Women Hating: A Radical Look at Sexuality, by: Andrea - Feminish

207 Pages·1610·2.99 MB·English

PLUME
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Copyright © 1974 by Andrea Dworkin
All rights reserved
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Drawing on page 98 by Jean Holabird
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For Grace Paley
and in Memory of Emma Goldman
... Shakespeare had a sister; but do not
look for her in Sir Sidney Lee’s life of the
poet. She died young —alas, she never
wrote a word.... Now my belief is that
this poet who never wrote a word and was
buried at the crossroads still lives. She lives
in you and in me, and in many other wom­
en who are not here tonight, for they are
washing up the dishes and putting the
children to bed. But she lives; for great
poets do not die; they are continuing pres­
ences; they need only the opportunity to
walk among us in the flesh. This opportu­
nity, as I think, it is now coming within
your power to give her. For my belief is
that if we live another century or so—I
am talking of the common life which is the
real life and not of the little separate lives
which we live as individuals —and have
five hundred a year each of us and rooms
of our own; if we have the habit of free­
dom and the courage to write exactly what
we think; if we escape a little from the
common sitting-room and see human be­
ings not always in their relation to each
other but in relation to reality... if we
face the fact, for it is a fact, that there is
no arm to cling to, but that we go alone and
that our relation is to the world of reality
... then the opportunity will come and the
dead poet who was Shakespeare’s sister
will put on the body which she has so often
laid down. Drawing her life from the lives
of the unknown who were her forerun­
ners, as her brother did before her, she
will be born. As for her coming without
that preparation, without that effort on
our part, without that determination that
when she is born again she shall find it pos­
sible to live and write her poetry, that we
cannot expect, for that would be impos­
sible. But I maintain that she would come
if we worked for her, and that so to work,
even in poverty and obscurity, is worth­
while.
Virginia Woolf,
A Room of One's Own (1929)
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Ricki Abrams and I began writing this book together in
Amsterdam, Holland, in December 1971. We worked
long and hard and through a lot of living and then, for
many reasons, our paths separated. Ricki went to Aus­
tralia, then to India. I returned to Amerika. So the
book, in its early pieces and fragments, became mine as
the responsibility for finishing it became mine. I thank
Ricki here for the work we did together, and the time
we had together, and this book which came from that
time and grew beyond it.
Andrea Dworkin
CONTENTS
Introduction 17
Part One: THE FAIRY TALES 29
Chapter 1 Onceuponatime: The Roles 34
Chapter 2 Onceuponatime: The Moral of the
Story 47
Part Two: THE PORNOGRAPHY 51
Chapter 3 Woman as Victim: Story of O 55
Chapter 4 Woman as Victim: The Image 64
Chapter 5 Woman as Victim: Suck 75
Part Three: THE HERSTORY 91
Chapter 6 Gynocide: Chinese Footbinding 95
Chapter 7 Gynocide: The Witches 118
Part Four: ANDROGYNY 151
Chapter 8 Androgyny: The Mythological Model 155
Chapter 9 Androgyny: Androgyny, Fucking, and
Community 174
Afterword 197
Notes 205
Bibliography 211
There is a misery of the body and a misery
of the mind, and if the stars, whenever we
looked at them, poured nectar into our
mouths, and the grass became bread, we
would still be sad. We live in a system that
manufactures sorrow, spilling it out of its
mill, the waters of sorrow, ocean, storm,
and we drown down, dead, too soon.
... uprising is the reversal of the sys­
tem, and revolution is the turning of tides.
Julian Beck, The Life of the Theatre
The Revolution is not an event that takes
two or three days, in which there is shoot­
ing and hanging. It is a long drawn out
process in which new people are created,
capable of renovating society so that the
revolution does not replace one elite with
another, but so that the revolution creates
a new anti-authoritarian structure with
anti-authoritarian people who in their
turn re-organize the society so that it
becomes a non-alienated human society,
free from war, hunger, and exploitation.
Rudi Dutschke
March 7, 1968