I'll mourn the passing of the voice of Andrea Dworkin

[Solly Mack]

I'll mourn her passion. I'll mourn her anger. I'll even mourn her darkest despair. I'll mourn the woman she was...and I'll mourn for the woman she might have been.

I'll mourn because I am a woman. Because I travel the road that women before me made possible.


I don't need to be either advocate or adversary of her every word to know another mile marker as been planted on the road I travel as a woman.

Behind me, as far as my eyes can see, are mile markers - clear reminders of the women who came before me.

Women, without whom, my road would have been that much harder to travel.

Look behind you.

Can you see them?

Look down that road you've traveled as a woman.

Do you see them?

Those faces you see are not just the famous ones. They are not just the well-known.

They are our mothers, our aunts, our grandmothers.

They are us.

Now look up that road you travel as a woman....see your daughters, your granddaughters... see all the daughters that will come after you

Tell them. Remind them.

The road we travel as women must keep moving forward.

There's no going back. Ever. I will not walk over the graves of those women who came before me.


I will plow ahead...I've got a road to build.

[smirkymonkey]

1. Lovely tribute.

Thanks.

She was so misunderstood, but she always held her ground. She was far more courageous than most people ever knew.

If only some of our politicians had the "balls" she had, we might not be in this mess that we're in right now. She stood up, unfailingly, for what she believed in. That is the definition of integrity.

[Solly Mack]

2. Her death got me to thinking of my childhood and

all the women who called me to be my best...to challenge the status quo and to never give in...

I greatly fear too many don't know just what women went through to get to this point in time...

So much is taken for granted...

[Stargleamer]

3. I learned a lot from her. . .

Like your elegy says, she was uncompromisingly impassioned for girls and women.

Because of her and Catharine MacKinnon, I am probably one of the few DU'ers against pornography.

I will so miss her voice.

They don't list the cause of death, but maybe it was just her tireless exhaustion to end the suffering and abuse girls and women are exposed to, and all the repercussions of them.

[lukasahero]

5. "One of the few" but not alone.

Just thought you'd like to know there are others. :-)

[swimmernsecretsea]

6. I happened upon some of her books while working at a bookstore

I was in awe of her talent for essay and her ability to reason a point. Her fierce determination to protect the rights of not just women but humanity revealed to me a spirit that few have. She had the ability to turn a general discussion into an eloquent emotional plea that was impossible to ignore, and focus a subject she was passionate about into in intimate recollection. When I think of her name, I think of how talented she was as a writer.

I recall in one of her books a transcript of a speech at a university where she requested that for one day all violence against women be stopped. Just one day. The speech made me realize how ingrained in our society it had become, and the magnitude of what she was suggesting made me understand the river of pain carried by and flowing through the girls that become women, by the boys that learn to abuse.

She wrote an essay on the pandemic of violence against women, and related a personal experience of her own, that later became post-traumatic stress syndrome. I realized after reading it that I had it too, from years of physical abuse that was great enough to need medical attention, and emotional abuse that prevented me from trusting others. She wrote that you will suddenly remember it, and you are reliving that experience, at any moment of your life without warning. I owe her my own debt of gratitude for allowing me to acknowledge this, after I'd read her books.

She needed to be here, on this earth, to shelter those whose voices have been made silenced, who have forgotten how to speak up.

[Solly Mack]

7. In Gloria Steinem' "Ruth's Song"

which I read many years ago, the line that always "got" me was, "if I had not been born, what mother could have been..."

(paraphrase more or less)

I was already looking at my own mother with news eyes and that line hit me like a bolt of lightning.

What our mothers, all our mothers (both by birth and song) could have been ....had more (better)options (choices) been available to them...


But then I think..."What would I have been had they not been born?"

(and sacrificed and fought...mourned and suffered)

for me.

I cried last night for all we've gained and for all we've lost in the gaining...

Sometimes, you just got to smile and tell people "It's a woman thang, you wouldn't understand"

and just keep singing...

[bloom]

13. "Who Was Afraid of Andrea Dworkin?", By CATHARINE A. MacKINNON

Published: April 16, 2005 in the New York Times

ANDREA DWORKIN, an inspiration to so many women, died last week at the age of 58. Over the course of her incandescent literary and political career, she also became a symbol of views she did not hold. For her lucid work opposing men's violence against women, she lived the stigma of being identified with women, especially sexually abused women. Instead of being lionized and admired for her genius, instead of being able to earn a decent living as a writer, Andrea Dworkin was misrepresented and demonized. In the words of John Berger, she was "perhaps the most misrepresented writer in the Western world."

<snip>

Lies about her views on sexuality (that she believed intercourse was rape) and her political alliances (that she was in bed with the right) were published and republished without attempts at verification, corrective letters almost always refused. Where the physical appearance of male writers is regarded as irrelevant or cherished as a charming eccentricity, Andrea's was reviled and mocked and turned into pornography. When she sued for libel, courts trivialized the pornographic lies as fantasy and dignified them as satire.

Andrea Dworkin exposed the ugliest realities of women's lives and said what they mean. For trusting the knowledge of her own experiences of battering, rape and prostitution, for listening to harmed women, for standing up for women with humor - "now the problem with telling you what it means for me, bertha schneider, to be in an existential position is that I dont have Sartres credibility," she wrote in a short story - lyricism and brilliance, she was shunned. Critics and reporters often talked about her ideas without reading them. She was tortured by editors, some of whom she considered censors ("police work for liberals").

<snip>

Andrea Dworkin saw through male power as a political system - "while the system of gender polarity is real, it is not true," she said - and exposed the sexual core of male supremacy, the heart of the male darkness. She stood with, and therefore for, sexually abused women. So she was treated as they are treated, denigrated as they are denigrated. She was the intellectual shock troops, the artistic heavy artillery of the women's movement in our time. She took its heaviest hits.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/16/opinion/16mackinnon.html?th&emc=th

[lukasahero]

4. Beautiful

Thanks for taking the controversy out of it and reminding us of how each "pioneer" forged the path we now take for granted.

[Solly Mack]

8. Thank you

My heart was full last night. Just a small part of the overflow that made it into words. The rest...just raw emotion.

[Pthalo BlueMoon]

9. Yes, Thank You...

...for a lovely tribute.

I can't help but wonder how many women in porn are abused, raped, or sodomized.

Makes me very sad...

[hfojvt]

10. I cannot say I was a fan

but I think it is sad that there is no mention of her in either the lounge or GD where there are several thread about Brittany Spears.
I was listening to Skid Row singing "I remember you" while reading this thread. And I do remember that Ms. Dworkin visited the University of Minnesota in my freshman or sophomore year (early 1980s). Too bad that people are not discussing her instead of Brittany or Paris.

[hfojvt]

11. a couple links

news of her death:

http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,6109,1457224,00.html

An Andrea Dworkin website:

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

[kalibex]

12. Few years back, saw her at a bookstore lecture/signing....

Didn't get anything signed; just went for the talk.

Looking back, am so glad I went.

-B

[Nikia]

14. I just finished reading "Intercourse"

I had read the comments in general discussion when she died criticizing her work as "man hating". Reading the book though, I can say that she made some really good points. Although I disagree with her in many individual circumstances, what she describes as intercourse is upheld as the patriarchial ideal. That ideal is incompatible with social equality of women as well as equality within a marriage or other sexual relationship.