How about this?

[ismnotwasm]

LETTERS FROM A WAR ZONE

WRITINGS 1976-1989

by
Andrea Dworkin


I Want a Twenty-Four-Hour Truce
During Which There Is No Rape
1983


I have thought a great deal about how a feminist, like myself, addresses an audience primarily of political men who say that they are antisexist. And I thought a lot about whether there should be a qualitative difference in the kind of speech I address to you. And then I found myself incapable of pretending that I really believe that that qualitative difference exists. I have watched the men's movement for many years. I am close with some of the people who participate in it. I can't come here as a friend even though I might very much want to. What I would like to do is to scream: and in that scream I would have the screams of the raped, and the sobs of the battered; and even worse, in the center of that scream I would have the deafening sound of women's silence, that silence into which we are born because we are women and in which most of us die.

And if there would be a plea or a question or a human address in that scream, it would be this: why are you so slow? Why are you so slow to understand the simplest things; not the complicated ideological things. You understand those. The simple things. The cliches. Simply that women are human to precisely the degree and quality that you are.

And also: that we do not have time. We women. We don't have forever. Some of us don't have another week or another day to take time for you to discuss whatever it is that will enable you to go out into those streets and do something. We are very close to death. All women are. And we are very close to rape and we are very close to beating. And we are inside a system of humiliation from which there is no escape for us. We use statistics not to try to quantify the injuries, but to convince the world that those injuries even exist. Those statistics are not abstractions. It is easy to say, "Ah, the statistics, somebody writes them up one way and somebody writes them up another way." That's true. But I hear about the rapes one by one by one by one by one, which is also how they happen. Those statistics are not abstract to me. Every three minutes a woman is being raped. Every eighteen seconds a woman is being beaten. There is nothing abstract about it. It is happening right now as I am speaking.

And it is happening for a simple reason. There is nothing complex and difficult about the reason. Men are doing it, because of the kind of power that men have over women. That power is real, concrete, exercised from one body to another body, exercised by someone who feels he has a right to exercise it, exercised in public and exercised in private. It is the sum and substance of women's oppression.

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

Note the date, 1983, can anyone read this essay and not feel how it resonates in 2013?

I was posting from my phone at work earlier, and I didn't Exactly see what that idiotic rape thread turned into. If we are to educate, and the anti-feminist can't read, or feel the poignancy, the exhaustion, the despair in this speech, how can I ever take anyone of them seriously? How could their opinions possible matter to me? Nothing and I mean nothing written on the topic of rape has effected me as strongly as Dworkin here, addressing a roomful of men.





And to see this tormented brilliant women constantly misquoted, used as gender fodder as her body was used in life makes me Ill. I don't respect those men and women acting out their silly little essential uselessness in that thread, but more they have nothing to say that even makes sense when compared to the stark simplicity of this speech. It's all word salad, unstable and without a center. It's not even sad, it's moved beyond sad, it's comical tragedy.

Fools.

[redqueen]

1. Thank you for this.

I can't tell you how good it is to have a place on DU where there is at least less of a chance of anyone attempting to minimize the brutal reality women face.

And to see this tormented brilliant women constantly misquoted, used as gender fodder as her body was used in life makes me Ill. I don't respect those men and women acting out their silly little essential uselessness in that thread, but more they have nothing to say that even makes sense when compared to the stark simplicity of this speech. It's all word salad, unstable and without a center. It's not even sad, it's moved beyond sad, it's comical tragedy.

Exactly. How can anyone comb through that and choose to ignore the message, which is still largely unheard 30 years later.

[Helen Reddy]

2. Dworkin

is wrong on EVERYTHING!

'Cuz she's fat.....and stuff. Ugly fat women who wear overalls should not be listened to! Hear that Junior Samples?! Salute!

Never mind she was beaten, and raped.

Her husband John Stoltenberg released her writings which anyone can download. Now a few could learn here at DU what a real feminist man looks like! He was a true friend to women's causes.

RIP Andrea

[redqueen]

3. How about this?

I'm going to ask you to remember the prostituted, the homeless, the battered, the raped, the tortured, the murdered, the raped-then-murdered, the murdered-then-raped; and I am going to ask you to remember the photographed, the ones that any or all of the above happened to and it was photographed and now the photographs are for sale in our free countries. I want you to think about those who have been hurt for the fun, the entertainment, the so-called speech of others; those who have been hurt for profit, for the financial benefit of pimps and entrepreneurs. I want you to remember the perpetrator and I am going to ask you to remember the victims: not just tonight but tomorrow and the next day. I want you to find a way to include them -- the perpetrators and the victims -- in what you do, how you think, how you act, what you care about, what your life means to you.

Now, I know, in this room, some of you are the women I have been talking about. I know that. People around you may not. I am going to ask you to use every single thing you can remember about what was done to you -- how it was done, where, by whom, when, and, if you know --why -- to begin to tear male dominance to pieces, to pull it apart, to vandalize it, to destabilize it, to mess it up, to get in its way, to fuck it up. I have to ask you to resist, not to comply, to destroy the power men have over women, to refuse to accept it, to abhor it and to do whatever is necessary despite its cost to you to change it.

-Remember, resist, do not comply

I have to say, I am thoroughly disgusted by those who make a joke out of her mental or emotional state. First of all, we are talking about people who are thoroughly dishonest as a matter of routine. It is their default mode, rather than an exception. But more to the point, this woman went through hell. Many of us women know other women like her. Many of us know women who consciously decide not to remember on some of the awful crimes committed against them, because of the cost involved in facing it.

This woman not only faced it, she made it public, and she stood up to the people who she knew would use it as yet another weapon to attack her with. She did it not for herself, but for all women.

Whatever disagreements people have with her, it is rational to expect that those disagreements would be stated in a sane manner. But so often, we see a completely different tack taken with Dworkin. The attacks on her take on a gibbering, lunatic quality. Raving diatribes about her can be found all over the net. She must be demonized, ridiculed, her character dragged through the mud, and for what? Some testimony before congress?

Please. The agenda of the people who devote so much time to her is clear. As is the reason for their actions.

p.s. Before any stalkers bother, no I'm not calling her a martyr. I'm recognizing the painful situation she put herself in. That's it. It's called compassion.

[ismnotwasm]

4. Because you know

People in the History of Feminism group don't know anything about HISTORY and stuff. Or something.

I suppose if we waxed poetic about Hemingway we'd have fans. Sigh.

Edit, and I agree completely.

[MadrasT]

5. Basically this is the only Dworkin I have ever read.

I believe it was included in the book "Transforming a Rape Culture".

I was very moved, it's a powerful essay. Would love to have been in the room when she delivered it to experience the reaction.

The more men whine about how awful she is, the more I want to read.

I am of the school that thinks there is some truth to the statement: "If men are applauding your brand of feminism, you are doing it wrong." Conversely, if they are whining loudly about it, there just may be some uncomfortable truths there, and that makes me curious to investigate further.

[redqueen]

6. And this.

Michael Moorcock: Several reviewers accused you of saying that all intercourse was rape. I haven't found a hint of that anywhere in the book. Is that what you are saying?

Andrea Dworkin: No, I wasn't saying that and I didn't say that, then or ever. … My point was that as long as the law allows statutory exemption for a husband from rape charges, no married woman has legal protection from rape. I also argued, based on a reading of our laws, that marriage mandated intercourse —it was compulsory, part of the marriage contract. Under the circumstances, I said, it was impossible to view sexual intercourse in marriage as the free act of a free woman.

Interview in New Statesman & Society (21 April 1995), discussing her books Intercourse and Right Wing Women