“Only
when manhood is dead -- and it will perish when ravaged femininity no
longer sustains it -- only then will we know what it is to be free.”
(Andrea Dworkin)
As someone who
eschewed college and instead embarked on a long journey of dedicated
radical self-education, I find it quite illuminating that it took so
damn long for me to finally encounter the work of Andrea Dworkin.
The “Left” often
talks of dissidents being marginalized but I easily and naturally
happened upon Noam Chomsky, Assata Shakur, Howard Zinn, Guy Debord,
Frantz Fanon, Arundhati Roy, Edward Said, Angela Davis, Emma Goldman,
Ward Churchill, bell hooks, and far too many others to name here. Meanwhile, I didn’t read Dworkin’s Heartbreak: The Political Memoir of a Feminist Militant
until 2015 -- and it just so happens to be the most revolutionary book
I’ve ever read. (This is not to say I agree with everything she’s ever
written so please don’t pull that tired old straw man from your tired
old bag of tricks.)
It’s hardly a coincidence that none of my subversive cohorts ever recommended a feminist pioneer like Dworkin to me during the past decade or two. The more I read of her work and the more I listen to her blunt analysis,
the more I comprehend why she's been either erased or demonized -- by
the mainstream and right wingers, of course, but also just as vehemently
by the denizens of the so-called Left. Regardless of one’s alleged
political beliefs, patriarchy still rules the day.
“The common
erotic project of destroying women makes it possible for men to unite
into a brotherhood; this project is the only firm and trustworthy
groundwork for cooperation among males and all male bonding is based on
it.” (Andrea Dworkin)
In a more
general sense, it’s illustrative to witness the palpable discomfort
caused by my endless evolution. But then again, perhaps friendships
based on shared ideology are more often than not doomed.
All that said,
please allow me to be clear: I am (at best) a work-in-progress and I
deeply lament how long it’s taken me to better understand the
foundational power of patriarchy. I think back with profound regret on
some of the stances I’ve held, the publications and websites for which
I’ve written, the movements I’ve trusted, the opinions I’ve shouted from
stages all across the country, the former comrades I’ve defended, and
the books I’ve authored (I’d seriously like to edit or erase all 13 of
‘em!).
I feel shame,
but not surrender. I'm fueled by an intense desire to make up for lost
time and commit myself more than ever to identifying and rejecting the
conditioning that’s shaped/warped me. To tear down, as Miss Andrea exhorts, what needs to be torn down.
I have a long,
long way to go and will undoubtedly falter but, regardless, I will
continue to do my best to live up to the standards I’ve detailed here and the standards that courageous visionaries like Dworkin
have established. I can finally see that since everything females do to
resist patriarchy has been pornified, commodified, weaponized, and used
against them, the change must begin with us men.
As I’ve written before,
if men want to live up to self-anointed labels like activist,
revolutionary, radical, ally, and comrade, the path is clear. We are
required to do almost all of the initial work and make (by far) the
biggest changes and commitments. If we care about justice and liberation
as much as we claim we do, now is the time to look in the
mirror, to call ourselves out, to check our egos and our masculinity
programming at the door, and to make what appear to be major sacrifices
(pro tip: they’re not). We men must name the problem, over and over
again, until we stop being the problem and stop passing on the problem to the next generation.
“Men who
want to support women in our struggle for freedom and justice should
understand that it is not terrifically important to us that they learn
to cry; it is important to us that they stop the crimes of violence
against us.” (Andrea Dworkin)
Postscript: For anyone seeking to experience the transformative work of Andrea Dworkin, I’d humbly suggest you start with the aforementioned memoir. Also, you’ll find PDFs of all her books here and many audios here. Lastly (for now), this 47-minute documentary is essential viewing (trigger warning for survivors of sexual abuse).
“If you know what it is that needs to be torn down, tear it down.” (Andrea Dworkin)
Mickey Z. can be found here.
Thank you, Andrea Dworkin by Mickey Z. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at http://worldnewstrust.com/thank-you-andrea-dworkin-mickey-z.
Some people think human beings have a problem. Others think they are the problem. The lingering toxic ethical foundation of "original sin" — there Calvinist, here "radical feminist" — it remains despairing and fatalistic, of predeterminism and categorical self-hatred.
ReplyDeleteYou want to destroy "manhood" and see it as "patriarchy"?
Fine. But where patriarchy actually means something (father right) and where human beings are the subject, not the object (socialism) — we can actually change the world, and ourselves, without the endless ulcer of misanthropy.
Heartbreak is a profoundly powerful book. Blunt, and where it is so simple, so wrong. Where the end is that "patriarchy" is an intrinsic, ahistorical and onotological reality of "male privilege" and female acquiescence — that's the same worldview as the most backward patriarchal revanchist.
Truth: you own no woman, Mickey Z. And the women all around you are free to do this or do that, be mothers or workers or both. And this idea that love, mutual aid, caring and so on are just the lies the patriarchy tells us?
It's philosophically akin to saying "all humans are guilty and cruel" for eating chickens and other food. It sees the very act of being human as just another way of seeing that "original sin."
And in that there is no hope. In that it literally doesn't matter what any man or woman does. In that is the longing for another excuse to separate the clean from the unclean and conflate politics with moral hygiene.
So, if another round of self-flagellation and blame-casting is what's in store — enjoy that miserable wallowing in "patriarchy" and the relief from the (entirely reasonable) idea that we are what we do, not the worst that has been done to us.
Shame. That feeling of shame. Why the shame, why not just become a Calvinist and be done with it.
ReplyDeleteAh, Jed Brandt - five-star general of the straw man army - has taken time out from fomenting "political revolution" to continue stalking me, as if our verbose opinions matter or ever mattered. As the cool kids might say: LMFAO.
DeleteI have an idea, Comrade Jed, instead of following me around on comments threads, why not crowdfund another of your super-effective and influential "peoples newspapers"? That never fails!
"and where human beings are the subject, not the object (socialism)"
ReplyDeleteLove it!
Thanks, Jed B.