Sad ? It’s f*cking outrageous.

And it’s also very deliberate.

Wonder why a piece like this can be written 26 YEARS AGO, and still nothing has changed, that this piece applies perfectly today ? Why do people continue to either ignore or tell lies about women like Dworkin and her writing ?

Who benefits ?

And this? “Do you remember pictures that you’ve seen of European cities during the plague, when there were wheelbarrows that would go along and people would just pick up corpses and throw them in? Well, that is what it is like knowing about rape. Piles and piles and piles of bodies that have whole lives and human names and human faces.”

This is so true. It’s hard for me to explain to people who presumably understand what it’s like–why I get so angry so quickly, why I won’t stop talking about it after everyone else has moved on, why I see rape in commercials and in magazine ads and in conversation. It’s just that in my mind are piles and piles of bodies of women who have been raped. And I’ve never even been sexually assaulted, but it’s like–knowing about it as a woman, knowing women, knowing how many women, it’s wheelbarrows-ful. And my MaleFriend, who is the best manperson I’ve ever met, and who is super supportive and talks to me about feminism and is super radical, still doesn’t have the visceral understanding of the sheer number of women. It’s sad.

Actually I am going to have to rethink this relationship. His best friend is getting married, and when all the men in the wedding were talking about where to go for the bachelor party, my partner was like, “I won’t go to strip clubs, but I do like steak. But, strip clubs make me uncomfortable so I won’t go to one.” Then last night he got an email from his friends that said that they were going to a strip club, and he was like “WTF!” to me, but then replied to the email that he wouldn’t be in town until after the party so he couldn’t go. He didn’t say anything about the problems inherent in consuming women’s bodies. It has conflicted me.

(Sample response to the original email, replied-to-all: “I’m up for steak and tits.” As if I needed to be reminded of how easy and casual it is for men to butcher and consume women’s bodies, like we’re steak made to be sliced apart fired up and ingested, to make the Men Folk Stronger and Manlier.)

God now I want to go lie down and cry.

As a feminist, I carry the rape of all the women I’ve talked to over the past ten years personally with me. As a woman, I carry my own rape with me. Do you remember pictures that you’ve seen of European cities during the plague, when there were wheelbarrows that would go along and people would just pick up corpses and throw them in? Well, that is what it is like knowing about rape. Piles and piles and piles of bodies that have whole lives and human names and human faces.

And on that day, that day of truce, that day when not one woman is raped, we will begin the real practice of equality, because we can’t begin it before that day. Before that day it means nothing because it is nothing: it is not real; it is not true. But on that day it becomes real. And then, instead of rape we will for the first time in our lives–both men and women–begin to experience freedom. If you have a conception of freedom that includes the existence of rape, you are wrong. You cannot change what you say you want to change. For myself, I want to experience just one day of real freedom before I die. I leave you here to do that for me and for the women whom you say you love.

I cried when I read this because I had never before realised how much the patriarchy had colonised my mind to the point where the very concept of a 24 hour truce – sheesh – 24 hours! – had never occurred to me as a possibility. Andrea taught me daring and imagination in my feminist activism and for that I will be forever grateful.

Here is what I would say to those of you who immediately experience a shiver on hearing the name of the woman who allegedly said all intercourse was rape (n.b.: she said no such thing): read Dworkin before you dismiss her. You may not like everything she has to say. But she does not say what most people assume she does.

My fucking philosophy teacher used that misquote of Dworkin (and he threw Mackinnon in there too) while talking about radical feminism. I haven’t read much of either of them (certainly not enough to feel comfortable correcting him!), but I knew enough to catch that it was, in fact, a misquote. I was pissed, and when I’m angry, I very quietly boil over. So the entire class, encouraged by the professor, completely dismissed the whole of radical feminism based on utter bullshit. Most frustrating, to say the least.

That’s a quote I want to remember.

“When I say I’m gonna twist your dick ’til it snaps what I mean is I’m gonna lovingly stroke it ’til you come.”

That’s a quote I also want to remember, but for different reasons…

The Ta-Nehisi Coates thread is distressing. How can people deny the violence inherent in the statement “break your back,” even if they still want to defend it as a metaphor? Also, this: “I guess it’s possible that we’re socialized in certain terrible ways about sex.” Really, could it be possible, really?

Dworkin herself was threatened by a few men at this conference, IIRC.

Also, ladies, keep in mind that this speech was made 26 YEARS ago.