Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

If you read this in context, it's clear that she's saying "this is the view of patriarchal society", not "this is how things should be".

Later in the same chapter you're quoting from, Dworkin says:

> Women have also wanted intercourse to work in this sense: women have wanted intercourse to be, for women, an experience of equality and passion, sensuality and intimacy. Women have a vision of love that includes men as human too; and women want the human in men, including in the act of intercourse. Even without the dignity of equal power, women have believed in the redeeming potential of love. There has been—despite the cruelty of exploitation and forced sex—a consistent vision for women of a sexuality based on a harmony that is both sensual and possible… These visions of a humane sensuality based in equality are in the aspirations of women; and even the nightmare of sexual inferiority does not seem to kill them. They are not searching analyses into the nature of intercourse; instead they are deep, humane dreams that repudiate the rapist as the final arbiter of reality. They are an underground resistance to both inferiority and brutality, visions that sustain life and further endurance.



Odd, I'd already expanded the area around the quote to provide context when pasting it. There seems to me a casual move between using the word 'men' and using 'patriarchy' (used as a synonym for evil), that many people find disturbing.


This is actually really good stuff, I've never been a fan of Dworkin due to some out of context quotes. I would say that this attitude isn't one held by all women, though.


No, and Dworkin does point out that some women don't have that attitude. Here's a link to the piece in question:

http://www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/dworkin/IntercourseI.html

Dworkin makes challenging reading, and is certainly extremely radical and outspoken. But most of the really unbelievable things attributed to her are misreadings or deliberate distortions. She just doesn't pull punches.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: