Andrea Dworkin: The Political Memoir of a Feminist Militant

incorporated and exploited isolation, dominance and submission, humiliation, and dehumanization. In each the effort was to control a human being by attacking human dignity. In each

the guilt of the imprisoned provided a license to animalize

persons, which in turn led to a recognition of the ways in

which animals were misused outside the prison, outside the

pornography. Arguably (but not always), those in prison had

commit ed an offense; the offense of women in pornography was in being women. In both prisons and pornography, sadomasochism was a universal dynamic; there was no chance for reciprocity or mutuality or an equality of communication.

In prison populations and in pornography, the most

aggressive rapist was at the top of the social structure. In

prison populations gender was created by who got fucked; so,

too, in pornography. It amazed me that in pornography the

prison was recreated repeatedly as the sexual environment

most conducive to the rape of women.

The one dif erence, unbridgeable, intractable, between prisons

and pornography was that prisoners were not expected to like

128

Prisons

being in prison, whereas women were supposed to like each

and every abuse suffered in pornography.

129

Sister, Can You

Spare a Dime?

In 1983 Catharine A. MacKinnon and I drafted, and the City

of Minneapolis passed, a civil law that held pornographers

responsible for the sexual abuse associated with the making

and consuming of pornography If a woman or girl was forced

into making pornography or if a woman or girl was raped or

assaulted because of pornography, the pornographer or retailer

could be held responsible for civil damages. If a woman

was forced to view pornography (commonplace in situations

of domestic abuse), the person or institution (a school, for

instance) that forced her could be held responsible. The burden

of proof was on the victim. In addition, the law defined

pornography as sex discrimination; this meant that pornography helped to create and maintain the second-class status of women in society - that turning a woman into an object or

using her body in violent, sexual y explicit ways contributed

to the devaluing of women in every part of life. The pornography itself was defined in the statute as a series of concrete scenarios in which women were sexual y subordinated to men.

130

Sister, Can You Spare a Dime?

In 1984 I went with a group of activists and organizers to

the convention of the National Organization for Women in

order to get NOW’s support for this new approach to fighting

pornography.

The convention was held in New Orleans in a posh hotel.

Sonia Johnson, an activist especially associated with a radical

crusade to pass the Equal Rights Amendment, was running

for president of NOW, and she sur endered her time and space

so that I could address the convention on her behalf; our

understanding was that I would talk about pornography and

the new approach MacKinnon and I had developed.

It was a hot, hot city in every sense. Leaving the hotel one

saw the trafficking in women in virtually every venue along

Bourbon Street. The whole French Quarter, and Bourbon

Street in particular, was crowded with middle-aged men in

suits roving as if in gangs, dripping sweat, going from one sex

show to the next, searching for prostitutes and strippers.

In the hotel, NOW women were herded into caucuses and

divided into cliques. I'm a member of NOW, even though its

milksop politics deeply offend me. Now I was going to try to

persuade the members that they should pursue the difficult

and dangerous task of addressing pornography as a civil rights

issue for women.

It is hard to describe how insular NOW is. It is run on the

national level by women who want to play politics with the

big boys in Washington, D. C., where NOW’s national of ice

131

Heartbreak

is located. I had, over the years, spoken at ral ies and events

organized by many local NOW chapters al over the country.

On the local level, my experience with NOW was entirely

wonderful. The members were valiant women, often the sole

staf for battered women’s shelters and rape crisis centers,

often the only organized progressive group in a smal town or

city. I’ve never met better women or bet er feminists. Those

who run the nationally visible NOW are different in kind:

they stick to safe issues and mimic the politics and strategies

of professional political lobbyists.

Soon after I came back from Amsterdam, I spoke at a ral y

organized by the local NOW chapter in Washington, D. C. At

the time the burning issue was the Equal Rights Amendment,

a proposed amendment to the U. S. Constitution that would

have given women a basic right to equality. There was a lot

of of icial (national) NOW literature on the Equal Rights

Amendment that I saw for the first time in D. C. I couldn’t

understand why reading it made me question the ERA - a

question I had only on contact with national NOW, its literature and its spokespeople. But of course, I did understand - I just wasn’t schooled yet in the ways of this duplicitous feminist organization. The literature was al about how the ERA would benefit men. Guts were sorely lacking even back then.

A decade later, the organization was torn over pornography.

The big girls in the big of ice didn’t want to get their hands

dirty - the issue demanded at least an imagined descent down

132

Sister, Can You Spare a Dime?

the social ladder. Lots of local NOW activists were fully

engaged in the fight against pornography and brought those

politics to the convention. Then there were what I take to be