Posted on 04/21/2005 9:00:26 PM PDT by quidnunc
A couple of weeks ago the world witnessed the death of an arch-conservative leader of a worldwide faith: a person whose views on sex and women were, to put it mildly, illiberal, divisive, and woefully out of step with modernity.
That person was not Pope John Paul II, but feminist Andrea Dworkin.
Ms. Dworkin was once described as "the Leon Trotsky of the sex war" for her radicalism and inflammatory rhetorical style. She vociferously condemned pornography, and with Michigan law professor Catherine MacKinnon wrote an ordinance defining it as a civil rights violation. "The time has come to condemn … the widespread hedonistic and commercial culture which encourages the systematic exploitation of sexuality and corrupts even very young girls into letting their bodies be used for profit." Those words, which track so closely Ms. Dworkin's views, came from John Paul II, in his 1995 Letter to Women.
Yet for John Paul II, mature marital relations were a reflection of the love between God and humanity: "The central word of Revelation, 'God loves His people,' is likewise proclaimed through the living and concrete word whereby a man and a woman express their conjugal love," he wrote. "Their bond of love becomes the image and the symbol of the covenant which unites God and His people." For Ms. Dworkin, though, even marital relations were tantamount to rape. She described intercourse as "a means or the means of physiologically making a woman inferior" — the "pure, sterile, formal expression of men's contempt for women." Though she vigorously denied ever saying that "all sex is rape," she might as well have — concluding that as a "violation of female boundaries," intercourse itself "may be immune to reform." She described women who enjoyed sex as "collaborators, more base than other collaborators have ever been…" -snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at timesdispatch.com ...
(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)
I gotta feel sorry for the poor old cow. What a miserable life she must have led.
As for the actual article, JPII was pretty explicit about denouncing the SIN of homosexuality or whatever, whereas in Dworkin's world all males are hateful and irredemably evil and there's no helping them.
The anti-Porn feminists and the anti-Porn persons of faith attempted to to coalesce back in the 1980s and both worked together to get 7-11 to stop selling Playboy, Penthouse and Hustler. It is when they attempted to enforce total bans that they ran into trouble, both in the US and Canada. In the case of one Canadian province (Manitoba?), many feminists were unpleasently surprised when their own work was banned as pornographic.
God help me, I'm a base collaborator!
Dworkin hated men specifically, and people in general.
JPII hated sin specifically, and loved people in general.
That speaks volumes about what a totally slimy piece of shit this article is. To compare the two in any way without mentioning how pouring concrete around that harridan's coffin so her stench doesn't somehow manage to percolate through would be a good idea...I'm not a particularly religious person, but it's sacrilege.
Note that the late Pope had a much more positive view of sexuality than Andrea Dworkin did.
You should read the article and comprehend it before you start blathering nonsense, though I realize this is a difficult article to understand, it not having any pictures and all.
He had a far more positive view of LIFE than the silly old crow.
The DU thread comparing the Pope and Anrea Dworkin was golden wisdom compared to this pile of crap.
I'm sorry, why are you getting all worked up? There's really no reason to be insulting Libertarian. Comparison of these two figures as if they were birds of a feather is just bloody silly.
Reminds me of a professor at my college who told a class that Muslim fundamentalists and American evangelical Christians should sit down and talk because they have "so much in common." Yeah, sure they do. I meet Evangelicals all the time who want to have Sharia law, religious police, males only voting and capital punishment for apostates.</sarcasm> That professor believes that I'm pretty similar to the Islamic nutbars because they take the Koran seriously and I take the Bible seriously. This article is in the same silly vein.
EXACTLY. It's like saying, "You know, that Jerry Falwell and Hitler are a lot alike." Or "You know, that Bill Clinton and Jesus are really similar." The comparison is so ridiculous as to be offensive.
What the author is saying is even though JPII and Dworken said similar things, for instance about pornography, they did so for diametrically opposed reasons, to wit:
Yet for John Paul II, mature marital relations were a reflection of the love between God and humanity: "The central word of Revelation, 'God loves His people,' is likewise proclaimed through the living and concrete word whereby a man and a woman express their conjugal love," he wrote. "Their bond of love becomes the image and the symbol of the covenant which unites God and His people." For Ms. Dworkin, though, even marital relations were tantamount to rape.
No, I read the whole article, and I got the point just fine, thank you. I think Libertarian's point in post 14 says it all.
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