Andrea Dworkin - Our Blood - Prophecies and Discourses on Sexual Politics

honorable final goal. We believe that to be equal where there

is not universal justice, or where there is not universal freedom is, quite simply, to be the same as the oppressor. It is to have achieved “uniform character, as of motion or surface. ”

Nowhere is this clearer than in the area of sexuality. The

male sexual model is based on a polarization of humankind

into man /woman, master/slave, aggressor/victim, active/

passive. This male sexual model is now many thousands of

years old. The very identity of men, their civil and economic

power, the forms of government that they have developed, the

wars they wage, are tied irrevocably together. All forms of

dominance and submission, whether it be man over woman,

white over black, boss over worker, rich over poor, are tied

irrevocably to the sexual identities of men and are derived

from the male sexual model. Once we grasp this, it becomes

clear that in fact men own the sex act, the language which

describes sex, the women whom they objectify. Men have written the scenario for any sexual fantasy you have ever had or any sexual act you have ever engaged in.

There is no freedom or justice in exchanging the female

role for the male role. There is, no doubt about it, equality.

There is no freedom or justice in using male language, the

language of your oppressor, to describe sexuality. There is no

freedom or justice or even common sense in developing a

male sexual sensibility— a sexual sensibility which is aggressive, competitive, objectifying, quantity oriented. There is only equality. To believe that freedom or justice for women,

or for any individual woman, can be found in mimicry of male

sexuality is to delude oneself and to contribute to the oppression of one’s sisters.

Many of us would like to think that in the last four years, or

ten years, we have reversed, or at least impeded, those habits

and customs of the thousands of years which went before— the

habits and customs of male dominance. There is no fact or

figure to bear that out. You may feel better, or you may not,

but statistics show that women are poorer than ever, that

women are raped more and murdered more. I want to suggest

to you that a commitment to sexual equality with males, that

is, to uniform character as of motion or surface, is a commitment to becoming the rich instead of the poor, the rapist instead of the raped, the murderer instead of the murdered. I want to ask you to make a different commitment— a commitment to the abolition of poverty, rape, and murder; that is, a commitment to ending the system of oppression called patriarchy; to ending the male sexual model itself.

The real core of the feminist vision, its revolutionary kernel

if you will, has to do with the abolition of all sex roles— that

is, an absolute transformation of human sexuality and the institutions derived from it. In this work, no part of the male sexual model can possibly apply . Equality within the framework of the male sexual model, however that model is reformed or modified, can only perpetuate the model itself and the injustice and bondage which are its intrinsic consequences.

I suggest to you that transformation of the male sexual

model under which we now all labor and “love” begins where

there is a congruence , not a separation, a congruence of feeling and erotic interest; that it begins in what we do know about female sexuality as distinct from male— clitoral touch

and sensitivity, multiple orgasms, erotic sensitivity all over the

body (which needn’t— and shouldn’t—be localized or contained genitally), in tenderness, in self-respect and in absolute mutual respect. For men I suspect that this transformation

begins in the place they most dread— that is, in a limp penis. I

think that men will have to give up their precious erections

and begin to make love as women do together. I am saying

that men will have to renounce their phallocentric personalities, and the privileges and powers given to them at birth as a consequence of their anatomy, that they will have to excise

everything in them that they now value as distinctively “male. ”

No reform, or matching of orgasms, will accomplish this.

I have been reading excerpts from the diary of Sophie Tolstoy, which I found in a beautiful book called Revelations: Diaries of Women, edited by Mary Jane Moffat and Charlotte Painter. Sophie Tolstoy wrote: And the main thing is not to love. See what I have done by loving him so deeply! It is so painful and humiliating; but he thinks that it is merely silly. “You say one thing and always do another. ”

But what is the good of arguing in this superior manner, when

I have nothing in me but this humiliating love and a bad temper;

and these two things have been the cause of all my misfortunes,

for my temper has always interfered with my love. I want nothing but his love and sympathy, and he won’t give it to me; and all my pride is trampled in the mud; I am nothing but a miser­

able crushed worm, whom no one wants, whom no one loves, a

useless creature with morning sickness, and a big belly, two rotten teeth, and a bad temper, a battered sense of dignity, and a love which nobody wants and which nearly drives me insane. 2

Does anyone really think that things have changed so much

since Sophie Tolstoy made that entry in her diary on October

25, 1886? And what would you tell her if she came here

today, to her sisters? Would you have handed her a vibrator

and taught her how to use it? Would you have given her the

techniques of fellatio that might better please Mr. Tolstoy?

Would you have suggested to her that her salvation lay in

becoming a “sexual athlete”? Learning to cruise? Taking as

many lovers as Leo did? Would you tell her to start thinking

of herself as a “person” and not as a woman?

Or might you have found the courage, the resolve, the conviction to be her true sisters—to help her to extricate herself from the long darkness of Leo’s shadow; to join with her in

changing the very organization and texture of this world, still

constructed in 1974 to serve him, to force her to serve him?

I suggest to you that Sophie Tolstoy is here today, in the

bodies and lives of many sisters. Do not fail her.