But it got her good headlines at first and if you court such controversy you play a very dangerous game. The deliberate blurring of these definitions is Dworkin's fundamental error and led ultimately to her malignment and the ease with which (male-led) society was able to demonise her.

'Pornography is a celebration of rape and injury to women.

It was not just sex between adults recorded to inspire erotic and sexually arousing feelings it was any sex act that involved degradation of women in a sexual context. In Pornography: Men Possessing Women, Dworkin used the word pornography knowing that it was different from society's understanding of the term. Her definition of porn and what is considered harmful is hugely misleading. People should not be able to incite violence towards women, in the same way that people are not allowed to incite racial hatred.īut the problem with Dworkin's attitude to porn sums up everything that can now be held against her. Elements of her arguments are tenable, and I agree that the makers of porn should have a legal incentive to create pornography that does not abuse. As the film editor of Scarlet magazine (Britain's sex mag for women) and a self-proclaimed lover of porn, one could imagine that I was dead against everything she had to say on this matter.

How brilliant that there was someone willing to stand up and talk about it - to say to the world: 'This has happened to me, and it happens to a lot of women and it has got to stop.' But Dworkin's radical writing and hugely controversial - practically melodramatic - ideas not only pushed the argument as far as it could go, but pushed it off the cliff of credibility.ĭworkin achieved fame for her stance against pornography. 'Since the 1970s,' said this paper's obituary, 'Dworkin symbolised women's war against sexual violence.' Rape, paedophilia and domestic abuse needed, and obviously still need, to be hounded out of our society.

Andrea dworkin men possessing women