marjaerwin

But radical queer politics is getting increasing misogynistic. I would point to Bash Back!, Pink & Black Attack, etc.

I managed to avoid the fiasco at Camp Trans, but those events, and the subsequent debates, seem to bring the crisis into stark relief. Ultimately it is about womyn's independence and womyn's spaces. Ultimately it is about whether we are to exist as ourselves, or to be morally mandated into androgyny by our supposed allies.

We are not less-than because we are womyn. We do not need men to be whole. We are womyn and we are whole as womyn. We do not need to integrate "masculine" and "feminine" aspects into ourselves or our relationships. Subversivism runs on the same premises as heterosexism when it pushes the idea that womonhood is incomplete. We are not assimilationists because we live our lives instead of playing the androgynous-chauvinist roles you assign to us. We do not want to destroy Fest. We would rather see it thrive and embrace the sisters it has excluded so long.

I have mixed feelings about this work.

The first half, Chapters 1-5 and probably 6 are very insightful critiques of misogyny and its pervasiveness. Chapter 7 has been criticized for overestimating the extent and duration of the witch-craze.

The last section, Chapters 8-9, however propose androgyny and pansexualism as antidotes to misogyny. But heterosexism and complementary sexism are the most widespread expressions of the myth of androgyny. By embracing pansexualism, Dworkin allows heterosexism in through the back door, devaluing the identities and experiences of womon-loving womon-identified-womyn.


P.S. Too many of us have had to deal with the idea that gender doesn't exist and gender shouldn't affect our choice of partners. We were told either that we should love the person and get past his/her body, or that we would eventually encounter "the right man." I'm not into men. I'm not into ideologies, like heterosexism and normative pansexualism, which guilt-trip me for being lesbian.