Our Blood: Prophecies and Discourses on Sexual Politics Read online

  Our Blood: Prophecies and Discourses on Sexual Politics

  Andrea Dworkin

  In this fierce and beautiful book, the author of Pornography: Men

  Possessing Women confronts our most profound social disgrace:

  the sexual, cultural, and political subjugation of women to men,

  and with rare eloquence examines the systematic crimes of our

  male-dominated society against women.

  “Our Blood is long overdue—all women must welcome the vigor

  and the incisive perception o f this young feminist. ”

  —Flo Kennedy

  “Andrea Dworkin’s writing has the power of young genius

  —Leah Fritz

  “Andrea Dworkin has dedicated the title chapter of her book to the

  Grimke sisters, and it would have pleased them, I think—since it

  contains material which can serve at once as source and inspiration

  for women. ”

  —Robin Morgan

  “Women, looking into the mirror of Out Blood, will feel anguish

  for our past suffering and enslavement—and outrage at our present

  condition. Men, if they dare to look into this mirror, will turn away

  in shame and horror at what they have done. ”

  —Karla Jay

  “It is great—scary and innovative and great. ”

  —Karen DeCrow

  “Our Blood takes a hard, unflinching look at the nature of sexual

  politics. Each essay reveals us to ourselves, exposing always the

  dynamics which have kept women oppressed throughout the ages.

  Our Blood compels us to confront the truth of our lives in the hope

  that we will then be able to transform them. ”

  —Susan Yankowitz

  WOMAN B

  o

  k

  s b

  y

  A

  n

  d

  reaD

  w

  i

  HATING

  THE NEW WOMANS BROKEN H EART

  p o r n o g r a p h y : m e n p o s s e s s i n g w o m e n

  Perigee Books

  are published by

  G. P. Putnam’s Sons

  200 Madison Avenue

  New York, NY 10016

  Copyright © 1976 by Andrea Dworkin

  New preface copyright © 1981 by Andrea Dworkin

  All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof,

  may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

  Published simultaneously in Canada by Academic Press

  Canada Limited, Toronto.

  “Feminism, Art, and My Mother Sylvia. *' Copyright Q 1974 by Andrea

  Dworkin. First published in Social Policy, May/June 1975. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Renouncing Sexual ‘Equality. ’” Copyright © 1974 by Andrea Dworkin.

  First published in WIN, October 1 7 , 1974. Reprinted by permission of the

  author.

  “Remembering the Witches. ” Copyright © 1975 by Andrea Dworkin. First

  published in WIN, February 20, 1975. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “The Rape Atrocity and the Boy Next Door. ” Copyright © 1975 by Andrea Dworkin. First delivered as a lecture.

  “The Sexual Politics of Fear and Courage. ” Copyright © 1975 by Andrea

  Dworkin. First delivered as a lecture.

  “Redefining Nonviolence. ” Copyright © 1975 by Andrea Dworkin. Published in WIN, July 17, 1975. Delivered as a lecture under the tide “A Call to Separatism. ” Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Lesbian Pride. ” Copyright © 1975 by Andrea Dworkin. First published

  under the title “What Is Lesbian Pride? ” in The Second Wave, Vol. 4, No. 2,

  1975. Delivered as a lecture under the title “What Is Lesbian Pride? ” Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Our Blood: The Slavery of Women in Amerika. ” Copyright © 1975 by

  Andrea Dworkin. First delivered as a lecture under the title “Our Blood. ”

  “The Root Cause. ” Copyright © 1975 by Andrea Dworkin. First delivered

  as a lecture under the title “Androgyny. ”

  Grateful acknowledgment is made to Random House, Inc., for permission

  to reprint from The Random House Dictionary o f the English Language.

  Copyright © 1966, 1967 by Random House, Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

  Dworkin, Andrea.

  Our blood.

  Reprint. Originally published: New York: Harper &

  Row, cl976.

  Bibliography: p.

  1. Women—Social conditions. 2. Feminism. I. Title.

  HQ1154. D85 1981

  305. 4'2

  81-7308

  ISBN 0-399-50575-X

  AACR2

  First Perigee printing, 1981

  Printed in the United States of America

  C ontents

  Preface

  xi

  1. Feminism, A rt, and My M other Sylvia

  1

  2. Renouncing Sexual “Equality”

  10

  3. Remembering the Witches

  15

  4. The Rape Atrocity and the Boy Next Door

  22

  5. The Sexual Politics of Fear and Courage

  50

  6. Redefining Nonviolence

  66

  7. Lesbian Pride

  73

  8. Our Blood: The Slavery of Women in Amerika

  76

  9. The Root Cause

  96

  Notes

  113

  FOR BARBARA DEMING

  I suggest that if we are willing to confront our own

  most seemingly personal angers, in their raw state,

  and take upon ourselves the task of translating this

  raw anger into the disciplined anger of the search

  for change, we will find ourselves in a position to

  speak much more persuasively to comrades about

  the need to root out from all anger the spirit of

  murder.

  Barbara Deming, “On Anger”

  We Cannot Live Without Our Lives

  Now, women do not ask half of a kingdom but

  their rights, and they don’t get them. When she

  comes to demand them, don’t you hear how sons

  hiss their mothers like snakes, because they ask

  for their rights; and can they ask for anything

  less?. . . But we’ll have our rights; see if we don’t;

  and you can’t stop us from them; see if you can.

  You can hiss as much as you like, but it is coming.

  Sojourner Truth, 1853

  I thank Kitty Benedict, A

  C

  K

  N

  O

  W

  L

  E

  D

  G

  M

  T

  S

  Phyllis Chesler, Barbara

  Deming, Jane Gapen, Beatrice Johnson, Eleanor

  Johnson, Liz Kanegson, Judah Kataloni, Jeanette

  Koszuth, Elaine Markson, and Joslyn Pine for

  their help and faith.

  I thank John Stoltenberg, who has been my

  closest intellectual and creative collaborator.

  I thank my parents, Sylvia and Harry Dworkin,

  for their continued trust and respect.

  I thank all of the women who
organized the

  conferences, programs, and classes at which I

  spoke.

  I thank those feminist philosophers, writers,

  organizers, and prophets whose work sustains and

  strengthens me.

  PREFA CE

  Our Blood is a book that grew out of a situation. The

  situation was that I could not get my work published. So I

  took to public speaking—not the extemporaneous exposition of thoughts or the outpouring of feelings, but crafted prose that would inform, persuade, disturb, cause recognition, sanction rage. I told myself that if publishers would not publish my work, I would bypass them altogether. I

  decided to write directly to people and for my own voice. I

  started writing this way because I had no other choice: I saw

  no other way to survive as a writer. I was convinced that it

  was the publishing establishment—timid and powerless

  women editors, the superstructure of men who make the

  real decisions, misogynistic reviewers—that stood between

  me and a public particularly of women that I knew was

  there. The publishing establishment was a formidable

  blockade, and my plan was to swim around it.

  In April 1974 my first book-length work of feminist

  theory, Woman Hating, was published. Before its publication I had had trouble. I had been offered magazine assignments that were disgusting. I had been offered a great

  deal of money to write articles that an editor had already

  outlined to me in detail. They were to be about women or

  sex or drugs. They were stupid and full of lies. For instance,

  I was offered $1500 to write an article on the use of

  barbiturates and amphetamines by suburban women. I was

  to say that this use of drugs constituted a hedonistic

  rebellion against the dull conventions of sterile housewifery,

  that women used these drugs to turn on and swing and have

  a wonderful new life-style. I told the editor that I suspected

  women used amphetamines to get through miserable days

  and barbiturates to get through miserable nights. I suggested, amiably I thought, that I ask the women who use the drugs why they use them. I was told flat-out that the article

  would say what fun it was. I turned down the assignment.

  This sounds like great rebellious fun—telling establishment

  types to go fuck themselves with their fistful of dollars—but

  when one is very poor, as I was, it is not fun. It is instead

  profoundly distressing. Six years later I finally made half

  that amount for a magazine piece, the highest I have ever

  been paid for an article. I had had my chance to play ball

  and I had refused. I was too naive to know that hack writing

  is the only paying game in town. I believed in “literature, ”

  “principles, ” “politics, ” and “the power of fine writing to

  change lives. ” When I refused to do that article and others,

  I did so with considerable indignation. The indignation

  marked me as a wild woman, a bitch, a reputation reinforced during editorial fights over the content of Woman Hating, a reputation that has haunted and hurt me: not hurt

  my feelings, but hurt my ability to make a living. I am in

  fact not a “lady, ” not a “lady writer, ” not a “sweet young

  thing. ” What woman is? My ethics, my politics, and my

  style merged to make me an untouchable. Girls are supposed to be invitingly touchable, on the surface or just under.

  I thought that the publication of Woman Hating would

  establish me as a writer of recognized talent and that then I

  would be able to publish serious work in ostensibly serious

  magazines. I was wrong. The publication of Woman Hating,

  about which I was jubilant, was the beginning of a decline

  that continued until 1981 when Pornography: Men Possessing Women was published. The publisher of Woman Hating did not like the book: I am considerably understating here.

  I was not supposed to say, for example, “Women are

  raped. ” I was supposed to say, “Green-eyed women with

  one leg longer than the other, hair between the teeth,

  French poodles, and a taste for sauteed vegetables are

  raped occasionally on Fridays by persons. ” It was rough. I

  believed I had a right to say what I wanted. My desires were

  not particularly whimsical: my sources were history, facts,

  experience. I had been brought up in an almost exclusively

  male tradition of literature, and that tradition, whatever its

  faults, did not teach coyness or fear: the writers I admired

  were blunt and not particularly polite. I did not understand

  that—even as a writer—I was supposed to be delicate,

  fragile, intuitive, personal, introspective. I wanted to claim

  the public world of action, not the private world of feelings.

  My ambition was perceived as megalomaniacal—in the

  wrong sphere, demented by prior definition. Yes, I was

  naive. I had not learned my proper place. I knew what I was

  rebelling against in life, but I did not know that literature

  had the same sorry boundaries, the same absurd rules, the

  same cruel proscriptions. * It was easy enough to deal with

  me: I was a bitch. And my book was sabotaged. The

  publisher simply refused to fill orders for it. Booksellers

  wanted the book but could not get it. Reviewers ignored the

  * I had been warned early on about what it meant to be a girl, but I hadn’t

  listened. “You write like a man, ” an editor wrote me on reading a draft

  of a few early chapters of Woman Hating. “When you learn to write like

  a woman, we will consider publishing you. ” This admonition reminded

  me of a guidance counselor in high school who asked me as graduation

  approached what I planned to be when I grew up. A writer, I said. He

  lowered his eyes, then looked at me soberly. He knew I wanted to go to a

  superb college; he knew I was ambitious. “What you have to do, ” he

  said, “is go to a state college—there is no reason for you to go

  somewhere else—and become a teacher so that you’ll have something to

  fall back on when your husband dies. ” This story is not apocryphal. It

  happened to me and to countless others. I had thought both the guidance

  counselor and the editor stupid, individually stupid. I was wrong. They

  were not individually stupid.

  book, consigning me to invisibility, poverty, and failure.

  The first speech in Our Blood (“Feminism, Art, and My

  Mother Sylvia”) was written before the publication of

  Woman Hating and reflects the deep optimism I felt at that

  time. By October, the time of the second speech in Our

  Blood (“Renouncing Sexual ‘Equality’”), I knew that I was

  in for a hard time, but I still did not know how hard it was

  going to be.

  “Renouncing Sexual ‘Equality’” was written for the

  National Organization for Women Conference on Sexuality

  that took place in New York City on October 12, 1974. I

  spoke at the end of a three-hour speakout on sex: women

  talking about their sexual experiences, feelings, values.

  There were 1100 women in the audience; no men were

  present. When I was done, the 1100 women rose to their

  feet. Women were crying and shaking and shouting. The

  applause l
asted nearly ten minutes. It was one of the most

  astonishing experiences of my life. Many of the talks I gave

  received standing ovations, and this was not the first, but I

  had never spoken to such a big audience, and what I said

  contradicted rather strongly much of what had been said

  before I spoke. So the response was amazing and it

  overwhelmed me. The coverage of the speech also overwhelmed me. One New York weekly published two vilifications. One was by a woman who had at least been present.

  She suggested that men might die from blue-balls if I were

  ever taken seriously. The other was by a man who had not

  been present; he had overheard women talking in the lobby.

  He was “enraged. ” He could not bear the possibility that “ a

  woman might consider masochistic her consent to the means

  of my release. ” That was the “danger Dworkin’s ideology

  represents. ” Well, yes; but both writers viciously distorted

  what I had actually said. Many women, including some

  quite famous writers, sent letters deploring the lack of

  fairness and honesty in the two articles. None of those

  letters were published. Instead, letters from men who had

  not been present were published; one of them compared my

  speech to H itler’s Final Solution. I had used the words

  “limp” and “penis” one after the other: “limp penis. ” Such

  usage outraged; it offended so deeply that it warranted a

  comparison with an accomplished genocide. Nothing I had

  said about women was mentioned, not even in passing. The

  speech was about women. The weekly in question has since

  never published an article of mine or reviewed a book of

  mine or covered a speech of mine (even though some of my

  speeches were big events in New York City). * The kind of

  fury in those two articles simply saturated the publishing

  establishment, and my work was stonewalled. Audiences

  around the country, most of them women and men,

  continued to rise to their feet; but the journals that one

  might expect to take note of a political writer like myself, or

  a phenomenon like those speeches, refused to acknowledge

  my existence. There were two noteworthy if occasional