If You Want To Know Who Is

Women Are Raped And Coerced Into Sex.

Marxism Teaches That Exploitation And Degradation Somehow Produce Resistance And Revolution. It's Been Hard To Say Why. What I've Learned From Women's Experience With Sexuality Is That Exploitation And Degradation Produce Grateful Complicity In Exchange For Survival. They Produce Self-loathing To The Point Of Extinction Of Self, And It Is Respect For Self That Makes Resistance Conceivable.

Imagine That For Hundreds Of Years Your Most Formative Traumas, Your Daily Suffering And Pain, The Abuse You Live Through, The Terror You Live With, Are Unspeakable - Not The Basis Of Literature. You Grow Up With Your Father Holding You Down And Covering Your Mouth So Another Man Can Make A Horrible Searing Pain Between Your Legs.... You Learn How To Leave Your Body And Create Someone Else Who Takes Over When You Cannot Stand It Any More. You Develop A Self Who Is Ingratiating And Obsequious And Imitative And Aggressively Passive And Silent - You Learn, In A Word, Femininity.

An Individual's Treatment And Alternatives In Life May Depend As Much On The Reputation Of The Group To Which That Person Belongs As On Their Own Merit.

Instead Of Being Lionized And Admired For Her Genius, Instead Of Being Able To Earn A Decent Living As A Writer, Andrea Dworkin Was Misrepresented And Demonized.