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Anti-porn crusader Dworkin dies

The American feminist author Andrea Dworkin has died at her home in Washington, aged 58.
Ms Dworkin sparked international debate by arguing that pornography was a violation of women's rights and a precursor to rape.

Her book, Woman Hating, published when she was 27, was the first of more than a dozen books on the subject.

Ms Dworkin also helped draft a law in the city of Minneapolis that recognised pornography as sexual discrimination.

Ms Dworkin, originally from Camden, New Jersey, had been ill several years. She suffered from a number of ailments, including osteoarthritis.

"Pornography is used in rape - to plan it, to execute it, to choreograph it, to engender the excitement to commit the act," she testified before the New York Attorney General's Commission on Pornography in 1986.

In 2001, Ms Dworkin won the American book award for writing Scapegoat: the Jews, Israel and Women's Liberation.

At the time of her death, she was working on a book with the working title Writing America: How Novelists Invented and Gendered a Nation.

"In every century, there are a handful of writers who help the human race to evolve," said fellow feminist Gloria Steinem. "Andrea is one of them."

Her agent of 30 years, Elaine Markson, said: "Some in the media liked to picture her as tough and hard and difficult, but she was soft and with a lovely voice and a good sense of humour."

But Ms Dworkin's critics called her an enemy of free speech.

Ms Markson said Ms Dworkin had recently had knee surgery, and did not seem to have recovered very well from the operation.

"She was rather frail of late," she added. Ms Dworkin is survived by her husband John Stoltenberg, also a feminist activist and writer.

A public memorial is to be held for her in New York.

[feeble!]

Ha, she sounds like she sucked - Reuben Sturman has to have been way cooler.

[Hogisbald]

So whats everyones opinions on this women? Porn is a precursor to rape? Interesting view

[feeble!]

I'm gonna have to disagree with that view - how many people watch porn? A lot. How many people then go out and rape people? Not a lot.

How is porn a violation of women's rights? They get paid to star in pornos, right? Men also star in porn flicks - does this mean that it violates their rights too?

[qzdiablo]

"Intercourse remains a means, or the means, of physiologically making a woman inferior: communicating to her, cell by cell, her own inferior status ... pushing and thrusting until she gives in."

discuss

[psydoll]

Let's face it if there was no porn the suicide rate would be a lot higher.

And the use of the Internet would drop dramatically.

[PVH]

Originally Posted by qzdiablo

"Intercourse remains a means, or the means, of physiologically making a woman inferior: communicating to her, cell by cell, her own inferior status ... pushing and thrusting until she gives in."

discuss

Shit...i thought it was a way to make children....all those books must have lied....

[qzdiablo]

i read that quote in the guardian over breakfast today, i was so shocked sugar puffs came flying out of my mouth

and i wasn't even eating sugar puffs

[New Found Power]

Originally Posted by qzdiablo

"Intercourse remains a means, or the means, of physiologically making a woman inferior: communicating to her, cell by cell, her own inferior status ... pushing and thrusting until she gives in."

discuss

Hardcore feminism is laughably ridiculous.