe it in callously realistic prose. She does this with some gay porn I'd never heard of, and she does this with Bataille's Story of the Eye, something considered 'literary', which I've read. She doesn't interpret these texts before giving a description of the book's contents. I don't recall finding Bataille's novella very sexually stimulating when I read it, but certainly there was an artless precision in Dworkin's representation of the book which made it all the more revolting. She doesn't quite misrepresent the book's contents - she's boringly literal on what's inside in such a way that cannot but provoke dread. I'd be interested in finding critical responses to Dworkin's style, because it is very powerful while simultaneously ridding other writers of perceived airs.
She writes about force, and is forceful. One doesn't want her to be correct in her assessments of sexual violence, but finds it difficult to deny her assertations.
As an argument against pornography this book isn't so much about the pragmatics of a wide-scale societal ban. Since that isn't the point, I can't discount the book for not articulating such an argument. I think pornography in its most widely circulated form, online, is available in less subjugative and seedy forms than was the case in the late 70s/80s, but I don't think it's gotten so much healthier as to deflect Dworkin's criticisms entirely. Certainly as an adolescent male I had a lot of sexual hangups because I was quite disgusted by pornography, yet felt abnormal to absolve myself of it as a maturing person. I was first shown online porn when I was 11 or 12 by an older friend, quite unwillingly. I don't know why the grotty and theatrically absurd conventions of pornography are taken to be the tastes of the majority, i.e. men.
When conventions of sexual expression are veiled in such a way as to make them inappropriate in general discourse, abuse thrives and stigmas arise. I think Dworkin offers a good rebuttal to those championing the expansion of liberty among else, though I'm not certain in her solutions, implied or otherwise. Nonetheless she is a powerful writer one cannot ignore.
A typical quality of her writing in this book is to take a pornographic image or piece of fiction and describe it in callously realistic prose. She does this with some gay porn I'd never heard of, and she does this with Bataille's Story of the Eye, something considered 'literary', which I've read. She doesn't interpret these texts before giving a description of the book's contents. I don't recall finding Bataille's novella very sexually stimulating when I read it, but certainly there was an artless precision in Dworkin's representation of the book which made it all the more revolting. She doesn't quite misrepresent the book's contents - she's boringly literal on what's inside in such a way that cannot but provoke dread. I'd be interested in finding critical responses to Dworkin's style, because it is very powerful while simultaneously ridding other writers of perceived airs.
She writes about force, and is forceful. One doesn't want her to be correct in her assessments of sexual violence, but finds it difficult to deny her assertations.
As an argument against pornography this book isn't so much about the pragmatics of a wide-scale societal ban. Since that isn't the point, I can't discount the book for not articulating such an argument. I think pornography in its most widely circulated form, online, is available in less subjugative and seedy forms than was the case in the late 70s/80s, but I don't think it's gotten so much healthier as to deflect Dworkin's criticisms entirely. Certainly as an adolescent male I had a lot of sexual hangups because I was quite disgusted by pornography, yet felt abnormal to absolve myself of it as a maturing person. I was first shown online porn when I was 11 or 12 by an older friend, quite unwillingly. I don't know why the grotty and theatrically absurd conventions of pornography are taken to be the tastes of the majority, i.e. men.
When conventions of sexual expression are veiled in such a way as to make them inappropriate in general discourse, abuse thrives and stigmas arise. I think Dworkin offers a good rebuttal to those championing the expansion of liberty among else, though I'm not certain in her solutions, implied or otherwise. Nonetheless she is a powerful writer one cannot ignore.
"We will know that we are free when the pornography no longer exists. As long as it does exist, we must understand that we are the women in it: used by the same power, subject to the same valuation, as the vile whores who beg for more. The boys are betting on our compliance, our ignorance, our fear. We have always refused to face the worst that men have done to us. The boys count on it. The boys are betting that we cannot face the horror of their sexual system and survive. The boys are betting that their depictions of us as whores will beat us down and stop our hearts. The boys are betting that their penises and fists and knives and fucks and rapes will turn us into what they say we are—the compliant women of sex, the voracious cunts of pornography, the masochistic sluts who resist because we really want more. The boys are betting. The boys are wrong."
i dont feel empowered by this book, i feel liberated
i dont feel empowered by this book, i feel liberated
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
tense
fast-paced
challenging
informative
reflective
tense
medium-paced