andrea_dworkin

**Update:  You know what absolutely tickles me frakking pink?  This post is getting hits from people searching for rape pictures and pictures of pornography depicting rape.  If you’re here that reason, welcome to exactly what you do not what to see.  Women being treated as people instead of objects for your distortedly pervtacular fantasy world.  I savour the sweet irony of you being directed to a feminist blog while looking for rape pictures.  Your kind is pathetic.

But, hey if you are not here looking to reinforce mindless observance to patriarchal norms, be welcome and read on!

Andrea Dworkin was a brilliant feminist theorist, activist and writer.  The question you should be asking yourself is why does this sound radical?  Dworkin makes many brilliant points in her speech entitled “I Want A Twenty-Four-Hour Truce During Which There is No Rape”.

Dworkin pulls no punches:

“We are very close to death. All women are. And we are very close to rape and we are very close to beating. And we are inside a system of humiliation from which there is no escape for us. We use statistics not to try to quantify the injuries, but to convince the world that those injuries even exist. Those statistics are not abstractions. It is easy to say, “Ah, the statistics, somebody writes them up one way and somebody writes them up another way.” That’s true. But I hear about the rapes one by one by one by one by one, which is also how they happen. Those statistics are not abstract to me. Every three minutes a woman is being raped. Every eighteen seconds a woman is being beaten. There is nothing abstract about it. It is happening right now as I am speaking.”

On the Patriarchy:

“The power exercised by men day to day in life is power that is institutionalized. It is protected by law. It is protected by religion and religious practice. It is protected by universities, which are strongholds of male supremacy. It is protected by a police force. It is protected by those whom Shelley called “the unacknowledged legislators of the world”: the poets, the artists. Against that power, we have silence.”

On Male Privilege:

“That is the way the power of men is manifest in real life. That is what theory about male supremacy means. It means you can rape. It means you can hit. It means you can hurt. It means you can buy and sell women. It means that there is a class of people there to provide you with what you need. You stay richer than they are, so that they have to sell you sex. Not just on street corners, but in the workplace. That’s another right that you can presume to have: sexual access to any woman in your environment, when you want. Now, the men’s movement suggests that men don’t want the kind of power I have just described. I’ve actually heard explicit whole sentences to that effect. And yet, everything is a reason not to do something about changing the fact that you do have that power.”

On the Politics of the Right Wing:

“Some of you are very concerned about the rise of the Right in this country, as if that is something separate from the issues of feminism or the men’s movement. There is a cartoon I saw that brought it all together nicely. It was a big picture of Ronald Reagan as a cowboy with a big hat and a gun. And it said: “A gun in every holster; a pregnant woman in every home. Make America a man again.” Those are the politics of the Right.

If you are afraid of the ascendancy of fascism in this country–and you would be very foolish not to be right now–then you had better understand that the root issue here has to do with male supremacy and the control of women; sexual access to women; women as reproductive slaves; private ownership of women. That is the program of the Right. That is the morality they talk about. That is what they mean. That is what they want. And the only opposition to them that matters is an opposition to men owning women.”

Why if Freedom is to be had, Rape must stop:

“And on that day, that day of truce, that day when not one woman is raped, we will begin the real practice of equality,rape-cases-02 because we can’t begin it before that day. Before that day it means nothing because it is nothing: it is not real; it is not true. But on that day it becomes real. And then, instead of rape we will for the first time in our lives–both men and women–begin to experience freedom. If you have a conception of freedom that includes the existence of rape, you are wrong. You cannot change what you say you want to change. For myself, I want to experience just one day of real freedom before I die. I leave you here to do that for me and for the women whom you say you love.”

You want to know where to start to fight the Rape Culture?  Start here.  One teaspoon, one hour, one woman at a time.