Our Blood: Prophecies and Discourses on Sexual Politics
Andrea Dworkin
In this fierce and beautiful book, the author of Pornography: Men
Possessing Women confronts our most profound social disgrace:
the sexual, cultural, and political subjugation of women to men,
and with rare eloquence examines the systematic crimes of our
male-dominated society against women.
“Our Blood is long overdue—all women must welcome the vigor
and the incisive perception o f this young feminist. ”
—Flo Kennedy
“Andrea Dworkin’s writing has the power of young genius
—Leah Fritz
“Andrea Dworkin has dedicated the title chapter of her book to the
Grimke sisters, and it would have pleased them, I think—since it
contains material which can serve at once as source and inspiration
for women. ”
—Robin Morgan
“Women, looking into the mirror of Out Blood, will feel anguish
for our past suffering and enslavement—and outrage at our present
condition. Men, if they dare to look into this mirror, will turn away
in shame and horror at what they have done. ”
—Karla Jay
“It is great—scary and innovative and great. ”
—Karen DeCrow
“Our Blood takes a hard, unflinching look at the nature of sexual
politics. Each essay reveals us to ourselves, exposing always the
dynamics which have kept women oppressed throughout the ages.
Our Blood compels us to confront the truth of our lives in the hope
that we will then be able to transform them. ”
—Susan Yankowitz
WOMAN B
o
k
s b
y
A
n
d
reaD
w
i
HATING
THE NEW WOMANS BROKEN H EART
p o r n o g r a p h y : m e n p o s s e s s i n g w o m e n
Perigee Books
are published by
G. P. Putnam’s Sons
200 Madison Avenue
New York, NY 10016
Copyright © 1976 by Andrea Dworkin
New preface copyright © 1981 by Andrea Dworkin
All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof,
may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Published simultaneously in Canada by Academic Press
Canada Limited, Toronto.
“Feminism, Art, and My Mother Sylvia. *' Copyright Q 1974 by Andrea
Dworkin. First published in Social Policy, May/June 1975. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Renouncing Sexual ‘Equality. ’” Copyright © 1974 by Andrea Dworkin.
First published in WIN, October 1 7 , 1974. Reprinted by permission of the
author.
“Remembering the Witches. ” Copyright © 1975 by Andrea Dworkin. First
published in WIN, February 20, 1975. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“The Rape Atrocity and the Boy Next Door. ” Copyright © 1975 by Andrea Dworkin. First delivered as a lecture.
“The Sexual Politics of Fear and Courage. ” Copyright © 1975 by Andrea
Dworkin. First delivered as a lecture.
“Redefining Nonviolence. ” Copyright © 1975 by Andrea Dworkin. Published in WIN, July 17, 1975. Delivered as a lecture under the tide “A Call to Separatism. ” Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Lesbian Pride. ” Copyright © 1975 by Andrea Dworkin. First published
under the title “What Is Lesbian Pride? ” in The Second Wave, Vol. 4, No. 2,
1975. Delivered as a lecture under the title “What Is Lesbian Pride? ” Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Our Blood: The Slavery of Women in Amerika. ” Copyright © 1975 by
Andrea Dworkin. First delivered as a lecture under the title “Our Blood. ”
“The Root Cause. ” Copyright © 1975 by Andrea Dworkin. First delivered
as a lecture under the title “Androgyny. ”
Grateful acknowledgment is made to Random House, Inc., for permission
to reprint from The Random House Dictionary o f the English Language.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Dworkin, Andrea.
Our blood.
Reprint. Originally published: New York: Harper &
Row, cl976.
Bibliography: p.
1. Women—Social conditions. 2. Feminism. I. Title.
HQ1154. D85 1981
305. 4'2
81-7308
ISBN 0-399-50575-X
AACR2
First Perigee printing, 1981
Printed in the United States of America
C ontents
Preface
xi
1. Feminism, A rt, and My M other Sylvia
1
2. Renouncing Sexual “Equality”
10
3. Remembering the Witches
15
4. The Rape Atrocity and the Boy Next Door
22
5. The Sexual Politics of Fear and Courage
50
6. Redefining Nonviolence
66
7. Lesbian Pride
73
8. Our Blood: The Slavery of Women in Amerika
76
9. The Root Cause
96
Notes
113
FOR BARBARA DEMING
I suggest that if we are willing to confront our own
most seemingly personal angers, in their raw state,
and take upon ourselves the task of translating this
raw anger into the disciplined anger of the search
for change, we will find ourselves in a position to
speak much more persuasively to comrades about
the need to root out from all anger the spirit of
murder.
Barbara Deming, “On Anger”
We Cannot Live Without Our Lives
Now, women do not ask half of a kingdom but
their rights, and they don’t get them. When she
comes to demand them, don’t you hear how sons
hiss their mothers like snakes, because they ask
for their rights; and can they ask for anything
less?. . . But we’ll have our rights; see if we don’t;
and you can’t stop us from them; see if you can.
You can hiss as much as you like, but it is coming.
Sojourner Truth, 1853
I thank Kitty Benedict, A
C
K
N
O
W
L
E
D
G
M
T
S
Phyllis Chesler, Barbara
Deming, Jane Gapen, Beatrice Johnson, Eleanor
Johnson, Liz Kanegson, Judah Kataloni, Jeanette
Koszuth, Elaine Markson, and Joslyn Pine for
their help and faith.
I thank John Stoltenberg, who has been my
closest intellectual and creative collaborator.
I thank my parents, Sylvia and Harry Dworkin,
for their continued trust and respect.
I thank all of the women who
organized the
conferences, programs, and classes at which I
spoke.
I thank those feminist philosophers, writers,
organizers, and prophets whose work sustains and
strengthens me.
PREFA CE
Our Blood is a book that grew out of a situation. The
situation was that I could not get my work published. So I
took to public speaking—not the extemporaneous exposition of thoughts or the outpouring of feelings, but crafted prose that would inform, persuade, disturb, cause recognition, sanction rage. I told myself that if publishers would not publish my work, I would bypass them altogether. I
decided to write directly to people and for my own voice. I
started writing this way because I had no other choice: I saw
no other way to survive as a writer. I was convinced that it
was the publishing establishment—timid and powerless
women editors, the superstructure of men who make the
real decisions, misogynistic reviewers—that stood between
me and a public particularly of women that I knew was
there. The publishing establishment was a formidable
blockade, and my plan was to swim around it.
In April 1974 my first book-length work of feminist
theory, Woman Hating, was published. Before its publication I had had trouble. I had been offered magazine assignments that were disgusting. I had been offered a great
deal of money to write articles that an editor had already
outlined to me in detail. They were to be about women or
sex or drugs. They were stupid and full of lies. For instance,
I was offered $1500 to write an article on the use of
barbiturates and amphetamines by suburban women. I was
to say that this use of drugs constituted a hedonistic
rebellion against the dull conventions of sterile housewifery,
that women used these drugs to turn on and swing and have
a wonderful new life-style. I told the editor that I suspected
women used amphetamines to get through miserable days
and barbiturates to get through miserable nights. I suggested, amiably I thought, that I ask the women who use the drugs why they use them. I was told flat-out that the article
would say what fun it was. I turned down the assignment.
This sounds like great rebellious fun—telling establishment
types to go fuck themselves with their fistful of dollars—but
when one is very poor, as I was, it is not fun. It is instead
profoundly distressing. Six years later I finally made half
that amount for a magazine piece, the highest I have ever
been paid for an article. I had had my chance to play ball
and I had refused. I was too naive to know that hack writing
is the only paying game in town. I believed in “literature, ”
“principles, ” “politics, ” and “the power of fine writing to
change lives. ” When I refused to do that article and others,
I did so with considerable indignation. The indignation
marked me as a wild woman, a bitch, a reputation reinforced during editorial fights over the content of Woman Hating, a reputation that has haunted and hurt me: not hurt
my feelings, but hurt my ability to make a living. I am in
fact not a “lady, ” not a “lady writer, ” not a “sweet young
thing. ” What woman is? My ethics, my politics, and my
style merged to make me an untouchable. Girls are supposed to be invitingly touchable, on the surface or just under.
I thought that the publication of Woman Hating would
establish me as a writer of recognized talent and that then I
would be able to publish serious work in ostensibly serious
magazines. I was wrong. The publication of Woman Hating,
about which I was jubilant, was the beginning of a decline
that continued until 1981 when Pornography: Men Possessing Women was published. The publisher of Woman Hating did not like the book: I am considerably understating here.
I was not supposed to say, for example, “Women are
raped. ” I was supposed to say, “Green-eyed women with
one leg longer than the other, hair between the teeth,
French poodles, and a taste for sauteed vegetables are
raped occasionally on Fridays by persons. ” It was rough. I
believed I had a right to say what I wanted. My desires were
not particularly whimsical: my sources were history, facts,
experience. I had been brought up in an almost exclusively
male tradition of literature, and that tradition, whatever its
faults, did not teach coyness or fear: the writers I admired
were blunt and not particularly polite. I did not understand
that—even as a writer—I was supposed to be delicate,
fragile, intuitive, personal, introspective. I wanted to claim
the public world of action, not the private world of feelings.
My ambition was perceived as megalomaniacal—in the
wrong sphere, demented by prior definition. Yes, I was
naive. I had not learned my proper place. I knew what I was
rebelling against in life, but I did not know that literature
had the same sorry boundaries, the same absurd rules, the
same cruel proscriptions. * It was easy enough to deal with
me: I was a bitch. And my book was sabotaged. The
publisher simply refused to fill orders for it. Booksellers
wanted the book but could not get it. Reviewers ignored the
* I had been warned early on about what it meant to be a girl, but I hadn’t
listened. “You write like a man, ” an editor wrote me on reading a draft
of a few early chapters of Woman Hating. “When you learn to write like
a woman, we will consider publishing you. ” This admonition reminded
me of a guidance counselor in high school who asked me as graduation
approached what I planned to be when I grew up. A writer, I said. He
lowered his eyes, then looked at me soberly. He knew I wanted to go to a
superb college; he knew I was ambitious. “What you have to do, ” he
said, “is go to a state college—there is no reason for you to go
somewhere else—and become a teacher so that you’ll have something to
fall back on when your husband dies. ” This story is not apocryphal. It
happened to me and to countless others. I had thought both the guidance
counselor and the editor stupid, individually stupid. I was wrong. They
were not individually stupid.
book, consigning me to invisibility, poverty, and failure.
The first speech in Our Blood (“Feminism, Art, and My
Mother Sylvia”) was written before the publication of
Woman Hating and reflects the deep optimism I felt at that
time. By October, the time of the second speech in Our
Blood (“Renouncing Sexual ‘Equality’”), I knew that I was
in for a hard time, but I still did not know how hard it was
going to be.
“Renouncing Sexual ‘Equality’” was written for the
National Organization for Women Conference on Sexuality
that took place in New York City on October 12, 1974. I
spoke at the end of a three-hour speakout on sex: women
talking about their sexual experiences, feelings, values.
There were 1100 women in the audience; no men were
present. When I was done, the 1100 women rose to their
feet. Women were crying and shaking and shouting. The
applause l
asted nearly ten minutes. It was one of the most
astonishing experiences of my life. Many of the talks I gave
received standing ovations, and this was not the first, but I
had never spoken to such a big audience, and what I said
contradicted rather strongly much of what had been said
before I spoke. So the response was amazing and it
overwhelmed me. The coverage of the speech also overwhelmed me. One New York weekly published two vilifications. One was by a woman who had at least been present.
She suggested that men might die from blue-balls if I were
ever taken seriously. The other was by a man who had not
been present; he had overheard women talking in the lobby.
He was “enraged. ” He could not bear the possibility that “ a
woman might consider masochistic her consent to the means
of my release. ” That was the “danger Dworkin’s ideology
represents. ” Well, yes; but both writers viciously distorted
what I had actually said. Many women, including some
quite famous writers, sent letters deploring the lack of
fairness and honesty in the two articles. None of those
letters were published. Instead, letters from men who had
not been present were published; one of them compared my
speech to H itler’s Final Solution. I had used the words
“limp” and “penis” one after the other: “limp penis. ” Such
usage outraged; it offended so deeply that it warranted a
comparison with an accomplished genocide. Nothing I had
said about women was mentioned, not even in passing. The
speech was about women. The weekly in question has since
never published an article of mine or reviewed a book of
mine or covered a speech of mine (even though some of my
speeches were big events in New York City). * The kind of
fury in those two articles simply saturated the publishing
establishment, and my work was stonewalled. Audiences
around the country, most of them women and men,
continued to rise to their feet; but the journals that one
might expect to take note of a political writer like myself, or
a phenomenon like those speeches, refused to acknowledge
my existence. There were two noteworthy if occasional