..... ....

 

Please send your tributes to Andrea Dworkin to this e-mail address, and we will post them on this page.

 

In Loving Memory of the life, dedication, sacrifice, wisdom, courage, struggles and suffering of scholar, writer/author, researcher, literary genius, orator, activist, humanitarian Andrea Dworkin

Andrea, to me (and to the radical feminist grassroots movement) you will forever remain:

The torn, turbulent and timeless ocean (magnitude, passion, waves, i.e., Preface to Intercourse, p. viii: "Intercourse is a book that moves through the sexed world of dominance and submission. It moves in descending circles, not in a straight line…");

A concrete cornerstone, keystone…bedrock (groundwork/foundation, comprehensive concrete concepts rooted in the experiences of women & girls and uncovered through consciousness raising);

The fire of my being and the collective grassroots radical feminist movement;

The spark which continues to animate ongoing consciousness raising (i.e., Intercourse, p. 135: "We hear something, a dim whisper, barely audible, somewhere at the back of the brain; there is some other word, and we think, some of us, sometimes, that once it belonged to us." Further illuminated in Letters from a War Zone, p. 267: "Pornography uses each component of social subordination. Its particular medium is sex. Hierarchy, objectification, submission, and violence all become alive with sexual energy and sexual meaning…")

The radical feminist movement and the world owe much to you.

The Ocean as formidable solidarity:

Letters from a War Zone, p. 17: "We must use our bodies to say "Enough"--we must form a barricade with our bodies, but the barricade must move as the ocean moves and be formidable as the ocean is formidable. We must use our collective strength and passion and endurance to take back this night and every night so that life will be worth living and so that human dignity will be a reality. What we do here tonight is that simple, that difficult, and that important." [Letters from a War Zone, p. 13: "The Night and Danger was written as a Take Back the Night speech. In New Haven, Connecticut, 2000 women marched. Street prostitutes joined the March and old women in old age homes came out on balconies with lit candles. In Old Dominion, Virginia, blacks and whites, women and men, gays and straights, in the hundreds, joined together in the first political march ever held in Old Dominion…People marched fourteen miles, as if they didn’t want to miss a footpath, under threat of losing their jobs and with the threat of police violence. In Calgary, Canada, women were arrested for demonstrating without a permit, the irony that a March is the safest way (arrests notwithstanding) for women to go out at night lost on the police but not on the women. In Los Angeles, California, the tail end of a double line of 2000 women walking on sidewalks was attacked by men in cars…"]

Letters from a War Zone, p. 9: "The Lie was written as a speech and given at a rally on October 20, 1979, at Bryant Park, behind New York City’s formal and beautiful main public library. This park is usually dominated by drug pushers. It, with the library behind it, marks the lower boundary of Times Square, the sexual-abuse capital of industrialized Amerika. 5000 people, overwhelmingly women, had marched on Times Square in a demonstration organized by Women Against Pornography and led by Susan Brownmiller, Gloria Steinem, and Bella Abzug, among others. The March had begun at Columbus Circle at West 59 Street, the uppermost boundary of the Times Square area, and the rally at Bryant Park marked its conclusion. For the first time, Times Square didn’t belong to the pimps; it belonged to women--not women hurt and exploited for profit but women proud and triumphant. The March served notice on pornographers that masses of women could rise up and stop the organized trafficking in women and girls that was the usual activity on those very mean streets. Feminists took the ground but didn’t hold it."

p. 9 continues: "The one message that is carried in all pornography all the time is this: she wants it…"

Letters from a War Zone, p. 19: "Pornography and Grief was written as a speech for a Take Back the Night March that was part of the first feminist conference on pornography in the United States in San Francisco, November, 1978. Organized by the now defunct Women Against Violence in Pornography and Media (WAVPM), over 5000 women from thirty states participated and we shut down San Francisco’s pornography district for one night. The ground was taken but not held."

p. 21: "One can know everything and still be unable to accept the fact that sex and murder are fused in the male consciousness, so that the one without the imminent possibility of the other is unthinkable and impossible. One can know everything and still, at bottom, refuse to accept that the annihilation of women is the source of meaning and identity for men…" p. 22: "…The fact is that the process of killing--and both rape and battery are steps in that process--is the prime sexual act for men in reality and/or in imagination…" […] "…The most important thing about pornography is that the values in it are the common values of men…" 

NOTE: This request for solidarity brings with it words of caution for radical feminists. Radical feminists must individually and collectively be in strong agreement with radical feminist principles, especially when defining and fighting against sexism in a sexual context (i.e. pornography, prostitution as a type of sexual assault). ‘Radical’ means going to the root(s) of female oppression. We cannot allow people who lack radical feminist awareness or/and who lack the capacity to develop strong feminist analysis of oppression, to refer to themselves or their ignorance as "feminist".

--Rebecca Diegelman, New York

 

I remember Andrea Dworkin vividly at 19. I was a freshman at Bennington, it was 1965, and I had come to that place at that time hoping for a refuge from a world where Elvis lived, lesbians were per se criminals, marital rape was an oxymoron, and political rebels were men.

Only a year older, Andrea didn't appear to need refuge, although I have no doubt that she did, as we all did. She appeared purposeful, energetic, intense, confident. She was already a published author. She moved quickly through Commons wearing blue work shirt, overalls, funky brown boots, and wild hair. She unequivocally hated the war, racism, and the Women's House of Detention on West Tenth Street. She was intimidating and inspiring.

Through the years I followed her development. I sometimes didn't agree with her positions when first articulated. But I always eventually came around because, once I looked at her observations and connections and logic, her conclusions were inevitable for me; although sometimes it took me years to get there, as with pornography vs what passes for free speech.

But I always think of her as 19. Even when I saw pictures of her looking older, the images that stayed with me were of this vibrant, already formed young freedom fighter in Vermont in 1965, moving quickly through Commons as if she knew she only had a short time to change the world.

I know aging and death are the way of nature. I'm just not sure these days that nature is on the side of us crones. Especially when it takes one of us who had so much more to say, and whom it cannot replace.

Lauren Levey

 

Dear friends and family,

I just read today in my little corpus christi paper a short announcement of Andrea Dworkin's death. She made a lasting impression on my life and so I felt pulled to send my gratitude for her life and work out to everyone I could in honor of her.

Going through law school with a toddler and a teenager was not easy, especially since I was much older than most students at the time and I had an educational background rooted in "poor schools" with little college preparation. On several occasions, after having read Dworkin's work, I sent her a letter explaining my fears and angst.

Having experienced deeply embarassing uses of pornography at my workplace at Dresser Atlas in which my boss placed XX rated pictures in the file cabinets I had to search before ordering needed parts and stood behind me as I found them, rubbing his grotch, I knew the horror Andrea tried to describe. And I deeply appreciated her work. It felt
freeing to me.

So when I discovered her and C. MacKinnon while I was in law school I read everything I could of theirs, resenting the fact that I had to do it outside of the 60+ hours I had to spend on my assigned materials. Their work was never part of my official classes. It was particularly galling, in my first amendment class, to have my favorite professor refer to her work on the anti-pornography ordinance in passing, dismissing it as a prudish criminal statute when in fact it contained only civil penalties and was not a criminal statute at all. That was the only official mention I ever heard of her work.

So you can imagine my amazement and joy to receive 2 postcards from Andrea Dworkin, one each in response to my 2 letters to her. She wrote encouraging words and in one instance, her words came to me right before my business organizations exam. I went into it with unusual calm and confidence.

Andrea Dworkin seemed to me, in my limited experience of her, as a woman of deep integrity, a woman who paid attention to the cries of every woman, no matter how small.

Whether I agreed with her analyses completely or not, and most times her work struck me as deeply insightful, I felt some small part of her personal strength and good will toward women and men in my own life and I want to praise her for it now in the hours after her death, being now aware that she is no longer around to continue providing it
personally. Just through her work.

In awesome remembrance of Andrea Dworkin upon her death,

Monica

Dear Andrea,

How can words express what you have given to the world? How can words express the influence and impact you've had on the lives of women and girls? Your writings spoke truths about women's lives so clearly and honestly, with such unwavering and uncompromising commitment and urgency, that women from all over the world were forever changed and continue to be forever changed.

Through your words, you gave voice to the violation and abuse of women in patriarchal society. You named the systems of male supremacy, especially pornography and prostitution, for what they were. Your courage, commitment and strength were shown time and time again. When the sex industry waged a hostile battle against you, when you held the Left accountable for failing women and they waged a hostile battle against you, when the backlash engulfed the feminist movement and replaced it with an entity more aligned with the status quo, assimilation and/or the sex industry than with women's freedom and they waged a hostile battle against you, you did not abandon or disown your radical feminist politics, your integrity, your commitment to women and girls and to a vision of a just, equal world where hierarchy, power abuse, subordination/domination of any kind does NOT exist. You refused to be silenced or acquiescent. You refused to bow down to the lies, fear, hate, or violence. You remained a leader, a visionary, a revolutionary, and a steadfast warrior in the fight against all forms of patriarchal control, coercion, and abuse. Your staunch refusal to comply is an inspiration - an inspiration that will never fade. It burns brightly like the warm radiance of freedom.

Through your words, you gave voice to the abuses and violences waged against women and shattering the silence around those abuses, you helped shatter the silence in other women.

Through you words, you extended to women the anger they had a right to and the right and responsibility they had to defend their livelihoods and all women's livelihoods by any means. You instigated women to action! You instigated creative, passionate acts of rebellion: be it grassroots activism, stealthy clandestine actions, women writing themselves into consciousness, resistance, and survival and agitating a revolution on paper, the list goes on and on. You helped women look fear in the eye and, whether crying, shaking, wavering or not, keep looking and start acting, growing, resisting, and being the ambitious agents of change that we were all meant to be.

Through your words, you granted women the affirmation and validation they needed to hear -- about their experiences and feelings, about how they saw the world, about how they wanted the world to be. How many times have I read your books or articles or speeches and yelled, 'Yes! Yes! She's saying it like it is.' You articulated on paper the things I knew in my head/psyche, in my heart, in the very marrow of my existence. You took those things and gave life to them in your passionate, poetic prose. You articulated my thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and visions when I had not yet or could not yet formulate them into tangible sentences.

Through your words, you spoke the truth of our lives as women in a misogynistic world that fails to even consider, let alone take seriously, the oppression of women. But you did take women's oppression seriously. You asserted in so many big and little ways that women mattered. WOMEN MATTERED. And you told the world, for all women to hear, that what happened to women mattered and what men did to women had to stop.

I could go on and on. Through your words, you have bestowed unlimited reserves of consciousness, awareness, activism, boldness, courage, bravery, militancy, passion, beauty, and, above all, truth. You lived as a truth-teller, seeker, teacher, and instigator. That truth will live on and on, for the truth we saw and see in you burns brightly in us and we will continue to ignite, emanate, and keep that flame alive.

As you wrote in a birthday message to me once: We're sisters together in birth and death. We certainly are.

Love and Sisterhood always,

Garine'

 

Andrea's writing inspired me to take action against male supremacy. It not only challenged the way I lived my life, but it forced me to speak out and not sit back in silence, while men kept hurting women. I always replay certain lines that Andrea wrote in my head when I feel scared to combat sexism; her words give me courage and define my fight. I especially think of the quote from her speech, Terror, Torture and Resistance:

"I'm asking you to stop passing: stop having feminism be part of a secret life. I'm asking you not to apologize to anyone for standing up for women ... I'm asking you to stop men who beat women. Get them jailed or get them killed, but stop them."

Andrea's words will always echo in my head, she will never be forgotten and we should never stop fighting.

In solidarity always,
K

 

 

A year ago April I sat and talked with Andrea for at least an hour. We had our heads together talking about health concerns we were encountering.
Anyone looking on might have thought we were discussing writing--some of that occurred also. We talked about the type of writing that each of us did throughout life.
Andrea was interested in the health essays I wrote. I told her not to fall for the doctor's version of "Hit the Bricks." It's when they stand to let you know the visit is over. I told her to stay seated until all of her questions were answered, and I'd bet they would sit back down. She laughed at my "mountain-woman" way of dealing with the problem.
We discussed just about every type of pain medication offered--sadly. She had arthritis, and since her death I keep wondering if she was on one of the drugs they've been trying to take off the market because they can cause sudden death.
Andrea, I wish that we didn't know so much about pain. I'm thankful that you are no longer hurting. The pain we are feeling, at losing you, is one that time, or medicine, won't heal.
Rest in Peace Woman Warrior.
Judith K. Witherow

 

 

Women, like seeds

By Lierre Keith
(for Andrea Dworkin)

I.
An inch of soil contains
a thousand seeds each one
a suspended prayer, a single
word to consecrate
the breaking that is the whole: the dying
spring, the quickening snow,
death is life's communion,
how all returns to one.

The blessed seed calls the rain the drop
beholds the sky and sinks in awe
to earth
the silk of green, the blade
of grass and down, down to the chalice of soil,
it answers.

Annointed now, the psalm begins
the liturgy its DNA and
holy, holy made the seed its
grace the radicle
the tiny stem, the urgent root
its all and only hope.

The paradox is the miracle:
life is so fragile and it is everywhere.

II.
Every seed lies waiting
for the promised ground
bared by fire, by flood, by falling
sky each in its season
or the mighty herds, their hallowed hooves
turning the world
from night to day and age to age.
Behind them the earth
is born again, each seed redeeming the dust
through leaf and green, through flower and fruit,
climbing toward heaven, claiming
the light of the world.

III.
The ages are over the nights
all days, the only fire a slow-burning globe.
The floods bring no snowmelt, the rivers
are damned and nothing
falls but bombs.

And only the beasts, broken-hearted, remember
how running opened the way
how we were the plainsong, each life, each one.

So until we cry,
Let waters rise, Let fires burn,
Break the gods who rend us!
let truth, small and holy, be your balm:
women, like seeds, lie waiting
and we are everywhere.

 

This is a song I wrote for Andrea, that I actually got to sing to her once. She was so touched it made her cry—one of the high points of my life.
Lierre

Come
(for Andrea Dworkin)

and come and out your ear to the ground
and listen to the rumbling awakening sound
and ask the question persistent in your blood
of what will finally be enough

and come accustom your eyes to the dark
and your feet to the pavement, and the pounding of your heart
and the weight of the weapons you find trembling by your side
will be waiting toward the day you decide

and the sky will break into a thousand drops
and wings will fill the air
and the water falling off your skin will ease all despair
and women like a river running wild and deep
with the longing to be free

and come bearing those who have died
and their names burned in your memory will be your battle cry
and when you think your heart will surely shatter form this task
then stand ready to use the shards like broken glass

and come remember the will to fight
and kindle it at the burning center of your life
and no matter what stands before you find a way to come
and when you long may it be for freedom

come for the ones who've come before you
come for the ones who've tried
come for the ones who've paid in blood risking their lives
the keepers of the flame each burning like a thousand stars
come to ease the great sadness of such hearts

 

 

by helen caddes

for Andrea, My Sister.
(d. April 9th, 2005.)
'My prayer for the women of the next millennium: have hard hearts; and learn how
to kill'- Andrea Dworkin (1999)

you died yesterday
and I never knew
because I was sending
a sister
you would have loved
to see Carmen.

I called a good friend
of yours
without knowing
today
and bitched about
the minutae of life,
male privilege,
and how I was going to be
myself again
at long last
how you two had inspired me
to that
how i couldn't stand
to live in a world
that wasn't colored by your
collective radiance.

fiery, raging, angrily
I told her the things
I was brave enough
to tell you in person.

I'm not sure if you understood
the high honor
I felt
seeing you speak
at my college
in Tennessee.

nobody could understand
my excitement.
i wanted to kiss everyone.
i was so impressed by anyone
who even showed up
that night
that i continued to give them credit
years later

I want a tape of that speech
from the Holocaust Conference
where you confided to us
that you'd spit on Hitler's grave.

you died after the pope,
which I'm sure pleased you
immensely.

you died before you got to see
who the new pope was,
but you know,
the world is better without a new pope
anyway.

hierarchies, lies, unjust courtrooms.
my one chance to see you.

I asked you a question,
and my dear,
I will be eternally glad
that I had the huevos to.

I can talk to you whenever I want to now,
during this,
the week before the sixtieth anniversary
at Ravensbruck.

the pope is dead.

Andrea, you will never die.

your fire will live through me
and our sisters
forever.

anyone who misquotes her again
remember,
we've got her back.
and we've got it forever.

trust this woman's wisdom,
get a new perspective on
the world you think you know
and watch it change around you

watch the power of love intermingled
with truth
as it is tapped by my tears.

my anguished cries
no one understood
amidst the clutter of moving
screaming into the night
railing against the angels
from taking ours from us
until her next reincarnation.

an honest woman who should have been president
and you lied about her.

America, you should be ashamed.

you loved men for the sacred virtue
of their genitalia alone
and silenced a fucking legend.

I will never forgive you.

read something of hers
and you will never forgive yourself,
either.

shining amidst the stars
in some spiral galaxy
kissing away the pains
of earthly strife
Andrea shimmers

 

as the sun shies through
my windoeacnew day,
i will live for her

Home