Feminist Andrea Dworkin Dies at 58

NEW YORK - Andrea Dworkin, a feminist who viewed pornography as a violation of women's civil rights and a direct cause of rape and violence, has died, her agent and family said Monday. She was 58.

   

Dworkin died Saturday at her home in Washington, D.C., said John Stoltenberg, who married Dworkin in 1998 after living with her for three decades. She had been ill several years, and suffered from ailments including osteoarthritis.


"Pornography is used in rape — to plan it, to execute it, to choreograph it, to engender the excitement to commit the act," Dworkin testified before the New York Attorney General's Commission on Pornography in 1986, according to a transcript posted on her Web site.


Dworkin's first book, "Woman Hating," published when she was 27, launched her lifelong advocacy on the ways pornography harms women. She campaigned frequently on the subject, helping to draft a 1983 law that defined pornography as a civil rights violation against women, her agent, Elaine Markson, said in a statement.


The law was inspired by the case of Linda Marchiano, who as Linda Lovelace appeared in the pornographic film "Deep Throat," the statement noted.


"In every century, there are a handful of writers who help the human race to evolve," said fellow feminist Gloria Steinem. "Andrea is one of them."


Dworkin, originally from Camden, N.J., wrote more than a dozen books, including "Scapegoat: The Jews, Israel, and Women's Liberation," which won the American Book Award in 2001. She was working on a book with the working title "Writing America: How Novelists Invented and Gendered a Nation," when she died, Stoltenberg said.


A public memorial will be held in New York, said Stoltenberg, 60, an author and managing editor of AARP The Magazine. Arrangements were incomplete.

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for more information on andrea dworkin: http://www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/dworkin/OnlineLibrary.html

wow, we were just learning about her today in philosophy of law class

Pornography encourages rape..like hell it does. It probably helps prevent it. ::)

i look at porn and i never had the urge to hate or objectify woman.

i listen to metal and i never had the urge to kill myself.

i play D&D and i never had the urge to kill someone else or worship satan.

in other words, people see the surface and hate what they see so they ignore the facts and look at the few exceptions and make it an issue.

RIP anyway, ms. dworkin

Yep, I agree with sputnikcorp...porn doesn't cause rape....strange/bad people do. It's sad that she died though :-\\

While I'm not big on porn.etc  ;), I don't think it should be solely blamed for what it has been. Yeah they have 'proven' that in like 90% of cases rape is not about sex but about power.blahblahetc. So if some guy got really horny from looking at porn don't you think he'd rather pay to go to some brothel than risk being put in jail for it?

"Depicting women as whores and the sexuality of women as sluttish is what pornography does. Its job in the politically coercive and cruel system of male supremacy is to justify and perpetuate the rape and prostitution from which is springs." -A.D

"Depicting women as whores and the sexuality of women as sluttish is what pornography does. Its job in the politically coercive and cruel system of male supremacy is to justify and perpetuate the rape and prostitution from which is springs." -A.D






Both the men and women are participating adults. They don't have to be in porn. ::)

Pornography encourages rape..like hell it does. It probably helps prevent it. ::)


How does it?

Nice to know that there are Puritans in the left wing as well as the right.

Why is it that she said porno is an offense against the civil rights of women?  What about the men?

How does it?




There are lots of lonely men out there who's only sexual satisfaction is through pornography. What would they do withou this outlet? Now, the MOST of them probably would not resort to rape. But I definitely think there are some men out there who use it, whom if they did not have it, would turn to that.