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From: falk@peregrine.Eng.Sun.COM (Ed Falk)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Re: Andrea Dworkin's new book?
Message-ID: <1357@exodus.Eng.Sun.COM>
Date: 12 Oct 90 23:01:55 GMT
References: <9010110554.AA11679@hudson.cs.columbia.edu>
Sender: ambar@ora.com (Jean Marie Diaz)
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mt. View, Ca.
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Approved: ambar@ora.com


In article <9010110554.AA11679@hudson.cs.columbia.edu> travis@hudson.cs.columbia.EDU (Travis Lee Winfrey) writes:

>It sounds fake to me -- but you should know that in the early
>70's, Andrea Dworkin was very impressed with the socially
>liberating powers of pornography, including S&M.  I'm pretty sure
>she wrote a very appreciative review of The Story of O.

Ouch.  That book is one of the most horribly brutal things I've ever
read.  It's about a woman who's being systematically abused.
Eventually her lover gives her as a gift to another man and the abuse
gets worse.  Towards the end, she's branded with her new master's
monogram, leaving scars half an inch deep.  The frightening thing is
that nothing's restraining her from getting up and walking away from
the situation -- she *chooses* to stay and take the abuse.  I kept
waiting for the brutality to end and the sex to begin, but it never
happened.  Then I was waiting for the heroine to come to her senses
and call the cops or something, but that didn't happen either.  I
can't believe *any* woman would like that book, but I guess it's true.
It was a woman to recommended it to me.  Supposedly it was a woman who
wrote it.

Delta of Venus by Anais Nin is similar.  Almost every story depicts
rape or brutality, yet the feminist community seems to love it.

Sometimes I think that the feminist definition of pornography vs.
erotica is more a matter of writing style than content.

		-ed falk, sun microsystems
		 sun!falk, falk@sun.com
		 card-carrying ACLU member.