Farewell to a Warrior Woman

Andrea Dworkin died April 9. She was among the first wave of radical feminists of the late 1960's, and one of the most difficult for many of us to embrace. I remember reading her work along with that of others during my coming awake, and while I never was able to go as far as she would have wanted, she was a voice in my head as I grew to awareness. Her contention that all intercourse was "male colonization of the female;" that "seduction meant that the rapist sometimes bothered to bring a bottle of wine;" "that pornography was training for rapists;" and in the later years, her more frustrated, and perhaps tired refrain that maybe "women needed their own country," left me always unsettled and thinking. As an anti-war activist and women's rights activist, she never gave up and she never gave in. She was an enigma and a challenge to the system she took on, and to the movement that she was a part of. I found her abrasive and too rigid and ultimately, I felt her inability to bend fed the power structure she sought to unseat. Still she framed an argument that needed to be made, and before her, there was no one who would even take it on... She would not have approved of my life, as a woman who chooses to surrender my personal power to a man, anymore than she would approve of the young women to whom her work and the work of others like her gave power and a voice -- women like this:
http://susiebright.blogs.com/susie_brights_journal_/2005/04/andrea_dworkin_.html
It was rough territory that she and her compatriots forged pathways through, and so today, I give honor to Andrea Dworkin and her bright, tormented, fated journey. I stand on her shoulders. She and I would not see eye to eye, and she would surely disapprove, but she and others like her gave me a place to stand. She let me find my feet, my voice, and ultimately, my wings.

swan

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