Andrea Dworkin and Cathy Young
Billy Beck points out a bit by Cathy Young, the summary of which is that Cathy Young makes a reasonably good case that Andrea Dworkin was insane -- based on all that man hatred Dworkin espoused. It was some seriously nasty stuff.
On the other hand, Cathy Young doesn't sound too well herself, yielding to her own psychological imperative to drag in, via an update to her original post, conservatives like Terry Jeffrey of Human Events and someone named Charlotte Hays from the Independent Women's Forum for a short flogging. It seems that the New York Times collected a handful of brief but kind words for Dworkin from conservatives like David Frum and Richard Brookheiser, who met the old hag in her later years and found her to be....a human being, well-read, capable of flattery, etc.
Was the sexual revolution the equivalent of "violence against women" as Jeffrey once said, earning Young's contempt? No, but neither does that make the sexual revolution a good thing nor Jeffrey someone who has earned a mention in a post-mortem attack on Dworkin.
Young's charge is the equivalent of the "all sex is rape" equation attributed to Dworkin (as the essence of her feminism, not something, apparently, that she actually said). Young similarly equates conservatives' respect for women, their virtue, their traditional roles with "neo-paternalism." If that's not as wacky as Dworkin, it's still just as stupid.
On the other hand, Cathy Young doesn't sound too well herself, yielding to her own psychological imperative to drag in, via an update to her original post, conservatives like Terry Jeffrey of Human Events and someone named Charlotte Hays from the Independent Women's Forum for a short flogging. It seems that the New York Times collected a handful of brief but kind words for Dworkin from conservatives like David Frum and Richard Brookheiser, who met the old hag in her later years and found her to be....a human being, well-read, capable of flattery, etc.
Was the sexual revolution the equivalent of "violence against women" as Jeffrey once said, earning Young's contempt? No, but neither does that make the sexual revolution a good thing nor Jeffrey someone who has earned a mention in a post-mortem attack on Dworkin.
Young's charge is the equivalent of the "all sex is rape" equation attributed to Dworkin (as the essence of her feminism, not something, apparently, that she actually said). Young similarly equates conservatives' respect for women, their virtue, their traditional roles with "neo-paternalism." If that's not as wacky as Dworkin, it's still just as stupid.
Comments
Can you imagine the mental makup of Dworkin's husband?
And Dworkin wasn't against sex per se'... (Why have a husband, then?) She was simply pissed she wasn't in control of it, and attempted in my view to use feminism and 'helping women' in an efort to redesign sex to fit her worldviews.
In doing so...In search of that control, it seems clear to me, that Dworkin, ironically did more against women than the men she railed against. I find Cathy's comments more tolerable when I add that to the 'mix'. She's pissed, and perhaps has a right to be, given the damage done.
But This goes deeper, I thinkm too. Control is what this is about. Always has been. And Cathy Young isn't immune.
What Cathy Young quotes from Dworkin makes it sound like Dworkin considered heterosexual sex per se to be an assault on women. It sounded like the only "control" Dworkin sought was the abolition of heterosexual sex itself.
I don't have any problem with Young's straighforward presentation of Dworkin's views, nor her evaluation that they represented some sort of break with sanity. I think that's fair.
My problem was when she decided to go for a bank shot off of Dworkin's corpse into the "neo-paternalistic" conservatives. That just stank of its own partial break with sanity.
In other words, if Dworkin's viewpoint that all sex is rape is delusional, then the idea that the conservatives' respect for women is "neo-paternalism" is equally delusional. And Young was trying to yoke the "neo-paternalism" gag into some sort of parallel with the outrageous views of Dworkin.
Indeed; I commented at my place that she was likely the inspriation for Limbaugh's quip that Feminism was designed so as to allow ugly women access to society.
But think about this; what is rape, but a loss of control?
Dworkin's points as quoted by Young, are online with how an unrecovered rape victim might react; Rape victims usually do react that way, at least for a while. They attempt to become asexual... which given Dwrkin's looks wasn't hard to do. But, Dworkin used feminism to raise the reaction to an artform of self-justification. All in the name of helping other women, of course.
As to Young, herself; She's looking at it from the viewpoint that says the conservatives are "trying to control my sex life"... and to some degree, she includes Dworkin in this, given Dworkin's anti-sex comments over the years.
I do agree that's equally delusional, but the issue behind them both is they are both quite desperately grasping for control of their situation. Dworkin never did get over the rape, and Young can't get past the idea that society actually exherts some dgree of control over her behavior.
A sad picture, really, and it amazes me how so much of our social/political scene is driven by such people.
As for Young, I don't know enough about her to draw a much broader conclusion than that her attempt to roll conservatives into a post-mortem on Dworkin sounded like the usual gripe about puritans or the "religious right" that one hears from libertines.
Perhaps, but neither of these gets as personal. Thereby, neither gets the long term reaction. (Which, I should say is what disturbed me about Dworkin; she in my view did more to damage the fight against rape than any women ever to walk the planet.
As for Young, I don't know enough about her to draw a much broader conclusion...
Nor I should say, do I, other than her online persona. Yet the deductions are not hard to come by, nor are they illogical given what we do know.
...than that her attempt to roll conservatives into a post-mortem on Dworkin sounded like the usual gripe about puritans or the "religious right" that one hears from libertines.
So it does. why does that surprise you? We're dealing in both cases, after all with irrationality, which usualy tends toward knee-jerk responses, no?