Andrea Dworkin - Woman Hating - A Radical Look at Sexuality

Muriel Rukeyser

there is a great deal at stake here, many writers

fight this battle and most lose it. what is at stake for

the writer? freedom o f invention, freedom to tell the

truth, in all its particulars, freedom to imagine new

structures.

(the burden o f proof is not on those who presume

freedom, the burden o f p roof is on those who would

in any way diminish it. )

what is at stake for the enforcers, the doorkeepers,

the guardians o f the L aw —the publishing corporations,

the book reviewers who do not like lower case letters,

the librarians who will not stack books without standard

punctuation (that was the reason given Muriel Rukeyser

when her work was violated)—what is at stake for them?

why do they continue to enforce?

while this book may meet much resistance— anger,

fear, dislike—law? police? courts? —at this moment I

must write: Ive attacked the fundaments o f culture,

thats ok. Ive attacked male dominance, thats ok. Ive

attacked every heterosexual notion o f relation, thats

ok. Ive in effect advocated the use o f drugs, thats ok.

Ive in effect advocated fucking animals, thats ok. here

and now, New York City, spring 1974, among a handful

o f people, publisher and editor included, thats ok. lower

case letters are not. it does make one wonder.

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so Ive wondered and this is what I think right now.

there are well-developed, effective mechanisms for

dealing with ideas, no matter how powerful the ideas

are. very few ideas are more powerful than the mechanisms for defusing them, standard form —punctuation, typography, then on to academic organization, the

rigid ritualistic formulation of ideas, etc. —is the actual

distance between the individual (certainly the intellectual individual) and the ideas in a book.

standard form is the distance.

one can be excited about ideas without changing at

all. one can think about ideas, talk about ideas, without

changing at all. people are willing to think about many

things, what people refuse to do, or are not permitted to

do, or resist doing, is to change the way they think.

reading a text which violates standard form forces

one to change mental sets in order to read. there is no

distance. the new form, which is in some ways unfamiliar, forces one to read differendy—not to read about different things, but to read in different ways.

to permit writers to use forms which violate convention just might permit writers to develop forms which would teach people to think differently: not to think

about different things, but to think in different ways.

that work is not permitted.

If it had been possible to build the Tower o f Babel

without ascending it, the work would have been permitted.

Franz Kafka

The Immovable Structure is the villain. Whether

that structure calls itself a prison or a school or a fac­

Afterword

203

tory or a family or a government or The World As It

Is. That structure asks each man what he can do for it,

not what it can do for him, and for those who do not do

for it, there is the pain of death or imprisonment, or

social degradation, or the loss of animal rights.

Judith Malina

this book is about the Immovable Sexual Structure,

in the process o f having it published, Ive encountered

the Immovable Punctuation Typography Structure,

and I now testify, as so many have before me, that the

Immovable Structure aborts freedom, prohibits invention, and does us verifiable harm: it uses our holy human energy to sustain itself; it turns us into enforcers, or outlaws; to survive, we must learn to lie.

T h e Revolution, as we live it and as we imagine it,

means destroying the Immovable Structure to create

a world in which we can use our holy human energy to

sustain our holy human lives;

to create a world without enforcers, doorkeepers,

guards, and arbitrary Law;

to create a world —a community on this planet—

where instead o f lying to survive, we can tell the truth

and flourish.

N O T E S

Chapter 1. Onceuponatime: The Roles

1 The Brothers G rim m , Household Stories (New York: Dover

Publications, 1963), p. 213.

2 Ibid., p. 213.

3 Ibid., p. 214.

4 Ibid.

5Ibid.

6 Ibid.

7Ibid., p. 216.

8 Ibid., p. 221.

9 Ibid.

10 Ibid.

II Ibid., p. 124.

12 Ibid., p. 72.

13 Ibid., p. 73.

14 Ibid.

15 Ibid., p. 74.

16 Ibid., p. 85

17 Ibid., p. 220.

18 Ibid., p. 85.

19 Ibid., p. 92.

Chapter 3. Woman as Victim: Story of O

1 Newsweek, March 21, 1966, p. 108, unsigned.

- Pauline Reage, Story o f O (New York: Grove Press, 1965), p. xxi.

3 Ibid., p. 80.

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4 Ibid., p. 93.

5 Ibid., p. 187.

6Ibid., p. 32.

7 Ibid., p. 106.

8 R obert S. d e R opp, Sex Energy: The Sexual Force in M an and

Animals (New York: Dell Publishing C om pany, 1969), p. 134.

Chapter 4. Woman atVictim: The Image

‘J e a n d e B erg, The Image (New York: G rove Press, 1966), p.

137-

2 Ibid., p. 19.

3 Ibid., p. 47.

4 Ibid.

5 Ibid., p. 10.

6 Ibid., p. 11.

7 Ibid., p. 9.

8 Ibid., p. 42.

9Eliphas Levi, The History o f Magic (London: R ider a n d C om pany, 1969), p. 263.

10 Ibid., p. 265.

" J e a n d e B erg, op. cit., p. 11.

11 Ibid., p. 135.

13

The Essential Lenny Bruce, ed. J o h n C ohen (New York: Ballan-

tine Books, 1967), pp. 296-97.

Chapter 5. Woman at Victim: Suck

1 The Essential Lenny Bruce, ed. John Cohen (New York: Ballan-

tine Books, 1967), p. 245.

2 Anne Severson and Shelby Kennedy, I Change I Am the Same

(n. d. ).

3 Suck 6.

4 Ibid.

5 Suck 4.

6

Ibid.