[lbo-talk] Andrea Dworkin, Sexual Fascist

Michael Pugliese michael.098762001 at gmail.com
Sun May 8 10:25:03 PDT 2005


Heh, from our Hari Kumar's org.

http://www.allianceml.com/

Organ of Alliance Marxist-Leninist (North America);

Volume 1, Issue 5; September 2003

Feminist theorist Andrea Dworkin represents all that is wrong with the petty bourgeois intelligentsia. Divorced from any real-world struggles, this intelligentsia degenerates into a fantasy world of boundless theoretical possibilities where even the most inane and bizarre positions are granted validation.

Dworkin's views present an extreme petty-bourgeois metaphysics, centered on sex as the primary motive force in society. Andrea Dworkin has often been characterized as the quintessential "Femi-Nazi." Although that ubiquitous phrase has, more often than not, been used as a term of abuse directed at any woman who strongly speaks out against male supremacism, with regard to Ms. Dworkin it does contain some truth. In place of the Nazi vision of race as the determining factor in the rise and fall of cultures and civilizations, Dworkin places sex. The conclusions she then comes to are as outlandish, freakish, reactionary, and anti-human as those of any Himmler or Rosenberg. And Dworkin outlines a vision of a sexual "New Order" as repellant as any conceived under the swastika.

The following are taken from her premier text, Woman Hating, 1974.

Androgyny the Ideal.

Dworkin denies gender:

"The discovery is, of course, that "man" and "woman" are fictions, caricatures, cultural constructs. As models they are reductive totalitarian, inappropriate to human becoming. As roles they are static, demeaning to the female, dead-ended for the male and female both (p. 174)."

It should be noted that Dworkin is not attacking the idea of gender roles, but the reality of sexual distinction itself. In its place she offers a so-called `androgynous ethic' She tries to defend this androgynous ethic by claiming that there are no biological differences between "men" and "women" which would make any sexual difference possible. Here pseudo-science, religion, and out and out fantasy are marshaled by Dworkin.

"there is no reason not to postulate that humans once were androgynous -- hermaphroditic and androgynous, created precisely in the image of the constantly recurring androgynous godhead" (p.176)."

Dworkin asserts that homo sapiens was, at one time hermaphroditic.

Thus placing human beings on the level of flatworms. Dworkin also believes in human parthenogenesis (pregnancy resulting from an unfertilized egg - i.e.. conception without sexual union.) Indeed, she claims parthenogenesis is a common occurrence. The world is littered with virgin births and Athena sprouting out of Zeus' head. She concludes:

"Homo Sapiens is a multi-sexed species, which has its sexuality spread along a vast fluid continuum where the elements called male and female are not discrete" (p.183).

Therefore there is no such thing as being male or female.

Heterosexuality is Evil.

Dworkin states that:

"Intercourse with men as we know them is increasingly impossible. It requires an abortion of creativity and strength, a refusal of responsibility and freedom: a bitter personal death. It means acting out the female role, incorporating the masochism, self-hatred, and passivity which are central to it. Unambiguous conventional heterosexual behavior is the worst betrayal of our common humanity (p.184)."

This is not to say that "men" and "women" can''t have sex, but that:

"androgynous [sex] ... requires the destruction of all conventional role-playing ... of couple formations..."

What does this mean? As Dworkin notes, homosexual sexual relationships are far closer to her version of androgyny because "it is by definition antagonistic to two-sex polarity" (p.185). But even this is too polarizing for Dworkin because many homosexuals have sex only with other homosexuals. Instead what Dworkin wants to see is some sort of omni-sexuality,

"An exclusive commitment to one sexual formation, whether homosexual or heterosexual, generally means an exclusive commitment to one role. An exclusive commitment to one sexual formation generally involves the denial of many profound and compelling kinds of sensuality. An exclusive commitment to one sexual formation generally means that one is, regardless of the uniform one wears, a good soldier of the culture programmed effectively to do its dirty work. It is by developing one's pansexuality to its limits (and no one knows where or what those are) that one does the work of destroying culture to build community (p.185)."

Monogamy is one of those "cultur[ally] programmed" views that would have to be discarded to experience "many profound and compelling kinds of sensuality." Continued on page eight.

In Favor of Bestiality.

One of the "pansexual" activities which Dworkin advocates is bestiality:

"Primary bestiality (fucking between people and other animals) is found in all nonindustrial societies. Secondary bestiality (generalized erotic relationships between people and other animals) is found everywhere on the planet, on every city street, in every rural town. Bestiality is an erotic reality, one which clearly place people in nature, not above it (p.187-8)."

"Needless to say, in androgynous community, human and other-animal relationships would become more explicitly erotic, and that eroticism would not degenerate into abuse. Animals would be part of the tribe and, with us, respected, loved, and free (p.188)."

In Praise of Incest.

Another universally condemned perversion which would be celebrated in Dworkin's petty-bourgeois sexual wonderland is incest.

"The parent-child relationship is primarily erotic because all human relationships are primarily erotic. The incest taboo is a particularized form of repression, one which functions as the bulwark of all other repressions. The incest taboo ensures that however free we become, we never become genuinely free. The incest taboo, because it denies us essential fulfillment with the parents whom we love with our primary energy, forces us to internalize those parents and constantly seek them...

"The incest taboo does the worst work of the culture: it teaches us the mechanisms of repressing and internalizing erotic feeling -- it forces us to develop those mechanisms in the first place; it forces us to particularize sexual feeling, so that it congeals into a need for a particular sexual "object"; it demands that we place the nuclear family above the human family. The destruction of the incest taboo is essential to the development of cooperative human community based on the free-flow of natural androgynous eroticism (p.189).

Not to Mention Pedophilia.

A few paragraphs later, Dworkin makes it explicitly that she seeks nothing less than the destruction of:

"the nuclear family as the primary institution of the culture" (p.190).

Dworkin ends her discourse on androgyny before making it explicit that this applies to children as well. Dworkin argues that children too must be 'liberated.'

"As for children, they too are erotic beings, closer to androgyny than the adults who oppress them. Children are fully capable of participating in community, and have every right to live out their own erotic impulses." (p.191-2).

In short, Dworkin offers a petty-bourgeois radicalism divorced from material reality, covered in metaphysics and pseudo-science, and focused on sex. . . perverse sex.

She is, a sexual fascist. -- Michael Pugliese



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