Andrea Dworkin - Work and Legacy

Radical feminists identified the hypocrisy behind the notion of consent, which Andrea Dworkin and Kathleen Barry termed “cultural sadism.” This term represented the way men initiated and controlled both sex and women, and women unknowingly submitted to it, portraying men as consumers and women as providers of sex (Ferguson et al., 1984, p.111). Liberal feminist critique of radical feminism has reduced influential radical feminists such as Dworkin “to cartoonish straw figures for many in the younger generations” (Donovan, 1997). Andrea Dworkin was a thinker, a writer, and an activist, she helped shape feminist thought and recognized everyone’s pains. She recognized the ways pornography reinforced sexual subordination and wrote “(w)e will know we are free when pornography no longer exists” (Douglass, 2005, p.14).

Feminists’s Sex Work Debates and Controversies

Radical feminists have always opposed sex work. Dworkin identified several victims of pornography, the primary victims being the women in porn. The majority of these women, according to Dworkin, are “victims of child sex abuse, (…) poor and illiterate, and vulnerable because of poverty and lack of opportunity” (Chan and Beltrand, 1985). Dworkin defines pornography as rape, pain, and humiliation, claiming that it sexualizes subordination and “turns inequality into something ‘sexy’ so that inequality becomes essential to sex” (Chan and Beltrand, 1985).

Liberal feminism has argued that pornography should be allowed if it is consensual and enjoyable, but also because it is an expression of free speech. Dworkin would reply to such claims by saying “[w]hat about freedom of speech? Who has it? Where does it begin? I say it begins with the incest victim… It begins with the child who is captive in that house and cannot say no (…) Maybe free speech begins with Linda Marciano” (Douglass, 2005). Dworkin worked with Marciano to stop the showing of the movie Deep Throat, where Marciano was forced by her abusive husband to act as Linda Lovelace (Douglass, 2005). This 1972 film was about a woman “whose lack of sexual response prompts her to visit a doctor for help (…) the doctor tells her, she will need to perfect the art of ‘deep throat’ fellatio” (Comella, 2015, p. 444). The film fueled radical feminism’s opposition to pornography and it “exemplified the failures of the sexual revolution and the inability of the culture to take women’s pleasure seriously (…) [the film] encapsulated the ‘painful truth’ about what men really thought about women” (Comella, 2015, p. 445).

Deep Throat also fueled the hegemonic beliefs that sex is good, sex is needed, and not being sexual is abnormal. Dworkin (1987) wrote, “In Amerika, there is the nearly universal conviction - or so it appears - that sex (fucking) is good and that liking it is right: morally right; a sign of human health; nearly a standard for citizenship (…) sex is good, healthy, wholesome, pleasant, fun; we like it, we enjoy it, we want it, we are cheerful about it” (Dworkin, 1987, p. 59). Women with a loss of sexual desire, such as Linda Lovelace, believe there must be something medically wrong with them, and according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM), there is. The DSM’s definition of women’s sexual problems was “founded solely on male sexual behaviors (…) [creating] a ‘false equivalency’ between female and male sexuality” (Hinchliff, 2009, p. 450). According to the DSM, a woman who reports sexual desire loss is diagnosed with “sexual desire loss” (Hinchliff, 2009, p. 450).

Sexual desire loss is the most common sexual problem in the UK, and a 2009 study by Hinchliff et al. (2009) tried to identify what some of these (heterosexual) women truly thought about their “illness ." The majority of these women “reported that their sexual desire loss had affected their sense of themselves as women” (Hinchliff, 2009, p. 455). The women all discussed the influence of the media, how it portrayed happy and healthy women as highly sexual, and that their loss of sexuality and womanhood was “affected by cultural expectations of what it means to be a heterosexual woman” (Hinchliff, 2009, p. 460).

The importance of media has been recognized for a long time. Women Against Violence Against Women (WAVAW), founded in 1976, targeted sexist and violent images in the media and understood “the role of media in teaching men that women liked to be dominated while simultaneously conditioning women to accept their subordination” (Comella, 2015, p. 445). Mass media “disseminated powerful ideologies that influenced how people understood themselves in the world in which they lived” (Comella, 2015, p. 445). Just as radical feminists and the WAVAW organization in the 1970s argued, “violent and sexist imagery desensitized men to rape” whether in mass media or pornography (Comella, 2015, p. 447). Susan Brownmiller, an influential feminist leader against pornography in the 1970s and 1980s, argued that “pornography was not consumed by ‘bad’ but by ‘good’ men” and that “pornography could be shown to provoke rape” (Meyer, 1987, p. 401).

Pro-sex, or liberal, feminists recognized the ways women were constrained by sexuality and were “wary of defining female sexuality solely in terms of danger and victimization” (Comella, 2015, p. 452). Instead, liberal feminists wanted to “fight sexism and sexual repression while simultaneously claiming sex for women” (Comella, 2015, p. 452). They did not view these goals as mutually exclusive, they wanted to “highlight the theme of sexual pleasure and its place in women’s lives” (Comella, 2015, p. 452). Liberal feminists believed that legalizing sex work, from prostitution to pornography, would “remove the stigma” attached to the profession and “enable the authorities to tackle problems of public safety and criminality” (Prins, 2008, p. 262).

Gail Dines, a modern radical feminist, attributes the start of the pornography industry to the first edition of Playboy in 1953 (Dines and Mantilla, 2007, p. 56). Dines argues that Playboy played a crucial role in the development of modern American capitalism, with its emergence post-World War II, its portrayal of how “high class” women made men “feel they could buy [the women] if they had consumed the ‘high class’ products that were advertised” (Dines and Mantilla, 2007, p. 56). According to Dines, the “idea of ‘sexual freedom’ is just a front for large scale businesses”, including the pornography industry, which in 2007 brought in $12 billion in revenue in the United States alone (Dines and Mantilla, 2007, p. 56). Since the start of Playboy, image-based media has become the primary form of media consumed and print-based media has almost been forgotten. Commenting on the rise of image-based culture, Dines said “images capture you, construct your identity” and that the “power of stereotypes lies in their ability to police the behavior of the oppressed and of the ability of the oppressor class to judge the oppressed by their behavior. Most women compare themselves to the women in the photos” (Dines and Mantilla, 2007, p. 56). Dines makes a similar comment on pornography as radical feminists in 1972 made on Deep Throat, saying “[p]ornography is really what men think about women - they hate women” (Dines and Mantilla, 2007, p. 57).

Gail Dines warns us of the way “pornography destroys the creative and life-loving aspects of sex and through the pornification of mainstream culture, we lose what it means to be human” (Dines and Mantilla, 2007, p. 57). As Dines points out, mainstream culture has become the new soft porn, and research has shown that sexualized content in mainstream advertising has become more pervasive since the 1980s (Dines and Mantilla, 2007, p. 57). It is “increasingly common for advertising to connect sexuality with aggression or violence against women” as advertisers believe that “sex sells, but only if it is more shocking and more graphic than preceding campaigns” (Capella et al., 2010, p. 38). Just like pornography, “any emphasis on dominance and aggression by men based on stereotypical sex roles [in advertisements] causes the development of rape-permissive attitudes” (Capella et al., 2010, p. 39).

The media, particularly advertisers, have the power to create social scripts, which are then imitated by consumers. Children and adults alike “acquire attitudes, emotional responses, and new styles of conduct through mass media” that shape their “behavior and social attitudes” (Capella et al., 2010, p.3 9). Capella et al. (2010) conducted a study to examine the influence of sexualized violence in advertising as a strategy to appeal to consumers’s beliefs, attitudes, and intentions (Capella et al., 2010, p. 46). The results showed that male participants generally held more positive responses towards the more violent ads, but both males and females were accepting of the depicted sexual violence in the ads. In their conclusion, Capella et al. reflected on the ways “images of female ‘pleasure’ coupled with male sexual aggression trigger thought patterns that encourage violence against women, and long-term exposure (…) leads to greater acceptance by men of their sexual harassment” (Capella et al., 2010, p. 47). Advertisements can create or reinforce men's and women’s beliefs, shape norms, and influence behavior, this becomes especially dangerous as advertisements normalize increasingly violent treatment of women by men.

Liberal feminists fail to realize that they have been manipulated by a lifetime of exposure to these sexualizing, demeaning, and violent forms of media, which have been designed by men. Liberal feminists trust “sex workers” (prostituted women) who claim to be in the industry voluntarily, and they do not question the powers behind their “consent ." Most importantly, liberal feminists disregard the double-bind of a liberal society, where legal “sex work” (prostitution) may lead to women taking on jobs even more degrading, and “sexuality [would] be handed over entirely to the forces of the free market” (Prins, 2008, p. 266). By allowing the commodification of all sexuality, liberal feminism “take[s] sexuality to be no more than the satisfaction of bodily appetites or the mere penetration of one body by another” (Prins, 2008, p. 269). Arguably, liberal feminists view sex under what Dworkin (1987) called “the logic of male supremacy” where “maleness is aggressive and violent; and so fucking, in which both the man and the woman experiences maleness, essentially demands the disappearance of the woman as an individual” (Dworkin, 1987, p.80).

Conclusion - Where do we go from here?

The flower of the “sexual revolution”, was initially planted in the 1950s, with radical feminism allowing it to burgeon and strengthen its roots in the 1960s. Its blossoming in the 1970s, and the hope it provided for the future of all women. But, its petals began falling as the feminist movement became increasingly divided in the 1980s. Now, there is hope for the flower to bloom once more. The radical feminists’ efforts have not gone unnoticed, and the roots of the movement they helped create will be the foundation needed to bring women true sexual liberation.

I believe there is hope, that women one day will be able to rid themselves of the fear that their actions will make men not love them, and thus women will stop behaving in ways that only serve to satisfy the male ego. Modern radical feminists need to stand their ground and keep advocating for women’s sex based rights by rejecting the “sexual revolution” which only benefitted men. But real change cannot happen until all women realize they have been manipulated by a male supremacist mindset and unite to fight these forces. We must fight, united as females, and destroy the primary source of sexualization in our lives; pornography. Pornography is responsible not only for the behaviors it causes in men but also for shaping the ways in which we come to understand ourselves. We have been manipulated to sexualize ourselves by this industry, we are sexualizing our pain, our work, and our lives, and pornography has normalized it.

To find liberation, we - women - must not simply have sex with any man, or sell our bodies to prove we are free. True freedom and true liberation will only come when we establish equality between men and women, and that begins with the de-pornification of the media.

References

Capella, M. L., Hill, R. P., Rapp, J. M., & Kees, J. (2010). THE IMPACT OF VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN IN ADVERTISEMENTS. Journal of Advertising, 39(4), 37–51. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25780658

Chan, C., & Beltrand, B. (1985, Apr 27). Andrea dworkin on pornography. Gay Community News, 12, 6-7. Retrieved from https://lib-proxy01.skidmore.edu/login?url=https:// www.proquest.com/magazines/andrea-dworkin-on-pornography/docview/2171700953/se-2?accountid=13894

Comella, L. (2015). Revisiting the Feminist Sex Wars [Review of Battling Pornography: The American Feminist Anti-Pornography Movement, 1976–1986; Anti-Porn: The Resurgence of Anti-Pornography Feminism; $pread: The Best of the Magazine That Illuminated the Sex Industry and Started a Media Revolution, by Carolyn Bronstein, Julia Long, & Rachel Aimee, Eliyanna Kaiser, and Audacia Ray]. Feminist Studies, 41(2), 437–462. https://doi.org/10.15767/feministstudies.41.2.437

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Donovan, J. (1997). Radically speaking: Feminism reclaimed; all the rage; reasserting radical lesbian feminism. NWSA Journal, 9(3), 181. Retrieved from https://lib proxy01.skidmore.edu/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/radically speaking-feminism-reclaimed-all-rage/docview/233240033/se-2?accountid=13894

Douglas, C. A. (1990, Apr 30). Daring to be bad: Radical feminism in America 1967-1975. Off our Backs, 20, 16. Retrieved from https://lib-proxy01.skidmore.edu/login?url=https:// www.proquest.com/magazines/daring-be-bad-radical-feminism-america-1967-1975/ docview/197159491/se-2?accountid=13894

Douglas, C. A. (2005, May). In memoriam: Andrea Dworkin radical feminist. Off our Backs, 35, 12-15. Retrieved from https://lib-proxy01.skidmore.edu/login?url=https:// www.proquest.com/magazines/memoriam-andrea-dworkin-radical-feminist/ docview/197135676/se-2?accountid=13894

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Prins, B. (2008). Sympathetic Distrust: Liberalism and the Sexual Autonomy of Women. Social Theory and Practice, 34(2), 243–270. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23558667Willis, Ellen. “Toward a Feminist Sexual Revolution.” Social Text, no. 6, Duke University Press, 1982, pp. 3–21, https://doi.org/10.2307/466614.