Andrea Dworkin, author and co-founder of the pro-censorship group Enough Is Enough, died peacefully at her home in the nation's capital after a long illness, at age 59.
Dworkin's first book, Woman Hating, was published in 1973, but she came to national prominence in the early 1980s when, together with attorney Catharine MacKinnon, she encouraged former porn star Linda "Lovelace" Marchiano to speak and write publicly about Linda's allegedly having been forced to perform in adult films, most notably Deep Throat, and several loops, including one in which Linda reportedly has sex with a dog. (None of the filmmakers connected with Deep Throat have confirmed Marchiano's accusations, and many have said exactly the opposite: That Linda enjoyed performing in the movie and connected well with co-star Harry Reems.)
Building on what was then a growing anti-adult movement among conservative religious leaders, Dworkin and MacKinnon wrote and obtained sponsorship for stringent anti-pornography laws in both Minneapolis, Minn. and Indianapolis, Ill. in the early '80s. The former measure never became law owing to a veto by Minneapolis' mayor, and the latter, after being upheld by the federal district court, was successfully challenged in the Seventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in American Booksellers Association v. Hudnut, which ruling was affirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court.
But the Dworkin/MacKinnon axis maintained a strident voice among "anti-porn feminists," a diverse group that included women from the reactionary right like Phyllis Schlafly and Donna Rice Hughes (who eventually became president of Enough Is Enough) to leftists like Robin Morgan, who wrote in 1974, "Pornography is the theory, rape is the practice."
This was also Dworkin's stated philosophy, that all intercourse with males was tantamount to rape, that because of cultural conditioning, women could not knowingly consent to sex with men, and although many attacked that position by accusing Dworkin of being a closet (or not-so-closeted) lesbian, her death notices have been accompanied by the statement that she shared her home with John Stoltenberg, her partner of 30 years and husband since 1998, so the truth is more likely that Dworkin was bisexual.
Author Susie Bright today blogged more kind words about the activist, claiming that "every single woman who pioneered the sexual revolution, every erotic-feminist-bad-girl-and-proud-of-it-stiletto-shitkicker, was once a freakin' crazed fan of Andrea Dworkin." Several feminists in the adult industry disputed that description.
However, another of Bright's observations rings more true: "Andrea Dworkin used her considerable intellectual powers to analyze pornography, which was something that no one had done before. No one. The men who made porn didn't. Porn was like a low culture joke before the feminist revolution kicked its ass. It was beneath discussion." That Dworkin's analysis was deeply flawed hardly detracted from its impact; if anything, its anti-porn stance elevated it in the minds of those seeking support for their pre-conceived notions that all women hated porn.
"The problem with Andrea's desire to 'free' women is the same as all of history's would-be liberators: they merely propose a change of incarceration, not a real liberation," observed Christian Mann, owner of Video Team. Andrea wanted women to be released from societally imposed demands of female sexual self-image, so that they could now don her bondage wear, i.e. her imposition that the only alternative to casting off the former was to adhere to her asexual or antisexual vision. Andrea was as much a liberator in the long run as Castro, Stalin, Khomeini or Bush. 'Meet the new boss, same as the old boss... we won't get fooled again!'"
Though the Dworkin/MacKinnon philosophy failed to make an impact on American jurisprudence, there is a legitimate question of its impact on Canadian law, as evidenced by the Canadian Supreme Court's decision in Regina v. Butler.
"The opinion doesn't really say, 'Dworkin and MacKinnon's analysis is right'," observed First Amendment attorney Reed Lee. "The opinion in Butler said, 'In evaluating the constitutional protection under Sec. 2B of the [Canadian National] Charter, of sexually-explicit material, we've got to take into account other Charter protections, one of which is the protection of equal dignity of groups against attack, which is a sort of a protection against what we would think of as group libel... That would be somewhat like the U.S. Supreme Court saying, 'Well, hate speech obviously advocated behavior that would be unconstitutional under the equal-protection clause; therefore, that's a reason to suppress hate speech. However, the U.S. Court has avoided going down that line of reasoning; they've always said, 'But nevertheless, it's speech, and you've got a right to advocate unconstitutionality and illegality unless it amounts to incitement under a very stringent test.' That's where the U.S. and Canada diverge on the obscenity issue."
"What the court did in Butler is divide the area of pornography into three groups, and unlike the American law, which basically says, in every case, the jury is applying these three [Miller v. California] standards anew, the court kind of said what contemporary Canadian standards are, as of '92," Lee continued. "It said, a lot of pornography just depicts men and women in all kinds of sexual situations, engaging in consensual activity, and that will not be obscene in Canada. It said some depicts force and rape and that sort of thing, and it said, 'Ordinarily, this will offend the contemporary community standards,' and then it said there's this middle group of subordination and stuff which may or may not. So the Butler court appeared to set out, once and for all, categories for what is acceptable in Canada and what isn't."
"So the Canadian Supreme Court's concern about degradation sounded similar to what Dworkin and MacKinnon were saying, I'm really not sure if they filed a brief with the court. But it wouldn't surprise me if the court relied on them to some substantial extent."
One of the earlier results of the Butler decision, however, was Canadian Customs officials' refusal to allow certain hardcore lesbian material into the country, including magazines such as On Our Backs and Bad Attitude ... and Dworkin's own feminist polemic, Pornography: Men Possessing Women, because of some images contained within its pages.
Other books by Dworkin include: Intercourse, Our Blood, and Heartbreak: The Political Memoir of a Feminist Militant.
Dworkin's legacy is still being felt, both in the number of religio-conservative anti-porn groups active in the U.S. today and in their analysis of whether porn deserves protection under the First Amendment. Sociologists are still combating her rhetoric with scientific studies of the effects of the material, but no one denies that Andrea Dworkin was an effective advocate for her twisted positions.
Susie Bright's eulogy can be found at: http://susiebright.blogs.com/susie_brights_journal_/2005/04/andrea_dworkin_.html
