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Thursday, April 21, 2005
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SONTAG v DWORKIN In an essay written about Susan Sontag after her death, a literary critic calls her “troubled.” Sontag was a productive and celebrated cultural figure to the end of her life. She was not troubled. Calling her troubled - a noxious euphemism - is a form of self-comforting. “She was a world-famous intellectual. But she was nuts. At least I’m not nuts.” In the case of Andrea Dworkin, however, when Cathy Young, in the middle of an appraisal of her, writes “It's sadly obvious that this supposedly bold and visionary prophet was, in actuality, insane,” it’s a more plausible move. It’s no less unkind to say it, but it not done to denigrate her, or to make oneself feel better about one’s lower profile in the world. It’s done because it’s important to distinguish between legitimate thinkers and monomaniacs who know how to write. Maggie Gallagher writes admiringly that Dworkin was "the kind of woman who has the peculiar courage of her fears." What Dworkin had was the peculiar cowardice of extreme asexuality -- a spiritually exhausting, deeply personal fear of physical penetration. That this vulnerable, suffering woman with her bloody abuse fantasies became an American feminist icon in the late years of the last century speaks to a disheartening convergence between one person’s soul-shattering penetration-phobia, and the ambient heterophobia of the time (about which Daphne Patai has written in this book). “One must always respect someone who fought valiantly for something they deeply believed in and for that, Andrea Dworkin earned my respect,” writes a commenter on the Daiy Kos site. “However, speaking as an African-American woman who deeply cares about feminist issues and therefore, obviously, read her work with an open mind, I have to say that ultimately I came to regard Andrea Dworkin as outright insane. ... Insanity is, to me, when one is incapable, because of their beliefs, to hear respectfully any truth no matter how compellingly and completely presented, that counters one's view of the world. That was clear from her writing - she was simply incapable of imagining such a thing as a non-patriarchial man, a non-rapist man, a non-exploitative sexuality that either pleased or involved men. ... It struck me as particularly insane that her writings took this position when she had an extremely long-term heterosexual relationship herself (although God knows what they did for sexual relations, given her stated views on the matter of PIV intercourse). At first, I took her many rantings as just the creative use of metaphor to make a desperately needed plea for gender equality, but over time, when it became clear that her views were simply incapable of being tempered in the face of reasonable disagreement, I tuned her completely out… . Thus, if Dworkin's goal was to alienate nascent feminists -- particularly women of color such as myself who just cannot relate to the level of self-absorption and ahistoricism it takes to expect particularly African-American women to act as if men are the enemy -- she definitely furthered her goals. “ Dworkin will eventually be viewed, I think, as akin to Edie Sedgwick and Marilyn Monroe -- a confused, symbolically potent vessel, a clueless icon. |