Andrea Dworkin NEVER said "all sex is rape"

[Kelvin Mace]

238. Defending the accuracy and context of a person's quotes

is not automatically endorsing all of their views.

To answer your questions:

1) No, I do NOT agree Dworkin and MacKinnon's legal views on censorship. I do not believe in censoring anyone's writing for ANY reason. I would also disagree with both woman on their very broad designs on restricting what they see as porn.

2) "Marriage as an institution developed from rape as a practice. Rape, originally defined as abduction, became marriage by capture. Marriage meant the taking was to extend in time, to be not only use of but possession of, or ownership."

You need to read up on your history to see that marriage was all about tribes run by men, building alliances with other tribes run by men. When that didn't work, you raided the other tribe, killed the men, captured and raped the women, then brought some back to bear your children. "Marriage" was a way of giving a ceremonial legitimacy to this practice. The major point is, women had ZERO choice in who they married. Marriage was "Here is my 14 year old daughter, let me give him to your 22 year old son." Women were PROPERTY, nothing more. So I find it real hard to see where women would consent to the practice of being given to strangers for sex, thus, lacking consent, it is rape. As stated elsewhere in this thread, until recently (as late as 1993) there were no laws against "marital rape". Sex was a woman's duty and if force was required, oh well, that's the social contract.

So, her statement is factually correct.

3) "Under patriarchy, every woman's son is her potential betrayer and also the inevitable rapist or exploiter of another woman."

Again, a factual statement.

Patriarchy : social organization marked by the supremacy of the father in the clan or family, the legal dependence of wives and children, and the reckoning of descent and inheritance in the male line; broadly

: control by men of a disproportionately large share of power

When men make all the rules, then they get to say what is, and isn't rape. They get to say who marries who and when. If you raise your son and teach him that patriarchy is the norm, then when he is presented with an unwilling woman he is told is now his wife, he will have sex with her with, or without, her consent, which would be rape by our definition as a modern civilized society, but not under the rules of a "patriarchy".

The point of contention among some folk was MacKinnon applying her statement to modern society. But again, we are back to the fact that during her time, there were no marital rape laws and women were still given the short end of the stick on everything from marriage to fair pay in what jobs they could get.

Another bright example of a patriarchy is a double standard about sexual behavior, men operating under one set of rules and expectations, women under another. And that double standard is still found even today.

There is MUCH disagreement about both MacKinnon and Dworkins views and actions on porn, which some feminists have no problem with and some do. On the subjects of rape, physical abuse and appalling discrimination and harassment, both of these women spared no words or contempt for the practices that society preferred to ignore.

They remind me of the ardent abolitionist and feminist William Lloyd Garrison who spoke with candor about slavery when such things could get you lynched (indeed he narrowly escaped several attempts). Garrison's writings and speeches were so inflammatory that the Georgia legislature put a $5,000 price on his head.

When told that he should moderate his words in order to not offend the sensibilities of the public he responded:

“I am aware that many object to the severity of my language; but is there not cause for severity? I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject, I do not wish to think, or to speak, or write, with moderation. No! no! Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen; — but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present. I am in earnest — I will not equivocate — I will not excuse — I will not retreat a single inch — AND I WILL BE HEARD.”

His characterization of slavery was considered incendiary by his critics and was just as shocking to the 19th century people as Dworkin/MacKinnon's writing about sex were in the 20th (and apparently 21st):

I cherish as strong a love for the land of my nativity as any man living. I am proud of her civil, political and religious institutions — of her high advancement in science, literature and the arts — of her general prosperity and grandeur. But I have some solemn accusations to bring against her.

I accuse her of insulting the majesty of Heaven with the grossest mockery that was ever exhibited to man — inasmuch as, professing to be the land of the free and the asylum of the oppressed, she falsifies every profession, and shamelessly plays the tyrant.

I accuse her, before all nations, of giving an open, deliberate and base denial to her boasted Declaration, that "all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

I accuse her of disfranchising and proscribing nearly half a million free people of color, acknowledging them not as countrymen, and scarcely as rational beings, and seeking to drag them thousands of miles across the ocean on a plea of benevolence, when they ought to enjoy all the rights, privileges and immunities of American citizens.

I accuse her of suffering a large portion of her population to be lacerated, starved and plundered, without law and without justification, at the will of petty tyrants.

I accuse her of trafficking in the bodies and souls of men, in a domestic way, to an extent nearly equal to the foreign slave trade; which traffic is equally atrocious with the foreign, and almost as cruel in its operations.

I accuse her of legalizing, on an enormous scale, licentiousness, fraud, cruelty and murder.

Garrison was considered by many people in his day to be (to use your word) "nuts".

P.S. - I live in North Carolina and have heard MANY self-styled Civil War historians fume about Garrison even to this day. He was a "provocateur", a "trouble-maker" a "crazy" who provoked the Civil War.