If someone had the time and energy to do it, it might be interesting to research and write the history of the DworkinMacKinnon Thing as a study of mythopoesis. On Usenet this two-headed monster is the constant bogeyman of the sore boys, but it's not easy finding out anything about it; its substance is mostly effaced:
A few years ago I tried to find out something about MacKinnon by using Altavista, and of the first 100 articles about or mentioning MacKinnon, 100 were denunciations of her writings and thought; the writings and thought themselves could not be found, other than as bits and pieces enclosed in denunciations, as if she were a Fifth-Century heretic whose relics were only anathematized quotations. That's some freedom of speech for you!
> > As for Carole's notion that the "anti-sex left" is only a
> > figment of some outsider's imagination: I invite you to
> > check out a recent article that appeared in Counterpunch by
> > Professor Robert Jensen called "Rape is Normal"
> > (http://www.counterpunch.org/jensen0904.html); it clearly
> > states his complete absorption of the Dworkin-MacKinnon
> > theory of male sexual rapicity/female passivity in order to
> > sell his analysis of pornography and prostitution as a grave
> > threat to women and a tool of "capitalist patriarchy".
Chip Berlet:
> I really urge people to go and read the Jensen article to appreciate what a
> major distortion of the work is contained in the above paragraph by
> Kennerson.
The arguments here are dancing away out on some very thin limbs. We have one article in Counterpunch as representing "The Left"; this article, in turn, makes vague allegations about culture apparently on the basis of a few overheard locker-room conversations. The trouble with this article is not DworkinMacKinnonism but that it has nothing new to say, and is ungrounded in observed fact. Evidently someone else is supposed to do the sociological dirty work.
I don't doubt that slavery, capitalism and other forms of class war have done some pretty serious damage to our sexuality, but I don't see how the damage is to be resisted or repaired by finding bogeymen, whether they're the DworkinMacKinnon or dumb frat boys in the locker room. These are but the messengers of the evil, and it will not accomplish much to shoot them over and over again.
As for discussing sexuality, my experience on mailing lists and newsgroups has been that, except for those explicitly devoted to the subject, as with the doctors there is a bit too much giggling for a serious conversation.
-- Gordon