Scan barcode
outcolder's review against another edition
4.0
I have a lot of thoughts, feels and reactions to this , so forgive me if this review rambles. The first thing I want to say about it is that it’s well written. Even at its ugliest it’s a pleasure to read. As she says in the intro, she didn’t want to write bullshit. At the end she complains that the editor insisted on punctuation and capitalization but allowed her to advocate bestiality, incest, LSD, etc. I am thankful for the punctuation and capitalization and whatever other work the editors did; I enjoyed reading this and I am often annoyed with the lack of editing in more recent publications.
Drugs. Thinking about Andrea Dworkin on drugs seems like a good starting point for various horror scenarios. It’s easy to imagine Dworkin not only having a really bad trip but also making everyone else miserable, but then, it must have turned out OK, thanks to whatever revolutionary possibilities Dworkin allowed herself to imagine in those darkest moments. You don’t need drugs to have a bad trip, and you don’t need drugs to imagine revolutionary possibilities but you need to imagine revolutionary possibilities if you don’t want to have a bad trip, once you recognize how fucked everything is.
The fairytales. If Dworkin were writing this stuff now, she’d still have to go after these fairytales the same way. Fifty years since this book, and really, hundreds of years since people first thought all these sleeping or dead princesses are a drag, and we still have to suffer the popularity of Disney, Twilight, and 50 Shades. Which goes right into the porn chapter. I think Dworkin has a reputation of being against having sex, against heterosexual sex, and the whole ‘sex-positive ‘ thing is, like, a reaction to Dworkin and her comrades. But obviously Dworkin is horny as hell and wishes there were erotic novels, photography, or whatever that wasn’t oppressive. She was hoping to find it in “Suck” magazine but it turned out to be more of the same. Later in the book, she hints that there are androgynous models for intimacy in the tantric traditions but she unfortunately doesn’t give them the kind of close reading she gave The Story of O.
The foot-binding chapter gave me nightmares. I am now constantly aware of my own feet. Absolutely the most disturbing subject. If you think the pandemic and climate emergency are overwhelming, know what foot-binding really meant and that it ended. So gruesome. I hope for everyone ‘s sake that foot-binding was never part of a Dworkin acid trip, but I fear, considering the fluxus like instructions at the start of that chapter that she did give it a whirl. Dworkin does not discuss what is sometimes called female genital cutting, and maybe if she had our collective rage might have ripped a hole in the cosmos. Foot-binding is so fucking wrong. Argh. Shudder.
The book winds up with a mix of subjects that in parts is far ahead of its time and in other parts, either wrong or not explained well enough. Consent is not possible with non-human animals. There are very good reasons for the incest taboo . While we’re at it, using the N-word as Yoko Ono does in that song is also problematic. But let’s allow Dworkin these excesses and look at the other taboos she attacks which are in fact today crumbling, namely, all those letters that come after L and G in the sexual “minority” acronyms. If you can time travel back to 1974 and say gender is not only socially constructed but also fluid, even biological differences are largely the result of social forces, the nuclear family is oppressive, and then draw conclusions from those realizations like, as long as we subscribe to these extreme gender-poles “straight” sex will be terrible... it’s massive. It is that rip in the cosmos that women’s rage opened.
Dworkin ‘s whole tone throughout is anarchic. The negative anarchy of Kafka, the anarchism of feminist consciousness raising groups, the explicit anarchism of Julian Beck, the anarchic tendencies of the so-called New Left, all weave their way through the whole work. Is this really the same author who fought for censorship and for harsher laws and sentences against sex work? Or is that also a misrepresentation of Dworkin, the way man-hating is?
Drugs. Thinking about Andrea Dworkin on drugs seems like a good starting point for various horror scenarios. It’s easy to imagine Dworkin not only having a really bad trip but also making everyone else miserable, but then, it must have turned out OK, thanks to whatever revolutionary possibilities Dworkin allowed herself to imagine in those darkest moments. You don’t need drugs to have a bad trip, and you don’t need drugs to imagine revolutionary possibilities but you need to imagine revolutionary possibilities if you don’t want to have a bad trip, once you recognize how fucked everything is.
The fairytales. If Dworkin were writing this stuff now, she’d still have to go after these fairytales the same way. Fifty years since this book, and really, hundreds of years since people first thought all these sleeping or dead princesses are a drag, and we still have to suffer the popularity of Disney, Twilight, and 50 Shades. Which goes right into the porn chapter. I think Dworkin has a reputation of being against having sex, against heterosexual sex, and the whole ‘sex-positive ‘ thing is, like, a reaction to Dworkin and her comrades. But obviously Dworkin is horny as hell and wishes there were erotic novels, photography, or whatever that wasn’t oppressive. She was hoping to find it in “Suck” magazine but it turned out to be more of the same. Later in the book, she hints that there are androgynous models for intimacy in the tantric traditions but she unfortunately doesn’t give them the kind of close reading she gave The Story of O.
The foot-binding chapter gave me nightmares. I am now constantly aware of my own feet. Absolutely the most disturbing subject. If you think the pandemic and climate emergency are overwhelming, know what foot-binding really meant and that it ended. So gruesome. I hope for everyone ‘s sake that foot-binding was never part of a Dworkin acid trip, but I fear, considering the fluxus like instructions at the start of that chapter that she did give it a whirl. Dworkin does not discuss what is sometimes called female genital cutting, and maybe if she had our collective rage might have ripped a hole in the cosmos. Foot-binding is so fucking wrong. Argh. Shudder.
The book winds up with a mix of subjects that in parts is far ahead of its time and in other parts, either wrong or not explained well enough. Consent is not possible with non-human animals. There are very good reasons for the incest taboo . While we’re at it, using the N-word as Yoko Ono does in that song is also problematic. But let’s allow Dworkin these excesses and look at the other taboos she attacks which are in fact today crumbling, namely, all those letters that come after L and G in the sexual “minority” acronyms. If you can time travel back to 1974 and say gender is not only socially constructed but also fluid, even biological differences are largely the result of social forces, the nuclear family is oppressive, and then draw conclusions from those realizations like, as long as we subscribe to these extreme gender-poles “straight” sex will be terrible... it’s massive. It is that rip in the cosmos that women’s rage opened.
Dworkin ‘s whole tone throughout is anarchic. The negative anarchy of Kafka, the anarchism of feminist consciousness raising groups, the explicit anarchism of Julian Beck, the anarchic tendencies of the so-called New Left, all weave their way through the whole work. Is this really the same author who fought for censorship and for harsher laws and sentences against sex work? Or is that also a misrepresentation of Dworkin, the way man-hating is?
junyan's review against another edition
5.0
4.75/5 This book is still radically revolutionary even today. The future me will thank myself for reading this book right now. 没打5分是因为德沃金在结果呼吁建立androgyny communities，我认为：首先是几乎不可能实现，基本可以排除这种情况。其次是，100%女=100分，若结合50%的男就会降为50分。自然已经把自然意义上的雌性打造成最优的存在。在理想社会里不需要出现任何“雄/男”的影子。(也可能是我理解错误。）otherwise, she said that women must take power, here we go, this is what we fight for.
constantinaa's review against another edition
first half was pretty good but the second half... anyways... dk what to rate this bc i dnf after 50%
minacat's review
challenging
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
4.5
doing so well until the incest .
Content Warnings
Graphic: Rape and Sexual violence
barbines's review against another edition
1.5
I don't even know what to say
The book is so so good right until the ending where she concludes that incest, beastiality and pedophilia are all valid and okay.
There were some quotes that were amazing and heartbreaking and will for sure stick with me until I die but then there was "As for children, they too are erotic beings" and no, just no.
The book is so so good right until the ending where she concludes that incest, beastiality and pedophilia are all valid and okay.
There were some quotes that were amazing and heartbreaking and will for sure stick with me until I die but then there was "As for children, they too are erotic beings" and no, just no.
11corvus11's review against another edition
5.0
Everything I even thought I knew about Andrea Dworkin was wrong. I read this book, intrigued to know more about this feminist who seemed to be either loved or hated by so many. What I found was a passionate and painful book about what women (and trans people even) suffer in this world. It was full of, not ridiculous or outlandish leaps, but a true love of women and a desire for their liberation. It was an honest and aggressive attack on the horrible things women experience in this world, radical now, and even moreso when it was written. It prompted me to read more Dworkin and she is now one of my favorite writers, whether or not we agree on everything. Experiencing her passion and love is truly a gift in this world.
lattelibrarian's review against another edition
5.0
This, I believe, is Dworkin's first published work, and wow, what a piece of work it is. Dworkin writes in a hugely accessible way, ensuring that readers of all kinds can understand what she means, not only in terms of her writing, but in the diagrams she chooses to show as well. Her evidence is compelling, and the history she provides is horrifying. I know that in some feminist circles Dworkin is more detested than revered, but I honestly can't see how after reading this. In my humble opinion, she's absolutely correct, spot on, one-hundred-percent right about everything she discusses. There's not one point she made that I disagreed with, and there were various points in her book where I laughed, cried, and held my hand over my mouth in pure shock. This book, I believe, should be on every feminist's basic reading syllabus. It will not disappoint.