A Radical Feminist Who Could Dine With (Not on) Conservatives
It's not surprising that feminists lamented the death last weekend of Andrea Dworkin, the antipornography campaigner and author of such feminist tracts as "Woman Hating." But a few conservatives marked her death, as well. It turns out that Andrea Dworkin and conservatives could agree on at least a couple of issues - Bill Clinton's presidency, for instance, and pornography. Most surprising of all, the fierce feminist in overalls and the conservatives in suits even shared a meal and some tea. A few excerpts:
David Frum, columnist for National Review and former Bush administration speechwriter (http://www.nationalreview.com/frum/frum-diary.asp):
I met her once, through the kindness of my friend Christopher Hitchens, who invited my wife and me to meet Dworkin and her husband, John Stoltenberg, over dinner. It was an audacious pairing, and I went to the dinner with some trepidation.
I can't say I was charmed. ... But despite myself, I was impressed. Dworkin was a woman of deep and broad reading. When I met her she was increasingly immobilized by illness, but her mind ranged free. ...
We talked about her respect for the Christian conservatives who fought against forced prostitution and sex trafficking and her revulsion against Bill Clinton's abuse of women. Politically she belonged to the far, far, far left, but she had little use for an antiwar movement that made excuses for Saddam Hussein or Islamic extremism. And in one respect at least, she shared a deep and true perception with the political and cultural right: She understood that the sexual revolution had inflicted serious harm on the interests of women and children - and (ultimately) of men as well. ...
Dworkin was grimly entertained by the opportunism of Bill Clinton's feminist supporters. ... I'll just say that although I would never, ever have expected to think so: She'll be missed.
Maggie Gallagher, a syndicated columnist (www.uexpress.com/maggiegallagher):
I was not alone! Andrea saw it, too. As I wrote in "Enemies of Eros": "What Dworkin observes is essentially true. Sex is not an act which takes place merely between bodies. Sex is an act which defines, alters, imposes on the personhood of those who engage in it...."
And as I later learned, to a lesser degree, Andrea Dworkin received the same gift from me. Standing in the local bookstore in Park Slope in Brooklyn (where we both then lived), she thumbed through my first book. "At last, someone who understands my writing!" she shrieked excitedly.
Then she, the infamous feminist, invited me, the unknown young conservative, to tea. I found her soft-spoken, pale, intellectual, anxious, motherly. She seemed to me the kind of woman who has the peculiar courage of her fears.
Charlotte Allen, of the Independent Women's Forum (http://www.iwf.org/inkwell):
Dworkin actually made a couple of good points. They are: 1) Pornography is degrading to women... 2) Prostitution... is not "empowering"... 3) Those beads-wearing, "peace 'n' love"-spouting flower children of the 60's could be nasty, wife-beating brutes ...4) She supported the death penalty for convicted wife-murderer Scott Peterson.
Richard Brookhiser, a senior editor at National Review and author of "Founding Father," a biography of George Washington (http://www.nationalreview.com/thecorner/corner.asp):
When I was introduced to Andrea Dworkin the first thing she said was how much she had enjoyed "Founding Father," and how much she admired George Washington. I was pleased (as a vain author) and also stunned. Washington was the ur-Patriarch, so much so that he was Father of His Country.... What was the source of her high opinion? Maybe the fact that there is no credible tale of Washington's sleeping with a slave (there is an incredible one), and the second fact that the last act of his life was to free his own slaves. As I point out whenever I talk about G. W., "Founding Father" is 63,000 words long; if I had to rewrite it in four, they would be, "He really meant it."
Later on, when N.R. twitted feminists for supporting a later president, Bill Clinton, I got a note from Dworkin pointing out that she didn't....
She really meant it. R.I.P.