Life and Death

by Andrea Dworkin

From Simon & Schuster, Life and Death by Andrea Dworkin is the unapologetic writing on the continuing war against women.

In this important work, Dworken gathers essays published between 1987 and 1995, in which she comments on society's ongoing and tacit approval of aggression against women that often ends in these women losing their lives.

Genres: Feminism, Nonfiction, Essays, Womens, Politics, Feminist Theory, Gender

256 pages, Paperback

First published March 10, 1997

About the author

Andrea Rita Dworkin was an American radical feminist and writer best known for her criticism of pornography, which she argued was linked to rape and other forms of violence against women.

An anti-war activist and anarchist in the late 1960s, Dworkin wrote 10 books on radical feminist theory and practice. During the late 1970s and the 1980s, she gained national fame as a spokeswoman for the feminist anti-pornography movement, and for her writing on pornography and sexuality, particularly in Pornography - Men Possessing Women (1981) and Intercourse (1987), which remain her two most widely known books.

Reviews

[Kathleen O'Neal · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book in either a little over or a little less than twenty-four hours and I have to say that Andrea Dworkin really is one of the greatest feminist writers in American history. This is an incredibly moving and powerful collection and it makes me want to read everything else she has ever written.

[Ryan Mishap · Rating 5 out of 5]

Deadly, blunt, furious and a good introduction for anyone who hasn't heard of Dworkin or only know her name as a bad word. Indeed, I don't think there is a writer or feminist as maligned and misread as Dworkin. No wonder: she doesn't make nice or mince words in the face of overwhelming male violence against women.

One of the most important concepts she relates has to do with pornography--that women and their bodies are not someone else's speech. Pornography happens to real women and has real effects on women and cannot be considered mere speech or ideas or art in the same way a story or fictional film can.

Recommended.

[Michele bookloverforever · Rating 4 out of 5]

essays, newspaper articles, speeches about a variety of topics concerning misogyny and various forms of violence against women. Points out how pornography supports misogynistic violence against women. Points out how woman hating turns young women into prostitutes and is another form of violence against us. victims for sale so to speak. also deals with incest. strong opinions by strong woman. thank goodness for Ms.Dworkin. Never knew she also was survivor of battering and sexual assault. I speak out as well, just not to so many people.

[seroquelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

i advise even die-hard dworkin readers such as myself to pass this one over. this edition of speeches/essays is immediately striking as more paranoiac, disorganized and incoherent than her earlier writings. it is really evidence of her decaying mental state. i mean that in the most sympathetic way possible. don't even bother with the essay 'free expression in serbian rape/death camps'. it is based on a supposition of the existence of filmed rapes taken by the serbian army, this idea was put forth by fellow anti-pornography activist catherine mackinnon around the same time. mackinnon herself admitted in a footnote to a text on the subject that there was no evidence of either the existence or circulation of the filmed rapes. dworkin uses this fabrication to support her anti-pornography stance, at the expense of women who suffered systematic rape during the war. dworkin decendes into what resembles paranoiac rambling about how the circulation of these tapes in america will be supported and encouraged by the state. so in the end it is a poorlyu researched waste of time that manages to victimize the already neglected women a third time.

i recommend the essay 'my life as a writer'; here dworkin talks about her middle-class secular jewish upbringing and the traumatic events of her early career as an activist which can be seen as some form of explaination as to why her writing is as angry, passionate, urgent, and violent as it often is. also read 'israel: whose state is it anyway?'

but overall, most of the content is just upsetting. not informative, not reasoned, not illuminating, just upsetting. in this way it was everything i couldn't stand about 'right-wing women'.

[Iman · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is very repetitive owing to the fact that it is a selection of lectures. I read the first couple of chapters and skimmed the rest. I gave it four stars as I feel it is an important book for everyone to read. It increased my awareness how our society views women and how this has serious consequence for women. I found her comments on pornography particularly valuable for me as I have never thought much about pornography other than child pornography.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book had an excellent and nuanced look at the treatment of women on all socioeconomic and racial levels in Western society. For the longest time, I didn't read Dworkin because of what I thought she'd said. I was wrong.

[Irene · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not the best of her books, this collection of essays and speeches is vehement and impassioned, though extremely repetitive. I would recommend viewing this book as a supplement to her other work if one is a fan of her style; 'Mercy' or 'Intercourse' or 'Pornography' or 'Heartbreak' are all better and more deeply provoking.

[Lindsay · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is more a collection of short essays and speeches than a cohesive whole. Each piece still has the intensity and moral clarity I've come to expect from Dworkin, but they feel transient and off-the-cuff; topical rather than profound.

[Desiree · Rating 1 out of 5]

I don't know how I tolerated reading this. It was explicitly graphic.

[Owen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Unique and incisive essays, speeches, and reflections on the horrorful incidents of the times. As always she is illuminating the shadows of our souls in a patriarchal and unjust world, and opening the eyes of many of her listeners and readers.

[Betelgeuse · Rating 5 out of 5]

Honestly I don't know where to start and how to finish.
This book is everything.
Literally, all that matters in post-second wave feminism even today, and perhaps still, or especially today.

Andrea Dworkin is a woman that needn't be introduced, but this book - a compilation of her writings from 1987 to 1995, first published in 1997,is an absolute must for everyone who calls thysef a feminist.
Not just radical feminists.

BTW, how many people today realise that the phrase "radical feminism" derives from "root", or "grassroot" feminism, that our forebears started to free women from male dominance, none the less? And the fact that common understanding of it now for many people is simply "radical" as in, without any restraints, without remorse, violent if necessary, is just a happy-ish coincidence?

So much knowledge, such insight into matters that certain branches of modern, liberal feminism deem unimportant and ancient, whereas these are all that should matter, until at least women are finally free.

Dworkin was a specialist on pornography and prostitution, having herself been forced for a few years to live the experience of being one. And this is it-she knows what she's talking about, unlike those who scream today that "sex work is work" and that pornography can be beneficial. She also worked on a set of federal laws in USA that would actually criminalise people gaining from pornography and prostitution (surprise, it's usually some men).
This book contains writings about this, then, and a lot of it. There's also domestic violence (of the mostly physical kind, because, in the 1990s,who would even try to classify emotional violence as such damaging aspect of dv), there's Israeli-Palestinian conflict (the state of Israel was founded two years after Dworkin was born, and so she was able to observe its failings), there's Holocaust and its aftermath. And there are other topics.

BUT one thing is common. It's the relentless focus on women and children. Andrea Dworkin never did budge. To the last moment she kept her steel gaze and strong conviction that feminism should never forget its roots and its focus.

Andrea, your legacy will live on.

[emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

this made me so deeply emotional. her writing has a way of eliciting my emotions so painfully.

“When men use women in prostitution, they are expressing a pure hatred for the female body. It is as pure as anything on this earth ever is or ever has been. It is a contempt so deep,so deep, that a whole human life is reduced to a few sexual orifices, and he can do anything he wants.”

[Lost_Clown · Rating 4 out of 5]

powerfully moving stories.

[Cherie]

C- I think it's up to every feminist to read Dworkin to see what she's about. I don't agree with her but some stuff she says is powerful.

[Amy Layton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Andrea Dworkin's writings truly only get better with age.  She's opened up a lot in this anthology, discussing her childhood, parents, her abusive husband, and her homelessness.  She takes her experiences and juxtaposes them against those of Nicole Brown Simpson and Heda Nussbaum, offering a startling look at how often women can ask for help and be denied it, and how often others are surprised at their murder, rape, or defamation afterwards.  

Where her other books--even other anthologies--tend to stick to one or two topics, this one does offer a much broader range of subjects.  For some, this may seem disorganized, but for me, this felt rather refreshing.  All topics were definitely explicit and hard to read, but the fact that each essay talked about something a little different definitely made it easier to swallow.  

Overall, what I appreciated the most out of this book were the autobiographical aspects that allow us readers to better understand Dworkin herself and where she comes from in regards to her history and her politics.  

Review cross-listed here!

[val · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 Love love her writing. She knows how to say everything she wants to say in such a simple but really deep way. Every women should read this book. Or at least 1 or 2 essays.

[Laura Whannell · Rating 5 out of 5]

So impactful and engaging. Many things that were predicted in this are true now RIP DWORKIN

[Mahmoud Amr · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow. For current events, the "Israel" essay is a must read.

[Annie · Rating 3 out of 5]

(Read for use in a term paper)

Dworkin is . . . not my favourite feminist author. I am decidedly pro-sex workers’ rights, and Dworkin is not, but I take her arguments and they are thoughtful and well-meaning.

Dworkin as a person sometimes gets on my nerves. She’s the opposite of humble and she’s so critical of others in a way she just isn’t of herself.

But I admire her unbreakable spirit, her zeal, her powerfully articulated arguments. I like to engage with them even when I disagree.

[Steven H · Rating 5 out of 5]

HER THIRD COLLECTION OF SPEECHES/ARTICLES—A MORE ‘AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL’ ONE

Andrea Rita Dworkin (1946-2005) was an American radical feminist and writer, as well as anti-war activist and anarchist in the 1960s, best known for her criticism of pornography; she was married to John Stoltenberg.

She wrote in the Preface to this 1997 book, “as I organized this, my third collection of writings… I saw … [that] everywhere in these essays and speeches, [they] are referring directly and explicitly to my own life. The experiences I have chosen to wrote about are not polite---they include being raped, battered, and prostituted---and I have not been polite about them…. I have used portions of my life for evidence and emphasis or simply because that’s what happened, which must matter… I love life, I love writing, I love reading---and these writings are about injustice, which I hate. They are a rude exploration of it, especially in its impact on women… [It] names the crimes committed against women by men and seeks redress…” (Pg. xiii-xiv)

She continues, “It is my hope that because of the political work of feminists over the last quarter of a century, these writings may at last be read and taken seriously. I am asking men who come to these pages to walk through the looking glass. And I am asking women to break the mirror. Once we all clean up the broken glass---no easy task---we will have a radical equality of rights and liberty.” (Pg. xvii)

In her fascinating autobiographical essay (‘My Life as a Writer’), she reports, “Harry, my daddy, was not a rolling stone. He wasn’t at home because he worked two jobs most of the time and three jobs some of the time. He was a schoolteacher during the day and at night he unloaded packages at the post office… later he became a guidance counselor … he was different from other men in how he acted and how he thought… He listened with careful attention to children and women… He was devoted to my mother and determined that she would get the very best medical care… He kept us warm and fed and sheltered, even though not always at home or together… He was nurturant and emotionally empathetic. He crossed a gender line and was stigmatized for it; called a sissy and a fairy by my buddies on the street… He loved my mother and he loved Mark [her brother] and me; but especially me. I will never know why. He said I was the apple of his eye from the time I was born and it was the one great gift of my life… He enjoyed my intelligence and treated me with respect. I think that to be loved so unconditionally by a father… was not common for a girl them…. He was appalled by the conflict between me and my mother… I could never have become a writer without him.” (Pg. 9-11)

She continues, “My fiction is not autobiography… I don’t show myself… Autobiography is the unseen foundation of my nonfiction work, especially ‘Intercourse’ and ‘Pornography’. These two nonfiction books are not ‘about’ me… Yet when I wrote [them] I used my life in every decision I made… I’d like to take what I know and just hand it over. But there is always a problem for a woman: being believed.” (Pg. 15-16)

She adds, “It was in Amsterdam in 1972 that I made the vow, which I have kept, that I would use everything I know in behalf of women’s liberation. I owed the women’s movement a big debt: it was a feminist who helped me escape the brutality of my marriage… I left the marital home toward the end of 1971… after I turned twenty-five… I have no continuous memory of the events of that year… I was attacked, persecuted, followed, harassed, by the husband I had left… it was the … desperate life of a battered woman who had run away for the last time… I have written about the experience of being a battered wife in three nonfiction essays…” (Pg. 17)

She goes on, “A feminist named Ricki Abrams helped me: gave me asylum, a dangerous kindness in the face of a battering man… together she and I started to plan the book that became ‘Woman Hating.’… In one emergency, when my husband had beaten me and threatened to kill me, I spent three weeks sleeping in a movie theater… No one knew about battery then, including me…. There were no shelters or refuges. Police were indifferent…. It was Ricki who first gave me feminist books to read… ‘Woman Hating’ was not a book written out of an ideology. It came out of an emergency, written half underground and in hiding.” (Pg. 18-20) She recounts, “I began messing with men when in was in high school, though, sadly, they began messing with me earlier than that---I was raped at nine… fingers and a hand were used…” (Pg. 22) But ultimately, “When I emerged as a writer with ‘Woman Hating,’ it was not to wallow in pain, or in depravity, or in the male romance with prostitution; it was to demand change.” (Pg. 28)

She also reveals, “But especially I have had the love of John Stoltenberg, with whom I have lived now for twenty years, and the love and friendship of Elaine Markson… my agent for the past 22 years. They are fierce and brilliant friends…. I love John with my heart and soul; but what is more extraordinary is the way in which he has loved me… I never promised him anything; but he promised me right from the beginning that he would stay with me for the rest of my life… We share the politics of radical feminism and a commitment to destroying male dominance and gender itself… He is a deeply kind person, and it is through the actual dailiness of living with him that I understand the spiritual poverty and the sensual stupidity of eroticizing brutality over kindness.” (Pg. 33-34)

She reports her experiences of being brutally searched by jailers after being locked up after an anti-War protest… "I had been raped twice before… The second time… was what is now called ‘acquaintance rape.’ Yes, I fought; yes, he beat me; yes, he hurt me, and no, I never told anyone.” (Pg. 57)

She points out in another essay, “We know that pornography causes sexual abuse. We know that in the United States the average age of rapists is going down. It’s now boys in their young teen-age years who are committing a preponderance of first assaults against young girls… There are young boys who take guns and try to put them in women’s vaginas. Where did they see it?... They will tell you, ‘I saw it in pornography.’ … the fact of the matter is that if you live in a society that is saturated with this kind of woman hating, you live in a society that has marked you as a target for rape, for battery, for prostitution, or for death.” (Pg. 123)

In the next essay, she notes, “The problem for women is that being hurt is ordinary. It happens every day, all the time, somewhere to someone, in every neighborhood, on every street, in intimacy, in crowds; women are being hurt.” (Pg. 132)

She asserts, “what’s urgent is to make the war against women visible. When it’s invisible we can’t fight it, and when it is invisible every single woman is isolated in the trauma of what is happening to her. She has no way out, and she has no way to become whole again.” (Pg. 168)

This book will be ‘must reading’ not just for feminists, but especially for those of us who love Dworkin’s writing.

[Greyson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Incisive and uncompromising; having not read (about) Dworkin previously I was ignorant to how divisive her writing (and physical existence) became in the latter half of the 20th century. In the years since, her theses remain generally prescient as male political dominance came screeching back into the spotlight during the 2016 election cycle and its aftermath (e.g. Kavanaugh nomination, ensuing circus, and eventual confirmation).

The Overton window has definitely shifted, though, considering that some of these essays were written pre-VAWA and deal (obliquely but obviously) with contemporary considerations of its passage. Hopefully her broad arguments become increasingly mainstream whatever the reader thinks of her methods, or whether her racial/ethnic hierarchical analogies are appropriate.

[Jane Doe · Rating 5 out of 5]

As from the first time I had read a book by Andre Dworkin which was Right Wing Women… you are given an emotional masterpiece.

This book when it talks about the horrors us as women experience as a collective.. you feel much less alone. And Dworkins writings give you a need to fight.

None the less… I also found the historical talks especially that of Israel and Serbia interesting.. despite my knowledge with parts of these topics these topics knowledge were added on further by what Dworkin has learned from others.

Dworkin is a writer I’m truly sad especially in these times we have lost once again.. her work is empowering and informational.

[Snorch · Rating 5 out of 5]

perfect and unbearable. everyone should read this.

[Veronika]

Heavy and harsh but too true too many times.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Devoured it helplessly

[Lucy · Rating 5 out of 5]

extremely powerful collection of dworkin's works. every woman should read this (after reading intercourse).

[Marisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Everything in the book was true. And I’m sure there were probably some good points, but the writing was so convoluted and hard to following it rotted my brain trying to read this book.

[ressisece]

3.5*