Andrea Dworkin - The Political Memoir of a Feminist Militant

Suf er the Lit le Children

safety or luxury or even just enough. The apartment, however,

did have walls, and one does learn to be grateful.

The older girl thought that she was probably pregnant. Her

father, the hippie man, did light shows, many for rock bands;

he had the habit of sending musicians into the older girl’s bed

to have sex with her; the younger daughter slept next to the

older girl, both on a mattress on the floor. They were wonderful and delightful girls, scared to death; each put up the best front she could: I'm not afraid, I don’t care, none of it hurts me.

The first order of business, after get ing them down from

the wood rafters il uminated by the burning candles, was getting the older one a pregnancy test. If she was pregnant, she was going to have an abortion, I said. I’m not proud now of

using my authority that way, but she was a child, a real child;

anyway, for bet er or worse, I would have forced one on her.

In Amsterdam the procedure was not so clandestine nor so

stigmatized. It turned out that she wasn’t pregnant.

One day she was suddenly very happy. One of the adult

rockers sent into her bed by her father was going to Spain and

he wanted to take her. This was proof that he loved her. I knew

from the hippie father that he had paid the rocker to take the

girl. Finally I was the adult and someone else was the child.

I told her. I told her carefully and slowly and with love but

I told her the truth, al of it, about the rot en father and the

rot en rocker. Her mother now wanted her and her sister

back. I sent them back. Nothing would ever be simple for me

91

Heartbreak

again. A strain of melancholy entered my life; it was the

fusion of responsibility with loss in a world of bruised and

bullied strangers.

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Theory

I went to Amsterdam to interview the Provos - not the blood-

soaked Irish Provos but the hashish-soaked Dutch ones. They

served as the prototype for the U. S. yippies, though their

theory was more sophisticated; as one said to me, “Make an

action that puts crowds of ordinary people in direct conflict

with the police, then disappear. This will undermine police

authority and politicize those they beat up. ” The man I eventually married said that he envisaged social change as circles on a canvas; the idea was to destabilize the circles by adding

ones that didn’t fit - the canvas would inevitably lose its

integrity and some circles would fal off, a paradigm for social

chaos that would topple social hierarchies.

What I found infinitely more valuable, however, were three

books: Sexual Politics by Kate Millet ; The Dialectic of Sex by

Shulamith Firestone; and Sisterhood Is Powerful , an anthology

edited by Robin Morgan. These were the classic, basic texts of

radical feminism; what happened when women moved to the

left of the left. I was hardheaded though; I defended Norman

Mailer even though his attacks on Mil et were philistine; I

stil liked D. H. Lawrence, though now I find him unbearable

93

Heartbreak

to read, such a prissy and intolerant hee-haw; and I again

learned the power of listening, this time because of someone

who listened to me.

Her name was Dr. Frankel-Teitz. I had found out that when

you told people your husband was beating you, they turned

their backs on you. Mostly they blamed you. They said it

wouldn’t be happening if you didn’t want it and like it. You

could be, as I was, carrying al you could hold in an effort to

escape or you could be, as I was, badly hurt and bleeding, and

they stil told you that you wanted it. You could be running

away fast and furious, but it was still your will, not his, that

controlled the scenario of violence: you liked it. You could ask

for help and they’d deny you help and it was still your fault

and you liked it. I’d like to wipe out every person on earth

who ever said that to or about an abused woman.

I had a lot of physical problems from having been beaten

so much and from the tough months of running and hiding,

including terrible open sores on my breasts from where he

burned me with a cigarette. The sores would open up without

warning like stigmata and my breasts would bleed. Finally

women helping me found me a doctor. “Al the lesbians go to

her, ” they said, and in those days that was a damned good

recommendation. I went to her but was determined not to say

I had been beaten or I was running; I couldn’t bear one more

time of being told it was my fault. Stil , I said it; it fel out of

me when she saw the open sores. “That’s hor ible, ” she said -

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Theory

about the beatings, not the sores. I'l never forget it. “That’s

horrible. ” Was she on my side; did she believe me; was it

horrible? “No one’s ever said that, ” I told her. No one had.

A few years later, back in the United States, I sent Dr.

Frankel-Teitz a copy of Woman Hating and a let er thanking

her for her help and kindness. She replied with a fairly cranky

letter saying that she didn’t see what the big deal was; she had

only said and done the obvious. The obvious had included

get ing me medicine I couldn’t afford. I thought that she was

the most remarkable person I had ever met. “That’s hor ible. ”

Can saving someone really be that simple? “That’s hor ible. ”

Horrible, that’s hor ible. What does it take? What’s so hard

about it? How can the women who don’t say those words live

with themselves? How can the women who do say those

words now, thirty years later, worry more about how they

dress and which parties they go to? In between the early days

and now someone must have meant what she said enough so

that it could not be erased. How much can it cost? Horrible,

that’s hor ible.