Dworkin, R.I.P.

[(Before I begin, the news: those damn Republicans are going to get rid of the estate tax yet. "Taxing the same assets twice" - wrong-o! It taxes the transfer of assets...something that happens practically every time money or other valuables change hands. How is this different? Only the rich do it. This one's gonna cost us a lot.]

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[R.I.P. Andrea Dworkin. "Andi," lest we forget, was the radical feminist who had everyone in an uproar for seeming to say that all heterosexual sex was rape. I remember well the field day Rush Limbaugh and friends had over that one. She also hated het porn, believing it incited rape and (more importantly) warped authentic sexual feeling and behavior, always to women's detriment, and usually to men's as well.]

[My dear friend Violet worships Dworkin, and I had the unhappy duty yesterday of telling her about her death. (We were sitting in V.'s Benz outside the former mansion of the Archbishop of San Francisco, and I was immediately reminded of that party several years ago when V. informed me of the Queen Mother's passing and I almost dropped my champagne flute. Give a feminist analysis of that chain of events and settings!) She hates having to teach people feminism, figuring the material's all out there. Figure it out for yourself.]

[Nevertheless, she and I have had several extensive discussions on the subject, and she has definitely shaped my own views. I had to get the "what about gay porn" discussion out of the way first, of course. While I have my own personal reasons for hating and mistrusting what porn can do to gay desire both general and specific, it is of course sometimes just the trick, and how, exactly, does it hurt women?]

[(I think this is why radical feminism is handled with neglect or extreme trepidation by the average well-educated 'mo, even though the lessons are so obviously applicable. We've spent so much time fighting to do, have, be and consume sex in our own way, and here comes some humorless feminist tryin' to take it all away again. Well, it ain't so.)]

[After disposing of that, we went on to the more fruitful topics of consent, freedom of expression, and how commodification does change everything. (Cyndi Lauper and Andrea Dworkin, duetting at last.) If one's "yes" is always informed by external, extremely pressing, and usually corrosive forces, is it really a "yes"?]

[Anyway, I don't know whether I'm a Dworkin feminist (Violet: you mean, a real one?), because I don't think I've totally understood her yet. I do agree with Gloria Steinem: her writing has had a real hand in the way we think and talk about sex, feminism, freedom, and what it means to "consent."]

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[Gosh, it feels good to write political again...]

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