Pornography: Men Possessing Women
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BY THESAMEAUTHORNONFICTION Woman Hating Our Blood: Prophecies and Discourses on Sexual Politics ' Right-wing Women Intercourse Letters from a War Zone: Writings 1976—1989 Pornography and Civil Rights (with Catharine A. MacKinnon) FICTION the new womans broken heart: short stories Ice and Fire PLUME Published by the Penguin G roup Penguin Books USA Inc, 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U . S. A. Penguin Books Ltd, 27 W rights Lane, London W8 5TZ, England Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood, Victoria, Australia Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M4V 3B2 Penguin Books (N. Z. ) Ltd, 182-190 W airau Road, Auckland 10, New Z e a la n d Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: Harm ondsw orth, M iddlesex, England Published by Plum e, an im print of Dutton Signet, a division of Penguin Books USA Inc. This paperback edition of Pornography first published in 1989 by Dutton, an im print of Dutton Signet, a division of Penguin Books USA Inc. Published simultaneously in Canada by Fitzhenry and W hiteside, Lim ited, Toronto. Copyright © 1979, 1980, 1981 by Andrea Dworkin Introduction copyright © 1989 by Andrea Dworkin All rights reserved. Printed in the U . S. A. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transm itted in any form or by any m eans, electronic or m echanical, including photocopy, recording, or any inform ation storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, w ithout perm ission in w riting from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or b r o a d c a s t. Library of Congress Catalog Card Num ber: 89-51147 ISBN: 0-452-26793-5 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 The author gratefully acknowledges permission from the following sources to reprint m aterial in this book: Gena Corea for an unpublished interview with Dr. Herbert Ratner, Septem ber 20, 1979. Alex de Jonge for his translation of four lines from Journaux Com pletes by Charles Baudelaire, cited in Baudelaire: Prince of Clouds by Alex de Jonge, copyright © 1976 by Alex de Jonge. Grove Press, Inc., for Justine from The Com plete M arquis de Sade by M arquis de Sade, translated by Richard Seaver and Austryn W ainhouse, copyright © 1965 by Richard Seaver and Austryn W a i n h o u s e . The Institute for Sex Research, Indiana University, for Sex Of fenders: An Analysis of Types by Paul H. Gebhard, John H. G agnon, Wardell B. Pomeroy, and Cornelia V. Christenson, published by ■Harper 8c Row, Publishers, and Paul B. Hoeber, Inc., Medical Books © 1965 by The Institute for Sex Research. And for Sexual Behavior in the H um an M ale by Alfred C. Kinsey, W ardell B. Pom eroy, and Clyde E. M artin, published by W. B. Saunders Company, copyright © 1948 by W. B. Saunders Com pany. Robin M organ for “The Network of the Im aginary M other” in Lady of the Beasts: Poem s, published by Random House, copyright © 1976 by Robin M organ. New Directions for two lines from A Season in Hell by Arthur R im baud, translated by Louise Varese, copyright © 1945, 1952, 1961 by New Directions. W. W. N orton 8c Com pany, Inc. for “Poem I” from “21 Love Poem s” in Dream of a Com m on Language by Adrienne Rich, copyright © 1978 by W. W. Norton 8c Com pany, Inc. Portions of this book have appeared in slightly altered form in New Political Science, Sinister W isdom, M other Jones, and Ms. For John Stoltenberg In Memory of Rose Keller Troubles walk in long lines.Russian walkinlonglines.Russian Troublesproverb No two of us think alike about it, and yet it is clear to me, that question underlies the whole movement, and all our little skirmishing for better laws, and the right to vote, will yet be swallowed up in the real question, viz: Has woman a right to herself? It is very little to me to have the right to vote, to own property, etc., if I may not keep my body, and its uses, in my absolute right. Not one wife in a thousand can do that now. Lucy Stone, in a letter to Antoinette Brown, July 11, 1855 Sexual freedom, then, means the abolition of pros titution both in and out of marriage; means the emancipation of woman from sexual slavery and her coming into ownership and control of her own body; means the end of her pecuniary dependence upon man, so that she may never even seemingly have to procure whatever she may desire or need by sexual favors. Victoria Woodhull, “Tried As By Fire; or, The True and The False, Socially, ” 1874 He said that life is very expensive. Even women are more expensive. That when he wants to f---------- a woman they want so much money that he gives up the idea. I pretended I didn’t hear, because I don’t speak pornography. Carolina Maria de Jesus, Child of the Dark C o n te n ts Introduction xiii Preface lvi 1 Power 13 2 Men and Boys 48 3 The Marquis de Sade (1740-•1814) 70 4 Objects 101 5 Force 129 6 Pornography 199 7 Whores 203 Acknowledgments 225 Notes 227 Bibliography 239 Index 287 Introduction I did not hesitate to let it be known of me, that the white man who expected to succeed in whipping, must also succeed in killing me. Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass An American Slave Written by Himself In 1838, at the age of 21, Frederick Douglass became a runaway slave, a hunted fugitive. Though later renowned as a powerful political orator, he spoke his first public words with trepidation at an abolitionist meeting—a meet ing of white people—in Massachusetts in 1841. Abolitionist leader William Lloyd Garrison recalled the event: He came forward to the platform with a hesitancy and embarrassment, necessarily the attendants of a sensi tive mind in such a novel position. After apologizing for his ignorance, and reminding the audience that slavery was a poor school for the human intellect and heart, he proceeded to narrate some of the facts in his own history as a slave.... As soon as he had taken his seat, filled with hope and admiration, I rose... [and]... reminded the audience of the peril which surrounded this self-emancipated young man at the North, —even in Massachusetts, on the soil of the Pil grim Fathers, among the descendants of revolutionary sires; and I appealed to them, whether they would ever allow him to be carried back into slavery—law or no law, constitution or no constitution. 1 Always in danger as a fugitive, Douglass became an or ganizer for the abolitionists; the editor of his own news paper, which advocated both abolition and women’s rights; a station chief for the underground railroad; a close com rade of John Brown’s; and the only person willing, at the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848, to second Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s resolution demanding the vote for women. To me, he has been a political hero: someone whose passion for human rights was both visionary and rooted in action; whose risk was real, not rhetorical; whose endurance in pursuing equality set a standard for political honor. In his writings, which were as eloquent as his orations, his re pudiation of subjugation was uncompromising. His polit ical intelligence, which was both analytical and strategic, was suffused with emotion: indignation at human pain, grief at degradation, anguish over suffering, fury at apathy and collusion. He hated oppression. He had an empathy for those hurt by inequality that crossed lines of race, gen der, and class because it was an empathy animated by his own experience—his own experience of humiliation and his own experience of dignity. To put it simply, Frederick Douglass was a serious man— a man serious in the pursuit of freedom. Well, you see the problem. Surely it is self-evident. What can any such thing have to do with us—with women in our time? Imagine— in present time—a woman saying, and meaning, that a man who expected to succeed in whipping, must also suc ceed in killing her. Suppose there were a politics of lib eration premised on that assertion—an assertion not of ideology but of deep and stubborn outrage at being mis 1. William Lloyd Garrison, Preface, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass An American Slave Written by Himself Frederick Douglass, ed. Benjamin Quarles (Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, I960), p . 5 . used, a resolute assertion, a serious assertion by serious women. What are serious women; are there any; isn’t ser ousness about freedom by women for women grotesquely comic; we don’t want to be laughed at, do we? What would this politics of liberation be like? Where would we find it? What would we have to do? Would we have to do some thing other than dress for success? Would we have to stop the people who are hurting us from hurting us? Not debate them; stop them. Would we have to stop slavery? Not dis cuss it; stop it. Would we have to stop pretending that our rights are protected in this society? Would we have to be so grandiose, so arrogant, so unfeminine, as to believe that the streets we walk on, the homes we live in, the beds we sleep in, are ours—belong to us—really belong to us: we decide what is right and what is wrong and if something hurts us, it stops.