Andrea Dworkin: The Feminist as Revolutionary

by Martin Duberman

Overview

From one of America's leading biographers, the definitive story of the radical feminist and anti-pornography activist, based on exclusive access to her archives

Fifteen years after her death, Andrea Dworkin remains one of the most important and challenging figures in second-wave feminism. Although frequently relegated to its more radical fringes, Dworkin was without doubt a formidable and influential writer, a philosopher, and an activist—a brilliant figure who inspired and infuriated in equal measure. Her many detractors were eager to reduce her to the caricature of the angry, man-hating feminist who believed that all sex was rape, and as a result, her work has long been misunderstood. It is in recent years, especially with the rise of the #MeToo movement, that there has been a resurgence of interest in her ideas.

This biography is the perfect complement to the widely reviewed anthology of her writing, Last Days at Hot Slit, published in 2019, providing much-needed context to her work. Given exclusive access to never-before-published photographs and archives, including her letters to many of the major figures of second-wave feminism, award-winning biographer Martin Duberman traces Dworkin's life, from her abusive first marriage through her central role in the sex and pornography wars of the following decades. This is a vital, complex, and long overdue reassessment of the life and work of one of the towering figures of second-wave feminism.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781620975855
Publisher:	New Press, The
Publication date:	09/08/2020
Pages:	384
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Martin Duberman is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of History at the CUNY Graduate Center, where he founded and for a decade directed the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies. The author of more than twenty books—including Radical Acts, Waiting to Land, A Saving Remnant, Howard Zinn, The Martin Duberman Reader, Hold Tight Gently, and Paul Robeson: No One Can Silence Me (for young adults)—Duberman has won a Bancroft Prize and been a finalist for both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. He lives in New York City.

Table of Contents

1 Beginnings 1

2 Marriage 27

3 Joining the Fray 57

4 The Mid-Seventies 86

5 The Gathering Storm 109

6 Pornography 126

7 Lovelace; Trans; and Right-Wing Women 152

8 The Ordinance 171

9 Writing 200

10 Mercy 228

11 Prelude to Israel 249

12 Scapegoat 266

Acknowledgments 289

Notes 291

Index 329

Editorial Reviews

06/01/2020

Bancroft Prize winner Duberman (Luminous Traitor) delivers an exhaustive, intimate, and admiring biography of feminist writer and activist Andrea Dworkin (1946–2005). He details Dworkin’s upbringing by socially conscious Jewish immigrants in New Jersey, horrific mistreatment by male prison doctors after being arrested for protesting the Vietnam War, and abusive marriage to a Dutch anarchist before tracking her “meteoric” rise in the feminist movement beginning with the publication of Woman Hating in 1974. Duberman highlights Dworkin’s reputation as a passionate—and sometimes shocking—orator, and documents her struggles to gain acceptance from her peers and mainstream publishers. He also notes her concerns over race and class divisions within the feminist movement, ties her presentation of gender as a social construct to an early understanding of trans issues, and categorizes her antipornography crusade as a pushback against the power of systemic patriarchy. Duberman defends against claims that Dworkin considered all intercourse rape, and discusses her relationships with men and women without shoehorning her into a queer identity. Selections from Dworkin’s letters and autobiographical writings bring her own self-assessment into the picture, helping Duberman to push back against detractors who saw her as a one-note antisexuality crusader. Through this empathetic and approachable portrait, readers will develop a new appreciation for Dworkin’s “combative radicalism” and the lifelong, unsteady truce she made with the feminist mainstream. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

Praise for Andrea Dworkin:
“A sympathetic, clear-eyed portrait that gives Dworkin her due without smoothing over her rough edges.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Exhaustive, intimate, and admiring. . . . Through this empathetic and approachable portrait, readers will develop a new appreciation for Dworkin‘s ‘combative radicalism' and the lifelong, unsteady truce she made with the feminist mainstream.”
—Publishers Weekly

“This compelling portrait comprises an essential chapter in the history of feminism and human rights.”
—Booklist

“This superlative biography of the woefully misunderstood feminist writer and activist reveals the multiple ways that she was ahead of her time.”
—Shelf Awareness

“An admiral treatise on Dworkin’s life and work.”
—Ms. magazine

“I wish my friend, Andrea Dworkin, were here to speak and write for herself, but thanks to this landmark biography by Martin Duberman, you will now be able to meet one of the greatest thinkers, writers, and activists of our time. If feminism had a prophet, raging from the hills, warning us of the worst and urging us toward the best, it would be Andrea.”
—Gloria Steinem

“Martin Duberman's assessment of Dworkin's life and work asks us to meet her where she stood, in a position of fury and uncompromising integrity, rather than compromising her for the sake of our own comfort. I have been waiting for this book.”
—Jessa Crispin, author of Why I Am Not a Feminist: A Feminist Manifesto

“Andrea Dworkin's reputation was forged in the crucible of the porn wars, but her vision for a just world was as expansive as it was uncompromising. I'm very grateful for this lucid portrait of a complicated revolutionary.”
—Johanna Fateman, co-editor of Last Days at Hot Slit: The Radical Feminism of Andrea Dworkin

“A bracing history of one of America's most maligned and misunderstood insurgent thinkers, this should be read by anyone interested in one of the twentieth century's most radical and revolutionary movements.”
—Soraya Chemaly, author of Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger

“In his warm tribute to this most controversial of second-wave feminists, esteemed historian Martin Duberman poignantly conveys what it was like to be Andrea Dworkin.”
—Alice Echols, professor of history and the Barbra Streisand Chair of Contemporary Gender Studies, University of Southern California

“Duberman’s account will be crucial to those discovering Dworkin’s life and work for the first time.”
—Claire Potter, Political Junkie

From the Publisher

★ 2020-05-17
Veteran biographer and gay rights activist Duberman assesses the life and thought of the combative radical feminist.

Andrea Dworkin (1946-2005) was among the most controversial figures in the second-wave feminist movement, caricatured by her critics as a man-hating lesbian who believed all heterosexual sex was rape. Duberman, who knew her personally, paints a much more nuanced picture, pointing out that Dworkin lived for 40 years in a nonexclusive, occasionally sexual relationship with a devoted male partner and that she was ahead of her time in seeing gender as a social construct that denied the fluidity of human sexual behavior. His account of Dworkin’s childhood and youth depicts a precocious rebel with a deep commitment to social justice and a theatrical, confrontational personality that brooked no compromise or evasions. When she was subjected to a brutal and humiliating vaginal exam after being arrested at a sit-in protesting the Vietnam War, 18-year-old Dworkin wrote to every newspaper in New York City describing her ordeal and the conditions at the Women’s House of Detention. It was the beginning of her lifelong battle to make the world face the fact that women were routinely mistreated and abused, culminating in her famous crusade against pornography. Duberman persuasively argues that Dworkin’s position was misunderstood as a call for censorship when in fact what she advocated was the right of women who had been harmed by pornography to sue its purveyors—and their obligation to prove their case in court. Her response to free-speech absolutists gives a good sense of both her belligerence and her searching intelligence: “People have no idea how middle-classed and privileged their liberal First Amendment stuff is—how power and money determine who can speak in this society.” These words resonate even more strongly today, and Duberman notes that after years of opprobrium, there is now “a modicum of acknowledgment of Andrea’s insistent bravery, her mesmerizing public voice, her generosity of spirit.”

A sympathetic, cleareyed portrait that gives Dworkin her due without smoothing over her rough edges.

Kirkus Reviews