So the Netherlands is apparently the next country to ban the burqa. This is disgusting and upsetting, but not surprising. I mean, look at the Netherlands track record for women hating. They legalize sexual slavery, torture and reinforce patriarchy. Fuck that place.
In other news, I finally found a book of Andrea Dworkin's in my university library. I checked out "Pornography: Men Possessing Women" today. I read the first few pages before class and love it so far. I was quite bothered, however, by how little radical feminist literature is available. I can never find dworkin or jeffreys in bookstores around my city, for example. I hate it! Also, the dworkin book had no cover, it looked as though someone ripped it off...so it probably doesn't get noticed very often and thus not read very often...that just makes me sad.
Anyway, not too much exciting news...more or less just an update. I've been quite busy, but hopefully will be able to post something interesting this weekend.
Hope everyone has a great weekend!
Hi Owl Eyes,
ReplyDeleteAnd also of concern: how little radical feminist literature--non-fiction and fiction, prose and poetry, is available in bookstores offline. While pornographers and pimps and libertarians proclaim the evils of "censorship", radical feminism is effectively silenced, removed in all its many voices, from social discourse and, increasingly, from Western social consciousness, except the version of it promoted by anti-feminists and pro-pornography activists.
Regarding P: MPW, by Dworkin, "The seven tenets of male supremacy" was once printed somewhere as a booklet, I believe. If ya want to talk about the book, lemme know. I'm always up for discussing Dworkin's work.
I have lived long enough to see Women's Bookstores in many cities dwindle down to less than none, what with shrinking Feminist Studies/Women's Studies book sections and academic departments, with each replaced by Gender Studies and some strange individualistic version of "Women's Studies" in bookstores that seems to have been consumed by "self-help" and pop psychology books that refuse to regard women as a class of people oppressed in and by many patriarchal societies.
Just today I noticed a talk show host ask a woman who was in a shitty relationship with a man, "What did relationship that teach you about yourself?" I'm waiting for the question, "What did that relationship teach you about heteropatriarchy?" But I'm not holding my breath.
Goooods, that makes me really disappointed that I'm heading back to the Netherlands at the end of the year.
ReplyDeleteThe one time I did see a Dworkin book in a bookstore it wasn't a happy moment. It was Intercourse, brand new, properly placed in the women's studies section. But it was literally RIGHT NEXT TO the "Suicide Girls On Tour" photobook, which was also in the women's studies section. I wish I was joking. T_T
ReplyDeleteMy university's library had a few of Dworkin's books-Scapegoat, her autobiography, Letters from a Warzone (?). Not the bigger ones, though, of course-no Pornography, no Intercourse, no Woman Hating. I think I might donate them myself, since my copy of each was only two bucks.
In their favor, they DID have the huge book her and MacKinnon did after the anti-pornography ordinance hearings, with transcripts and everything. It was most fascinating and informative, but hard as hell to read emotionally. I figure that book might be easier to find in university libraries because it's law-related.
And seriously, screw the Netherlands. I hate how liberals and libertarians idolize the place as some kind of progressive holy land.
Uh, wow. For some reason I decided to check and see whether the Atlanta public library had any Sheila Jeffreys books, and they don't own a single one. Not in the entire system. I'm having withdrawals from having access to an academic library as it is, but now I'm despondent.
ReplyDeleteYou can get a fair amount of her stuff here:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/dworkin/index.html
Thanks!
ReplyDeleteI don't know if it's possible at your university library but mine gives you the option to make requests and as I have been told most of the books requested are actually ordered and put up. Perhaps you can do activism this way? I personally have also played with the idea of ordering extra copies from ebay and other places to donate to my library.
ReplyDeletePornography was the first Dworkin book I was able to find in a bookstore, too.
ReplyDelete(Intercourse was the second --- I found a new, 25th-anniversary edition at Barnes & Noble. The introduction to that edition kinds of sucks, but as far as I know it's the only one of her books still in print/being sold in stores).
I frequent used bookstores and library sales pretty often, and I find that even in places with a good selection of feminist books, there's almost never any Dworkin.
I suspect this is because people who have her books choose to hang onto them, not give them to libraries/used bookstores.