Andrea Dworkin NEVER said "all sex is rape"

[Kelvin Mace]

212. First,

is the conditional phrase "under the patriarchy", which when Dworkin was writing this was still very much how marriage could be described. Marital rape was not illegal in quite a few states at the time Dworkin wrote her views. Marrying a man in many states meant you submitted to sex regardless of your consent. If a husband forced his wife to have sex, it was not an offense, since in the eyes of the law this was a wife's duty as a wife, part of the marriage contract.

Dworkin's comments cannot be judged out of context with what she was writing, when she was writing and her experiences that lead her to her views.

Second, people have asserted that she said "All sex is rape", This is factually incorrect. When called on it, one poster INSISTED it was true because he remembers reading it in a Penthouse interview in 1978. He later admitted that it was a Camile Paglia interview he recalled, and even then he was wrong because Paglia never said it. Now, having proven she didn't say that (nor did MacKinnon), people fall back on "well, that's what she meant, so it's the same thing." which it is not.