Andrea Dworkin matters because what happens to women - the fact that we do not truly own our own bodies and minds, the fact that we are always to some extent public property, commodities, products - she matters because all that shit pissed her off.

She wasn't polite about it, she wasn't quiet or diplomatic. I want someone to be angry about it. I needed that. Being angry, being outraged proves that someone, somewhere does not think that the way women are used and discarded is natural or acceptable.

Yeah, it's great that people get sad over it, theorize about it, write papers. But really, what I need is for someone to get pissed. And the fact that she could write like mad and hit you in the gut, that made it all the more satisfying. Someone was outraged about what happened to me. Thank God for Andrea Dworkin.

September 15, 1963, four little girls were killed in a racially motivated church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama. The whole country got outraged, finally, thankfully. Something turned.

Right now in the world, each year 2 million women and children are trafficked into the sex trade, generating more profit for their traffickers worldwide than the drug trade. In case you think this is a third world problem, 45,000 to 50,000 of those women and children are trafficked into the United States every year. In countries where trafficking is tolerated, or prostitution is allowed, there are more brothels than schools.

And by the way, trafficking is the polite term. What we are talking about here is more accurately called sexual slavery.

Where is the outrage for these women and little girls? Where is their movement?

If that is too abstract and huge to actually hurt you, think about this: In my neighborhood, statistically speaking, there are more than just four little girls who have experienced rape already. Before they can even vote, drive or graduate high school.

In yours, too. Everywhere.

Andrea Dworkin was outraged, I am outraged. She taught me that the only natural emotion for women experiencing violence - whether culture-wide or interpersonal - is rage. Anyone who asks that we feel something more 'civilized' (read quiet, polite, ineffective) hasn't actually confronted the reality of what it means to be born a woman.

I first heard of Andrea Dworkin in the early 1980's. During my child care course, a lecturer distributed 2 opposing articles on fairy tales, one by Dworkin. You could guess which side she was on, but it was electrifying to read a dissenting voice such as hers. I remember it was so sharp, intellectually rigourous and exciting. Her ideas, along with Steinem's and Greer's, still push me to question society's norms and fight for women's rights everywhere.

I guess a fitting tribute for Andrea is how hated she was by conservatives and anti-feminists. She should wear it as a badge of honour.

Andrea Dworkin, feminist theorist and shit-starter
died this weekend. There has been no media coverage of her death, partially because her family has been mourning and dealing with the specifics of her death.

I know that not evey feminist I know agreed with
Andrea. I know that there are tons of places where I don't agree with her, places in her theory where she is incomplete or just plain wrong.

But she was the first person who taught me to be angry. She was the first theorist that I read who talked about the rage that we feel when we've been hurt, when we've been raped, when we've been because we are wymyn.

She was the first to draw attention to rape as a gendered crime. She was the first person to name "domestic violence" and say that it was something that happened to us because we were wymyn. She was one of the first people to ever say that we had a right to be angry at the hand that we have been dealt.

I will be lighting a candle for Andrea Dworkin tonight because I mourn the end of that validation. I will miss it.

I will miss HER.

I have lost a friend. Women have lost a champion. And the world seems more unsafe.

The death of Andrea Dworkin is devastating. We have lost a sage. Andrea's courage and integrity inspired women to acts of resistance that we didn't know we were capable of. Her generosity and support of women who constantly spoke with her about the brutal sexism in our lives was legendary. In debates, her sardonic humor cut to the bone. Andrea was a humanitarian who always considered the viewpoint of those who were marginalized - most recently, the viewpoint of those marginalized because of disability. I am certain that Andrea Dworkin's life and her work will be appreciated in the years to come in new ways and by new generations of people.

I'm so saddened to learn of this loss. I cried all afternoon. Somehow, knowing she was always out there speaking "truth to power" with that unflinching, relentless honesty about women's experience under male dominance, was a comfort to me, one that I realize I took for granted in the years since I traded in my activism for raising two strong daughters. For years, I would pull her _Letters from a War Zone_ off the shelf (which she autographed for me at Southern Sisters in 1991, and she was so much warmer than I had expected!), and it would give me so much courage to name and inhabit my own experience, however briefly. Even now, on one my favorite left-wing listservs, a few of us are mourning her and the rest are vilifying her, reminding me of the male dominance on the left that I'd prefer to ignore in the context of America's incipient fascism. If we have a 22nd century (indeed, if the Earth isn't destroyed in the 21st), she will be known as one of the greatest, and most unappreciated, political thinkers of our day. If any of her family and friends are reading this, I thank you for sustaining her through good times and bad, and extend my deepest sympathy for your personal loss. She has given so much more to human race than most of its members, unfortunately, can presently comprehend.

Although I don't always agree with Andrea and locate women's oppression in a different place,I am saddened that we have lost such inspiring radical feminist, activist, and thinker. My heart goes out to her family and friends and to all of the feminist communities who have lost a scholar worth arguing with. Please accept my deepest condolences.

Amanda Luke
Miami University of Ohio

Andrea Dworkin spoke for me. She spoke for my rage, my pain, and my hope for women. She wrote with beauty, honesty and courage. My eternal thanks to her.

I read _Pornography_ many years ago in researching my thesis, and I was struck by Dworkin's fierce eloquence and strength of conviction on such a polarizing subject. I believe she was, above all, one who held us to be our better selves in defense of others, and not just when we felt like it. The resistance she faced speaks volumes about how precious, how guarded, and how fraught our most private moments are.

I am sad to hear of Andrea's passing, and I send my deepest condolences to those who loved her. I wondered many times if we would have had her voice if she had had more peace in her life. I thank her for her unwavering commitment to women's sexual safety and expression and hope that she has peace now. I will revisit some of her writings now to remember why I sought her out in the first place.

While her writings kept me up at night (hard to sleep when you're angry), I appreciate her voice and the way it kept me (and probably many women) from feeling pressured to "go with the flow," especially as regards pornography.

Thank you, Andrea, for helping us think in new ways!

When I was not much older than twenty, as an undergraduate, I took a "student directed seminar" in feminist issues. One of the assigned readings was Andrea Dworkin's book Woman Hating. I remember devouring that book in what seems (in retrospect) one long mesmerised, horrified sitting. To say it hit me hard would be understatement; it demolished my worldview. I was raised by parents who believed that girls could do anything boys can do. I was raised in a middle-class home without pornography; my parents's conflicts may have been at times angry, but they were not resolved by violence. I managed to make it through high school without being assaulted. I was, in other words, completely clueless about my political position as a female, about the ugly realities of "woman's place" and the mechanisms men have devised to keep her -- us! -- in it. Andrea Dworkin's book gave me a clue. It also broke my heart.

It seems odd perhaps to feel, over 25 years later, such gratitude for this devastating (at the time) experience. To an extent I can honestly say, "Andrea Dworkin made me a radical feminist" -- obviously there were other influences, but that first kick in the pants seems, in my memory, where it all started: sitting crosslegged on my rumpled bed, reading Woman Hating, and weeping, and not being able to stop reading because it all made sense. My life might have been more calm and pleasant if I had remained in illusion or denial. It might also have remained "an unexamined life."

Every commitment to social justice I have ever made, every analysis of power and abuse, of corruption and malfeasance, harks back to that first basic understanding of the injustices done to women in a culture still (to this day) pretty much run by and for men. Like the seed crystal that launches a runaway reaction in a saturated solution, Andrea's book dropped into my life and set, irrevocably, the direction of my moral philosophy. I read all her other books as well, over the years, and all were valuable. I disagreed with her here, cheered her there, marvelled at her ability to sustain such passion, such incandescent rage, and yet remain alive. I cancelled my sub to The Nation because of the gratuitous and vile insult offered to Andrea by one of their guest writers. And always her writing -- particularly her writing for public speaking -- set a high standard which I aspired to but never matched; her emotional and physical courage set a standard even harder to emulate. We never met in person, yet she was always a presence -- intellectual, moral, literary -- in my life. So I feel not so much as if a close friend had died, as a teacher, a role model -- a personal hero.

Those of us who have been fortunate enough to enjoy the marginal advantage of safety, of partial immunity, that comes with race and class privilege (not to mention plain old random luck) -- those of us who (so far) have not been prostituted, not battered, not raped -- we owe an unique debt to the mentor who first opened our eyes to the injustice that was right in front of us all along, who set a lifelong challenge before us, who made us look upon the face of suffering and let it break our hearts, who made us know in our guts that the prostituted woman, the battered woman, the raped woman, the murdered woman, is not Other, but us, and our cause is hers. That debt I owe to Andrea Dworkin -- an untamed spirit.

I don't know what to say really but I'd not feel right saying nothing. I know a lot of people will post how Andrea got them started, how she helped form their opinions... and I suppose I'm no different... but I don't want to talk about that really. I just want to say that... I know I've never met her, never spoken to her... but I love her, I do. She will be missed. She will really... really be missed.

Andrea Dworkin was the first woman I encountered who was angrier than I, but in her reasoned rage, she gave me vent and voice. I am simply and sadly stunned that she is gone.

Wow, I just realized what she meant to me. She was there, in the background of my life, ready to be called if I needed her. I always felt a sense of security as a woman, knowing she was "on the case". Now I feel more alone. It's amazing that someone I didn't know personally, had never even met, could have been such an integral part of my personal life. That's the thing....I feel like I did know her. I feel like she was a little bit of me. Who can ever fill her shoes? I hope someone...

I am so sorry - Andrea was part of my young adulthood and a big part of my political, social and sexual consciousness. A lot of my awareness and lessons came from her writings. She was an example to us all - she was used as a threat to us, held up as a bad example, but was actually our vanguard. Be who you are. Be as much as you can be. Don't let anyone else (male or female) define you. Good grief, we are still arguing about body hair. Still told it is our duty to stay looking young and sexualised. Still ourselves both consumer and a commodity.

Bless you Andrea - for changing the way we looked at the world, for really making a difference. After so much suffering, and so much vilification - now you are home at last.

And my condolences to those close to her and supported her. After the sadness of her passing and her loss, we will always celebrate her life and work.

i don't really have words. but she did.
my god, she did.

her words on violence towards women, raging out against porn, her own painful accounts of rape, her passion and her rage are still relatively new to me. still, struck a chord in me that will continue to hum with what she's given until i'm old and grey.

she reminds me that it's not just "okay"- it's fucking necessary to be angry -to feel rage- for all the atrocities and violations that have happened to my women-friends, to all the women in the world.

she's helped me better understand my girlfriend.

in helping me accept my rage as necessary, as vital and good, she's helped me love myself more.
such a gift. severely missed, never forgotten.

It's so interesting to me that Andrea passed somewhere between the pope's funeral and a royal wedding, and that hour after hour of papal coverage and news about Charles and Camilla subsumed the story of the passing of one of our great civil rights leaders.

We expect so much from our women leaders, yet she always chose to carry the burden of that expectation.

Rereading her autobiography, I love how she thought to use her strong, clear voice, her work, as a 'weapon of war' (in response to the war against women). She wanted her work to act as a 'landmine' that would 'explode the status quo'.

The idea of using one's work to literally blow up the status quo, to realize the power that a writer, an artist, can have to transform injustice, is yet another of her brillant ideas: sharp, fierce, and clear.

It's this clarity, and her fierceness, that I most appreciate.

It was a requirement in one of my women's studies courses to read 'Woman Hating.' I could just barely get through the chapter on foot binding---and I had to put the book aside. I wasn't able to finish it for several years.

Reading that book (that documentation) made me feel as if I had been slammed against a brick wall, but that reaction came from the depth of the truth and authenticity in it.

The world still needs this documentation about our shared history as women. It's a history that keeps repeating itself, a history too many women choose to distance themselves from, thinking (wrongly) that it will protect them---or that this story isn't connected to *them*.

She bore witness tirelessly. She was on the receiving end of so much hate----and somehow, she took that hate, turn it into a mirror on paper, and held it up to the haters so they would be forced to see their image reflected back at them. And all of us, in the course of reading her work, would be forced to bear witness, too.

She forced us all to *know*---we couldn't go around pretending we didn't know about this or that injustice---she made sure of that.

I 'm grateful for her blinding courage, intelligence, and commitment. The only way to repay such devotion is to pick up the mantle and contribute our own words, our time, our activism, and continue pushing the species to evolve.

Kim McCarten
Chicago

I'm 25, and Andrea Dworkin saved my life. I was born the year "Pornography:Men Possessing Women" was published, but she still managed to save me. She saved me from the pornography I grew up with, with my father, and gave me a voice, one that said, pornography hurts, and women have a right to say how much.

It's always strange to me whenever I hear somone attack Dworkin as being 'anti-sex.' I can honestly say, before I read 'Intercourse,' I thought sex would be impossible for me. I thought sex was what I'd seen in pornography, inherently humiliating for women, invasive, and then I read what she wrote, with her wit: "his penis is buried inside another human being; and his penis is surrounded by strong muscles that contract like a fist shutting tight and release with a force that pushes hard on the tender thing, always so vulnerable no matter how hard . . . his penis is gone--disappeared inside someone else, enveloped, smothered, in the muscled lining of flesh that he never sees . . . she has engulfed it inside her, and it is small compared with the vagina around it, pulling it in and pushing it out: clenching it, choking it . . . afterward, shrunk into oblivion . . . he finally surrenders, beat, defeated in endurance and strength both."

I remember how I felt when I read that. I cried, and smiled. I laughed. I had my dignity back.

Andrea spoke at Mills College during the student strike after trustees voted to admit men. She was the only national figure that I recall being there. She was an enormous inspiration and part of what kept the students strong and helped overturn the decision.

Whether you agreed with everything she said, most of what she said or none of it, there can be no denying that a strong, eloquent and vital voice for woman AND men is no longer with us. Her writing, however, is still available for future generations -- and I'm quite sure that the truth of what she wrote will be much more evident in years to come. She was truly ahead of her time.

Andrea Dworkin: She saw reality for what it was. She was brilliant. She fought the good fight.

*Right Wing Women* was an amazing, brave piece of work, an indictment of liberal feminism's failure to offer tens of millions of women a vision of freedom that didn't spell danger to them and their daughters. She challenged feminists to build a movement that could win those women's allegiance.

We lost her far too soon. I was only just now coming to know her thoughts...

I met Andrea after a speech she gave at California State University, Sacramento in the 80s. I brought all my books for her to sign and I ended up gving her a smooth rock I had in my pocket. I found it years ago in a small stream and I just felt it needed to go with her. She was surprised that I was giving her something so beautiful and so natural. Just for a moment, I glimpsed and beheld her beauty and her strong soul. She was fighting for all of us - she gave us her stories and made us look at the reality - not the fables we were taught. Her memory lives on.

Dear Andrea, thank you for giving so much of yourself so that we might have help becoming who we are. Your life was profoundly generous. I was very lucky to meet you for a moment at a reading in a NYC bookstore in 1990 when you stopped and listened to every single woman who wanted to speak to you. You must have been there all night. Far more meaningful was a note you wrote to me. I had written to you a
few years earlier to thank you for your courage and all the work
you did for us. The note you sent back said: "Things are very
hard for me and tonight was one of those nights. Your words
meant so much. Thank you." Imagine HER thanking one of US!
Please be at peace now, Andrea, and know that your work was
done and you will never be forgotten. You changed everything.
Although few have yet realized how profoundly, you really have
changed everything. Rest now, with my love.

I remember seeing Andrea at a book signing - she was reading from Heartbreak at an independent bookstore in Santa Cruz, CA. She came in on crutches and she had the careful movements of someone in a lot of pain. She seemed so sad. Someone asked her about happiness, and she replied that happiness wasn't a right, like life or liberty. But with all I had heard about her life, I hoped she was happy. And I am wishing that for her now.

I knew her - I published her first work of fiction, "The New Womans Broken Heart." Although we had not been in touch for some years and I disagreed with her on many, many points, I considered her a friend. Ironically, it was Friday that I just gave my publishing papers including letters Andrea wrote to me to the University of California at Berkeley's Bancroft Library and I was just in the process of writing to her to inform her of that fact. I will always cherish her memory, her stories and the good times we had together. My heart goes out to John.

Susan Hester

A true conversation with Andrea in San Francisco after lunch:
Me - "Ah, what a bright and beautifully afternoon it is, Andrea."
Andrea- "The fog is rolling in."
Me - "Come on..."
Andrea - "I'm Jewish."

Andrea Dworkin's clear-eyed perspectives on sexuality and pornography will be greatly missed in a world that still defines sexual liberation as women making themselves perpetually available for use. I will miss her courage, her articulacy in her pain, her solidarity with the powerless, her enormous wit and vivid perception. Most of all, women, children and decent men all over the world will mourn a great champion of human rights and dignity.
Farewell, greatheart.

She was a brave and beautiful artist and I thank her with all my heart for having the immense courage to keep speaking no matter how many times being told to stop. One of the most inspiring writers and women we will ever be fortunate enough to read and have our minds further opened by.

I was deeply saddened to learn of the loss of one of America's brightest, most powerful thinkers and leaders. She's significantly influenced the way I think about sex and gender. I learned so much from her writings -- it was edifying and inspiring and I'm truly grateful. I was first exposed to her theories and structures as an undergraduate at the University of Michigan. It was formative. I have only come to admire her courage and respect her intellect even more through the years. She was brave, and she will be profoundly missed.

Thank you Andrea for giving your life, in such a dangerous and uncompromising manner, for the benefit of other women.
You were a brave woman to live your life and speak your mind in a way that most of us never dare to.
Rest now and hope that another soul will follow yours and take on your mantle, inspired by you.

The world feels like a colder and more dangerous place now that Andrea has died.


Andrea was not only an extremely intelligent writer but she was also truly gifted. Her writing spoke not just to the head, but to the heart. When you read her work, or heard her speak, it was like she was writing or talking just for you. She had a way of personalising the political in a way that no other feminist writer/activist did. Andrea made women feel as if they mattered - if you were alone, politically isolated, struggling and desperate - she felt your pain and wrote for you. Andrea's writing revealed the truth, the horrifying truth, about the world in which we live, but the truth, in the way she wrote it, did not crush you. Instead she created movement and action, inspired you to see that there was a possibility of a better world, a better life for not just women, but every being and the planet itself. Andrea was someone who loved humanity, despite the atrocities she saw men inflict upon woman after woman, she still felt that humanity was better than this; that the standard for what a human is, and what a human should be, had to be better than what is currently accepted.


She was, and always will be, the embodiment of courage, love and hope.


My heart and support goes out to those who were closest to Andrea, particularly her partner John, who must be feeling such deep shock at such a devastating loss.

"A lifetime of resistance
Against patriarchal oppression
A lifelong unapologetic struggle
To free all womynkind

1946 - 2005
58 YEARS OF REBELLION
1946 - 2005
R.I.P ANDREA

A radical voice for wimmin
Speaking out against male violence
Inspiration for independent thought
From the courageous radical feminist warrior

1946 - 2005
58 YEARS OF SHEROISM
1946 - 2005
R.I.P MS. DWORKIN"

What a loss.

I attended one of her readings in Berkeley many years ago. Because of her radical stand and the unpopularity of her analysis, I was apprehensive, not certain how the audience would react. Well,she got a standing ovation. And when I think of her, I return to that moment. Her courage encourages and strengthens me.I agree with Gloria Steinem that she helped to move our cosciousness along. What she gave will live on and many of us will be thankful for her vision for the rest of our lives. I hope to live my life as if in an ongoing standing ovation to this brilliant, courageous woman. She stood for us; now I guess it's our turn to stand for her. Thanks, Andrea.

I am gutted. It is the end of an era; not of our resistance, but of an era. I am a Pakistani woman of 55, a mother, a grandmother. I read Letters from a War Zone when I was 36 and it did save my life, not in any cliched way, but really. Everything I have done, thought and understood since then has evolved from reading that book. It laid bare what I had known and experienced. I went on to read all Andrea's books. I wrote to Andrea to tell her this. Even if my voice was one of thousands, I felt it was important for her to know what she had given me. She replied with great humility.

At first I loved and looked up to Andrea as a child does to its mother, always wanting clarity, the truth, and cherishing the guidance when it came in articles, speeches, interviews and books. I grew from there into an adult and an equal, because this is the power that the truth gave me. It demanded that I grow in stature in the world and stand shoulder to shoulder with brave women, by becoming a brave woman myself. No other words, no other actions in the world had allowed me the full possibility of seeing myself in this way; someone of great worth and endless potential. Always her gendered analysis was the key. The abiding question it left me with in any circumstance was "where are the women in this, and what is happening to them?", the question that followed was "where am I in this, and what is happening to me?" Asking these questions requires brutal honesty, and no place for complicity. I have lost a friend and a sister, and the way that I can honour this very precious relationship is by carrying on the resistance to male supremacy and domination.

I found out this morning that one of the most important feminists has died. From a personal viewpoint, Andrea Dworkin was inspirational. From a feminist perspective, she was vital.

I always thought that Dworkin's work, although difficult and punishing to read, really cut to the truth about how I felt about love and sex. I hope in the future more people see past the shocking nature of her writing and discover that her words, far from being so radical as to be consigned to the status of quirky, quotable sidenote, were actually a decent assessment of the state of the relationship between men and women. I am genuinely gutted to hear about her death and extend my deepest condolences to her family and friends.

Andrea Dworkin justified and put words to a rage and pain one feels as a woman, thereby providing a relief to which I am profoundly grateful

Like you all, I felt immense sadness on hearing of Andrea's death.

Yet, reading the comments posted here and knowing that this sadness is shared gives me hope.

It gives me hope because in paying tribute to Andrea's life and work we are also - publicly, proudly, angrily, loudly - stating our feminism and our commitment to continuing the struggle to end men's violence against women.

Andrea's anger, her passion, commitment, intelligence, bravery and humanity will be much much missed. But her writings will continue to inspire us and her cause will live on.

What an amazing legacy.

Thank you Andrea.

as a raped woman and mother of a beautiful 8 year old daughter assulted by a paedophile,its good to have you standing at my shoulder

Friend’s, sister’s, women,

Until this morning (BBC Radio 4, UK) I had never heard of Andrea Dworkin - and what a shame only to hear of her at her passing at such a young age.

I have often been accused of being aggressive - not true, I am just a bit defensive having spent almost every day of my life being attacked by society - my age, my weight, the way I look, and yet I am a young, slim and attractive woman, intelligent too; Still, the comments and put downs come in thick and fast usually and most often by ugly, fat, balding middle-aged men! I am paid an average of 18% less that my male counterparts but seem to be working twice as hard for it.

The word ‘Feminist’ in our Oxford English Dictionary means ‘Pro-Women’ and how could I, a woman, be Anti Women?

I have read many of the comments here and on hearing Radio4’s Women’s Hour this morning must say that I miss Andrea too. Not wishing to miss out on her words of wisdom I will find out what she had to say by reading her books etc. and add that we women must keep on where she left off in memory of her and for the future of ourselves, our daughters and our daughter’s daughters.

Georgia x

(REF: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/womanshour/ )

She was a warrior - yet gentle. Passionate and beautiful. I'm middle-aged and tired but kept on living because of Andrea Dworkin. I owe part of my sanity to her. In my 20s I was radical, confused and half-mad because of what had happened to me. Reading Andrea Dworkin - and seeing her on Channel 4's After Dark (UK) was a revelation. I never met her but will honour her by re-reading her work. Thank you for saving my life.

Andrea spoke about me. She spoke about so many of us. And she spoke for us too.

She had a way of getting right to the crux of the matter instantly. No messing around, no apologising for what she was going to say, no fluffing around. She said it, right out, right there. She hit the spot with every word she wrote.

I have never been as angry, inspired, fired up, as when I read 'Life and Death'. Every time I read it, the same happens. For me, that book hits right between the eyes, and you can't hide any more from the things that sometimes I would like to pretend didn't exist.

The fact that Andrea has been so vilified is proof, to me, that she was dangerous to the heteropatriarchal establishment. If she wasn't, then the malestream media would not have felt the need to humiliate, dismiss and hurt this amazing woman. But she was dangerous to them, she spoke the truth so clearly, and the only way to escape that was to slate her.

I remember reading the Observer article in which she talked about having been drugged and raped. I cried, and nodded at so much of what she said. And cried some more. I remember her saying something about how, afterwards, she couldn't get her head round the fact that people were just getting on with their day-to-day lives. How could they still be shopping, talking, laughing, when this had happened?

I felt the significance and meaning of what she said acutely.

And then came the backlash. The criticisms, questionings, and downright accusations directed at her following her discussion of her experience of drug rape stunned me. For *any* woman to be disbelieved, mocked and criticised after discussing their experience of rape, is an appalling indictment of the misogyny in the society we live in. But somehow, for Andrea herself to experience this felt even worse.

It felt like those who had criticised her work for so long, were now criticising her for speaking out about her own experience of it too, as an extension of the criticism of her work.

At first I wanted to say, even if you don't agree with her beliefs, her feminist politics, you must still believe her account of this further annihilation of her as a woman by being drugged and raped.

And then I realised that her work, her politics, her beliefs, are *all* about when women talk about this annihilation of themselves. The two can't be separated.

To dismiss Andrea Dworkin's work, is to dismiss women's experiences of rape and sexual violence against women.

To dismiss women's experiences of rape and sexual violence, is to dismiss Andrea Dworkin's work.

The two are inextricably linked as they lead from one to the other. Andrea talked about women's experiences of rape and sexual violence.

She talked about my experiences of rape and sexual violence, about Linda Marchiano's experiences of rape and sexual violence, about Nicole Brown Simpson's experiences of rape and sexual violence, about prostituted women's experiences of rape and sexual violence, and about her own experiences of rape and sexual violence.

She helped women to frame their own experiences within the context of the misogyny and patriarchal society we live in.

We have lost an outstanding warrior, and the only fitting tribute is to continue what she did. To speak, to challenge, to care, to cry, to shout.

Rest in peace Andrea, my sister.

This loss is unbearable. I cannot stand to think of a world without Andrea. She was a moral center of radical feminism and she defined what radical feminism meant for me. I simply cannot imagine who I would have been without her and how I would have navigated this world without her work. Her passion and absolute refusal to cower in the face of patriarchy helped to give me the courage to speak even when I knew I was going to get it from the boys for speaking the unspeakable. How many of us remember the first time we read her and said, yes, this is what I have been waiting for all my life. I was sixteen and comatose and then I read Woman Hating. The world was never the same again. I remember when I first saw an anti-pornography slide show and just couldn’t understand how “feminists” could be pro-porn. At first I was confused and then crushed --- I felt like I had been deserted by the movement. And then Andrea wrote Pornography and thus began my life’s work. I also have to say that for me Andrea being Jewish was so important as I had had no experience of Jewish women being feminists or intellectuals. I was born to European Jews still dealing with the aftermath of the holocaust. Jews were meant to stay silent in the presence of non-Jews because they couldn’t be trusted. It never occurred to me that a Jewish woman could be an activist or a public intellectual. In England, Jews were the disappeared of the feminist movement. Andrea helped shaped my identity on so many levels and helped to give me a life worth living. I want to thank all the wonderful radical feminists I have spoken to in the last few days as you have been such a source of support. To feel devastated is one thing, but to be devastated and alone is beyond tolerance. Andrea helped form this community of radical feminists and now we have to collectively deal with the loss. At the end of her BBC film (the one they won’t distribute here), she says about the women everywhere who are brutalized “we miss her and we want her back.” Need I say more?

Gail Dines

The death of Andrea Dworkin is an enormous loss for American feminism and for the world of literature. Dworkin's genius brought us the brilliant RIGHT WING WOMEN and INTERCOURSE, for which I will be forever grateful.

I feel deep sorrow for John Stoltenberg and Dworkin's close friends. A very great, masterful writer and woman of profound compassion has left us far too early.

Pace, sister.

She is my hero. She made it easier for me to live and speak without apology.

Andrea Dworkin didn't just get womyn to think-- she got womyn to LIVE. She got womyn to entirely transform, and that's what put her in a different category from even highly distinguished feminist thinkers and activists. Every wommon I know who went through the profound personal transformation known as becoming a radical feminist was initially inspired by Andrea Dworkin-- or inspired by someone else who was.

I owe a debt of gratitude to Andrea Dworkin for the incredible breadth with which she loved womyn, even womyn like me who didn't come from beaten-down backgrounds and who had to be dragged into the feminist movement because it removed them from "comfortable" lives. She has a truly magnetic personality and written persona.

Andrea, the incredible responsibility to live as courageously and as confrontationally as you has been passed on to us, the younger generation, and believe me when I say we shall not fail.

I am sure that the life and works of ANDREA DWORKIN will continue to shed light on the dark-side of life,and inspire others to fight injustice,hypocrisy and prejudice wherever it lurks.Now and in the future.

I am saddened by her passing

I sit here with tears in my eyes, trying to understand my grief. I feel overwhelmed with loss. Andrea Dworkin was a great writer, thinker, feminist and cultural icon. Her views on women in our patriarchal society should be required reading for all freshmen in all universities--why aren't they?

I will miss her courage and her unwavering dedication to liberation for women. I will always be struck by how strongly people react to her work--which to me, is a testament to how much truth it reveals--truth that makes people uncomfortable.

Andrea, I love you and thank you for your bravery and honesty.

I had the privilege of hearing Andrea speak at Reed College while an undergraduate. It would not be an overstatement to say that she defined my worldview at a profound level. Now, twenty years later, I still remember that evening as a moment in which I was in the presence of genius -- injured, angry, unflinching, and revolutionary.

I have read and absorbed and been changed by many other feminist writers and thinkers since that time. My feminism may not be the same as hers. But there is no denying how essential she was, and is, to the woman I am today.

Andrea Dworkin, I wish you peace and light. May your words continue to be a beacon, or a target of scorn -- anything but forgotten, anything but ignored.

Travel well, Andrea. You shook the very foundations that I stood on. Taught me that anger is not hatred, that rage can be constructive. More importantly, you taught me to see the women in my life--my mother, my sister, my wife, my friends--with different eyes. And to challenge the men in my life...to not remain silent to the covert actions that I understood all to well because I, too, am a man.

John, I am sorry for the loss of your companion and sister.

Travel well...

Any time someone who is not afraid to speak out on behalf of the exploited and oppressed dies, it is a loss for us all.

My deepest condolences to those who accompanied the life of this amazing woman of coraje (anger) and corazón (heart).

She will be missed. Her work and her courage on behalf of women have been an inspiration.

We have lost a great woman.

I met Andrea at a writers conference and was delighted with her approachability and saneness. She was angry and justifiably so, I was also very angry and she helped me find the words to express myself. I am forever grateful to her for her voice. The world is much poorer with her passing and women more endangered than ever despite all her hard work. Her work "Pornography" has shaped my life as a librarian and my point of view on the subject. I am also glad for that. My sympathies to her family and the world for this loss.

Andrea Dworkin was a true visionary and, like other true visionaries, her ideas threatened vested interests. To thwart the nakedness of her truth, she was personally mercilously villified.

Research increasingly supports the common-sense argument that sexually violent pornography encourages sexual violence. But, alas, there will always be people who say that cigarettes don't cause cancer (a view that is especially prevalent among those on the payroll of the cigarette makers).

Today, we see the phenomenon of the explosive growth of the multi-billion dollar porn industry on the Internet.

The earth has lost a great human being.

Patricia G. Barnes

I will always remember her. Her ideas, her bravery and her story will inspire and inform many people all through the ages. She did an incredible job living her life. Good works live on!

in some ways, my life would have been easier if i'd never read andrea dworkin's work.

how many hours have i argued with people who didn't read her work, wouldn't read her work, or referenced her work out of context in service to the political aims of a woman-hating world? or, how many times did i sit back silently and pretend i didn't know what pornography meant, what pornography did, does, all the time to women? or, how many times have i risked divulging the "dirty secret" about myself - that i am an anti-pornography activist - only to see looks of shock and betrayal on the faces of people who are supposed to be my friends and comrades?

i wish more people knew andrea dworkin, but to know her, you have to read her work, and that is hard. reading her work, you have to give something up, give up things you think you know about the world, and that is hard.

you can hide all alone with what you know is the truth about pornography, but the knowledge never leaves you. hiding with it feels like a choice, but the truth is, we hide because we feel lonely and alienated. because it's too hard to try to explain, yet again, and to risk, yet again.

we are more alienated now that andrea is gone. what voice we have, we owe in part to her brilliant writing. her life. i would not be me if it hadn't been for her. she modeled the ability and the necessity to look critically and with rage at the world, and this is how i look at the world now, and even at her own work.

i used to see her occasionally walking the streets of park slope. i'd look around at the others on the street and wonder if they realized that there was someone really special in their presence. she looked like an ordinary person, blended in fairly well (not too hard in nyc), but i knew she was different. it made me feel special to walk the same streets, shop in the same bookstores as she did. once, i approached her. "i've read your work" i said simply, keeping a respectful distance, but also keeping my voice low so as not to draw attention. "it's meant a lot to my life."

what else can you say? what i meant was, "i recognize you." in all senses of the word.

i hope she got that. and i hope we all strive to be more recognizable, at least to each other.

With Andrea's passing we have lost a great soul. May her words always be read. May they continue to inspire us to think and to question and to rage. Andrea was a true warrior. She did not allow herself to be silenced and she presented the truth of women's reality unflinchingly. As a woman, she mattered, and her words still do.

I will miss her so much.

Caron L Capizzano
NYC

Do you remember the first time your read Andrea Dworkin’s work? I do. In the summer of my junior year in high school, I saw the documentary Killing Me Softly about abusive images of women in the media. I had never thought about these ideas and they made a lot of sense. I went to the library to learn more and I found Pornography: Men Possessing Women by Andrea Dworkin. Andrea’s writing was ferocious and brilliant; it leapt off the page and shook me by the lapels. I read the book squatting in the stacks without stopping because the words spoke so directly to me and to what I needed in order to develop critical thinking about gender. I remember thinking as a kid—Is this legal?—because if anyone wants to repress ideas, this book has so many new and earth shattering ones, it would be where a censor would start. That was 22 years ago. Now I teach Andrea’s work in my Feminist Legal Theory class. My students find her the most troubling, enraging, and/or inspiring writer. Her writing infuriates (“When the police refuse to help you, you begin to believe that he can hurt you or kill you and it will not matter because you do not exist”). It scares (“I want you to feel what it feels like when it happens over and over and over and over and over and over and over again: because that is what prostitution is”). It buoys (“There has been—despite the cruelty of exploitation and forced sex—a consistent vision for women of a sexuality based on a harmony that is both sensual and possible”). It emboldens (“I want to see the men’s movement make a commitment to ending rape because that is the only meaningful commitment to equality”). In its courage, it thrills (“‘Are you a bisexual?’ some woman screamed over the pandemonium, the hisses and shouts merging into a raging noise. ‘I’m a Jew,’ I answered; then, a pause, ‘and a lesbian, and a woman.’ And a coward. Jew was enough.”). It shocks (“What I am saying is that every one of us has the responsibility to be the woman Marc Lepine wanted to murder”). My life has been deeply enhanced by being able to read Andrea’s words and hear her speak. I know I’m not alone in that statement. Andrea was a warrior for all of us and her death is an immeasurable loss to the movement she loved, and to every person who yearns for a deeper humanity.

December, 1976. On a visit to Boston to meet my new boyfriend's family, I am browsing in a bookstore near Harvard Square. I am 26, recently divorced, and just beginning to sense the bigger picture. Suddenly, I see it: Woman Hating, Andrea Dworkin, just the words green/black/orange against a stark white cover. I am stunned, the title alone instantly rewrinkling my brain. I buy it quickly, hiding it from the boyfriend, and after feigning the need for a nap, I escape to a small bedroom upstairs and read all afternoon. A few days later, the boyfriend proposes marriage, but I have the big picture now and refusing is effortless. Not laughing is more difficult.

Almost 30 years later, I think of all the choices that followed, informed by the truthtelling of Andrea and all the radical feminists of the Second Wave, who not only saw it and wrote it, but found ways to get it on the bookshelves so that late-bloomers like myself could find it. How to adequately express gratitude for showing me that my life is my own, but only if I'm willing to know the truth?

Andrea did far more than her share. There is more truth to be told, in a social climate with propaganda devices that make 1974 seem quaint. The work goes on, and because of Andrea's fierce uncompromising courage we have more clarity about what that work is.

Introduce Andrea's work to a young person today, and help tomorrow be informed by her brilliance.

Last night I reread some of Pornography: Men Possessing Women and Right-Wing Women--something I had done many times but not in a few years. Amazing how much of what she said seems even more relevant now: for instance, her remarks about terror as a means of enforcement for male power. More than any other feminist writer of any era, she gave us our dignity by offering us the unvarnished truth--especially those of us who have suffered the most at the hands of men. It's miserable, hollow, deprived, to think that from now on we will have to live in a world without her, and worse to remember how horribly she was treated by so many for being so brilliant and so honest. While I have often heard it said that reading her is painful or frightening or infuriating, I have always found it comforting, simply because she does not lie; she does not prettify or shrink from difficulty in any of its forms. It's the liars and the deluded who scare me; they've already shown they have too much at stake protecting themselves for anyone else to be able to trust them. I agree that someday Andrea Dworkin will be seen as one of the greatest thinkers, and writers, of her time. The tragedy is that that should've happened on a wide scale while she was alive. We'd all be a lot closer to meaningful freedom if it had. Her words were the best antidote to the insipid and the false I've ever encountered. One of the few who could cut through the panic of fanaticism, she was punished, and the threat to fanaticism of her influence limited, by being labeled "fanatic" herself. The only happy thing I can say today is that I am grateful beyond measure that she lived and wrote at all--she saved my intellectual life and probably my physical one as well--and I'm glad to see so many of us here mourning her passing. We have a lot of work left to do, and we owe it to her to embark on it.

"I wish that every human life might be pure transparent freedom" - Simone De Beauvoir.

Ms. Dworkin was a champion for women on so many levels. She will always have a place of priviledge in my library and in my heart.

What she wrote about, people generally don't want to be reminded of, although they know it's true - as with slavery, the Holocaust, child sexual abuse.
People who are 'victims' are supposed to be inarticulate in the expression of their pain so that the powerful can pity them, not to use their pen as a flaming sword.
For exposing the brutality and sexual violence that is inherent(so far)in human society, and for making your own deep knowledge of it art...thank you Andrea.

Here is the obituary I wrote in the Guardian. I will miss Andrea terribly. She was a warrior.

Andrea Dworkin

Feminist writer and tireless campaigner against pornography and the violent oppression of women

Julie Bindel
Tuesday April 12, 2005
The Guardian

Andrea Dworkin at the Edinburgh Book Festival. Photo: Murdo Macleod
Andrea Dworkin at the Edinburgh Book Festival. Photo: Murdo Macleod

Andrea Dworkin, who has died aged 58, was a feminist who came to represent the fierce debate on pornography and sexual violence. The author of 13 books of feminist theory, fiction and poetry, she was a formidable campaigner against violence towards women.

To the libertarians and pornographers, who argue that pornography is harmless, she was a man-hating misery. But for her admirers around the world, she was an inspiration and great political thinker.

Article continues
Since the mid-1970s, Dworkin symbolised women's war against sexual violence. Heroine or hate figure, her name became an adjective, used and misused to describe the type of feminist we are supposed to strive not to be.

Although her previous books, including the notorious Pornography: Men Possessing Women (1981), were widely read in feminist circles, both in the US and Britain, Dworkin achieved fame when, in 1983 along with legal academic Catharine MacKinnon, she drafted and promoted the civil rights law recognising pornography as sex discrimination in Minneapolis.

In 1980 Andrea asked MacKinnon to help her bring a civil rights suit for Linda Marchiano, who as Linda Lovelace had been coerced into making the film Deep Throat. They discovered that, under current law, there was nothing they could do.

Three years later, Dworkin and MacKinnon were commissioned by the Minneapolis city council to draft a local ordinance that would embody the legal principle that pornography violates the civil rights of women, and is "hate speech". Public hearings on the ordinance were organised across the US, and it was the first time in history that victims of pornography testified directly before a government body.

This sent the pornographers wild. Shouting about "freedom of speech" and the first amendment. Al Goldstein, founder of Screw Magazine, said that he would "rather suck dick than have sex with Andrea Dworkin".

When Larry Flint published cartoons in Hustler magazine depicting Andrea in a sexually explicit way, she sued the publisher, but lost. After receiving anonymous death threats, she hired security whenever she spoke publicly.

Dworkin was born in New Jersey and had what she described as an idyllic childhood in many ways. She attended a progressive school and grew up to lead a bohemian life in the 1960s.

Her political career began when she was 18. While a student at Bennington College, Vermont, she was arrested at the United States Mission to the UN, protesting against the Vietnam war. Dworkin was sent to the Women's House of Detention in Greenwich, New York, where she endured several violent internal examinations.

Her testimony was reported in newspapers around the world and helped bring public pressure on the New York City government to close the detention centre down. It worked.

She graduated in literature from Bennington in 1968, and soon after moved to Amsterdam and married a Dutchman. Among the events that led her to the anti-violence movement was the abuse she endured in that relationship. "I was a battered wife," she said, "and pornography entered into it. Both of us read it, and it helped give me the wrong idea of what a woman was supposed to be for a man."

She left the marriage in 1971 aged 25, and fled the country, describing that time as her "living as a fugitive, sleeping on people's floors and having to prostitute for money to live."

Dworkin then met a feminist named Ricki Abrams, who took her in and proposed they write a book together entitled Woman Hating, but Abrams left it to Dworkin to write.

However, it took a sit-in, supported by feminist authors such as Phyllis Chesler at the office of the publishers to persuade them to bring out a paperback edition of Woman Hating in 1974.

That year she met the writer John Stoltenberg. They lived together for more than 30 years, with Dworkin encouraging John in his work to educate young men about rape and sexual assault.

In 1999 she wrote of being drugged and raped in a hotel room in Europe, the trauma of which led her to take heavy medication to enable her to sleep.

In recent years, she had become increasingly disabled. Operations to replace her knees, worn down by years of obesity, left her in constant pain.

Last year, during a visit to London, she made contact with the Guardian and was given commissions to write on topics such as the trial of Scott Peterson, convicted of killing his pregnant wife, and living with disability. In the past few years Dworkin had been, she believed, cast into the wilderness as a writer because of her stance against pornography.

"It's heartbreaking," she wrote to me, "to know I am censored in my own country."

But Dworkin was no feminist separatist or man-hater. She despised those men who choose to hurt women and children. In Heartbreak (2002) she described the deep sense of betrayal she felt from men in the political left who used pornography.

"I seemed to learn the lesson that pornography trumped political principle and honour," she says.

Although rarely described as such, Dworkin was an intellectual. The book she was working on when she died is Writing America: How Novelists Invented And Gendered A Nation, an exploration of the contribution that writers such as Hemingway and Faulkner have made to American identity.

She also had a brilliant, though wicked, sense of humour. Her kindness and humility surprised those who expected to meet a frothing Rottweiler.

The last time I spoke to her, a few weeks ago, we were talking about what it was that motivated her to carry on fighting for women, when she had suffered enough in her life. "Julie", she said in that famous, gravelly but soft voice, "I see it like this. All women are on a leash, because we are all oppressed. But those who get to adulthood without being raped or beaten have a longer leash than those who were. It should be that the ones with the longest leashes do more to help others. But it doesn't work that way, so we are the ones that fight the fight."

When asked in this newspaper how she would like to be remembered, she replied:

"In a museum, when male supremacy is dead. I'd like my work to be an anthropological artefact from an extinct, primitive society." She meant it.

Her partner, John Stoltenberg, survives her.

· Andrea Dworkin, feminist and writer, born September 26 1946; died April 9 2005

The loss of Andrea Dworkin while the condition of women is so terrible leaves me feeling mostly frightened.

That's what I keep thinking - what a loss, what a great loss to all of us. Whenever I read her or heard her I found new ways in which she had managed to put into words, eloquent powerful words, the things I felt or thought or just somehow knew but had never managed to articulate. And when I met her I was quite overwhelmed by the sense of kindness she exuded. For one who could write so fiercely she came across as gentle and funny and wise. And now I feel so sad. As someone else posted above, I always felt better somehow for knowing she was out there fighting the good fight. Perhaps she is still out there. These lines of from Edna St Vincent Millay's Dirge Without Music came to mind ... "Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave. I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned" . I am not resigned to her loss but I hope she has gone gently and is at peace now.

Last night as I was struggling to write a paper about my reaction to the Holocaust, I thought to myself, how would Andrea Dworkin put this? Feeling newly liberated, I let my fingers fly over the keyboard. I am coming into my power as a writer and as a woman because of her.

It is so difficult to put horror into words, but Andrea Dworkin never held anything back. Like the Beat writers she admired in her youth, Andrea Dworkin bent the world so that no one who read her words would ever look at reality the same way again.

I am very saddened today to hear about her passing. We have lost a great voice, an amazing teacher, thinker, writer, and fighter.

Many blessings today to her, to her husband, and to the people who loved her around the world.

To put it simply, I felt a little safer knowing someone like Andrea was in this world, fighting my fight, having a heart that was constantly breaking and constantly healing over all the terrible and beautiful things that happen to women in this world. It doesn't matter whether I agreed with everything she said, that's not even close to being what it's about - it's about her dedication, her honesty, her lack of shame and fear that made her a beautiful spirit that the world was blessed to have.

Andrea, Je n'arrive pas à croire que tu es partie. Je ne suis pas arrivée à faire traduire même un seul de tes livres en France.Andrea, avec toi disparait une des féministes les plus extraordinaires de ce siècle. Tu étais courageuse, déterminée,et pleine de compassion. Tu étais en colère,et tu prenais le temps et la peine de ciseler tes phrases pour que leur beauté porte leur vérité à l'incandescence. Dire "tu étais", quand je pensais t'écrire bientôt, dans une semaine, dans un mois, sans savoir que le temps pressait. Je n'ai pas pu te dire Adieu. Je n'ai pas pu te dire merci--ou pas assez. Je n'ai pas pu te dire que je t'aime. Mon Andrea, si triste et si forte,si drôle et si désespérée,merci, Adieu, je t'aime.

Andrea,
I can't believe you are gone. I haven't managed to get even one of your
books translated in France. Andrea, with you disappears one of the most
extraordinary feminists of this century. You were courageous, determined and
full of compassion. You were angry and you took the time to polish each
sentence so that its beauty made truth incandescent. To be saying, "you
were" when I thought I would write you soon, in a week, a month, without
ever knowing that time was running short. I haven't been able to say
farewell. I haven't been able to say thank you - or to say it enough. I
haven't been able to say I love you. My Andrea, so sad and so strong, so
funny and so desperate. Farewell, I love you. christine

translation by Martin Dufresne

Andrea Dworkin is dead. No pomp, no ceremony, no FOX news, no CNN, no People Magazine, no Oprah. She wasn't a vegetable tied to a tube, she wasn't a demigouge with dementia, she wasn't a jucy celebrity getting married/divorced/whatever... The world is not safe for women. Anyone who thinks otherwise is just supporting the system that's killing us. That was Andrea's message, don't forget it.
I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore!

Andrea Dworkin's words and work and just her being in the world have helped me to keep on putting one foot in front of the other, morning after morning, day after day, week after week, year after year, for a long time now, for the sake of the people of women. She may have been taken from us, but she's left thousands of us to carry on with the work she began until women are at last free.

She'll shine on, in her words, in her work, in us. I'll miss knowing she's alongside us, but I'll work even harder, now that she's gone. I bet we all will.

And the haters won't be able to hurt her anymore, or try to, and honestly, that gives me some comfort.

In radical feminist sisterhood and solidarity,

Heart
(Cheryl Lindsey Seelhoff)
The Margins
http://www.gentlespirit.com/margins

I read about her this morning in the Post on the way to work. I had heard about her before. Politically, I was inclined to dismiss her. But something about her quotes in her obituary, and the fact that she lived with a man for thirty years, touched me. I go to this online collection, and find myself moved to tears by her writing on the Simpson case.

Also, conservative David Frum's online comments in National Review Online is affecting:
http://www.nationalreview.com/frum/frum-diary.asp

I behold a life well lived, and a passionate, compassionate, articulate soul.

A Tribute to Andrea Dworkin, who died on April 9, 2005, at the age of
58 in Washington, DC.

Dear Andrea,
It is with unspeakable sadness that I say goodbye to you. Your writings transformed the lives of so many who fight for human rights and social justice. Like most prophets, your work was dismissed, ridiculed, and worst of all neglected. I was lucky to call you a friend for twenty-four years. I remember rushing the stage after a speech you gave at San Francisco State in 1981, dumbfounded by your electrifying rhetoric. I hugged you. You did not turn me away. Enveloped in your arms, I fell in love. You were for real. I already called myself a radical feminist activist, pouring my blood on entryways of beauty contests and Ms. Nude contests, challenging those who entered that they were "walking on the blood of raped women"--a concept coined by friend and mentor, Nikki Craft. But when I read your book, Our Blood: Prophecies and Discourses on Sexual Politics, I was stunned by your provocative language. In your unmistakably unique, gritty, and ruthless style, you challenged every concept I held. That day I met you, I knew you were a true blood-sister.
I admit your books scared me. They were like viewing photos of senseless war dead; your words ripped blinders that had served to optimistically sanitize the ugly truth of woman hating, white supremacy, and class. I was simultaneously drawn and repelled by your descriptions of these long-neglected realities.
Thank you for your scathing critiques of academia and its capacity to destroy budding female writers. Thank you for your decades long critique of gender as a social fiction, one that cramps human potential, and for pushing our culture toward acknowledging the sheer beauty and wonder of human similarities, rather than obsessing over differences. Thank you for giving a voice to the destitute, sexually abused, homeless women who prostitute and pose in pornography. You dared say that pornographers and pimps should never have more free speech than the women they profit from using. Brilliant.
I especially want to thank you for your unwavering refusal to sell out. Your courage to challenge every aspect of patriarchy, from fashion dictates to pornography, leaves me in awe. In my mind's eye I see you walking away from me after a dinner one night in New York City, wearing your comfortable overalls and untamed hair, making your way home by train to Brooklyn, and I realize there is no human I will ever share time with on this planet who will be your equal. Your contributions to the world through your defiant speeches and impeccable writing remain a gift to last an eternity. I only hope people don't wait that long to experience your work.-- Ann Simonton. April 10th, 2005

To hear a raw two hour tribute to Andrea Dworkin from yesterday April 11th and to access an Internet memorial please go to:
http://www.mediawatch.com/news.html

Andrea Dworkin mattered.
She illustrated that women could use their voices and stand firm without pandering to the commercial, the commodifying. She was true, and true feminists--militant, passive, traditional, of whatever stripe--need to gain fire from her passing. Let this teach us that people are not forever, that times do change, and that we can stand firm in our beliefs to attain that solidarity, that strength of feminist voices that was representative of 60s, 70s, 80s feminism. When we become lazy and complacent with our political and social gains--regardless of their size and/or perceived importance--the feminist spirit will truly suffer. We can't afford to let that happen.
Thanks to Andrea Dworkin for her compassion and for adding fire to that feminist spirit, and here's to hoping we keep it going!

Andrea Dworkin

Thank you for caring and for your insight.

Thank you for expressing your rage openly and without apology.

Thank you for saying what most women are too afraid to say.

Indeed, Thank you for not being afraid.

Thank you for sharing Andrea.

Andrea Dworkin changed the way I thought.

I was able to tell her in person how grateful I was for her work when she came to Scotland a few years ago. I recognised her while she was browsing in a bookstore and being a huge fan I had to introduce myself to her and shake her hand. I told her I thought she was the greatest advocate of human and civil rights since Martin Luther King and she thanked me the way people do when have never been thanked for anything.

The next day I went along to her reading and lecture about 'Scapegoat'. It was as moving and stirring as you'd imagine and at the end when everyone had gone I reintroduced myself to her and was touched that she not only remembered me but that she autographed all the books I brought with some really inspiring inscriptions. She made a very sweet joke about the entire Andrea Dworkin library I had with me. 'It's nice to see all of my books in once place,' she said, 'that's NOT my office!'

She was a gauge and a prophet. Hers is one of the few contemporary voices which will still be heard in 150 years time.

Dear Andrea,
Thank you for all that you so selflessly gave over and over again. Many blessings to you, on this, the next part of your lifes journey. Namaste dear warrior...namaste.
Ally

o small you
sitting in a tree-
sitting in a treetop
riding on a greenest
riding on a greener
(o little i)
riding on a leaf
o least who
sing small thing
dance little joy
(shine most prayer)
ee cummings

We heard you, Andrea. Even some of us white, het, American, middle-class, middle-aged, Xian guys. That's something.
Thank you - for taking me by the arm and saying, "Look!" - for showing me how it might be - how it could be, better. How I could be. Will be. Thank you.

You do shine, Andrea. Shine on.

In Loving Memory of Andrea Dworkin
4/11-12/2005

by Paul S.

It was with great sadness and shock that I learned yesterday of
Andrea's death. I can only be thankful it was peaceful. God knows her life wasn't.

Andrea spent over thirty years fighting, with public activism and
published words (the latter an expression of the former, always) one of the most brutal and cruel forms of oppression known to humanity: men's dominance over women; its ideology, male supremacy; and several of its institutions, including the pornography industry.

Brave soul. Braver than any of us will know. The additionally
corrupt power of organized crime and mainstream corporations have had significant ties, over these many decades of her and our feminist struggles, to that one deeply misogynous and incalculably callous industry; and they have worked very hard, the pornographers, along with many other groups, all along the political spectrum, to discredit and demean Andrea. I know this hurt her deeply. And she went on, despite this on-going hurt.

It was not only the misogyny and multiple forms of ethnic hate, that constitutes and defines the bulk of pornography, that Andrea fought against. There were many other battles in her life, a life thoroughly and sincerely dedicated to working on behalf of women to free them from systems of utterly grotesque and utterly commonplace harm: rape, battery, prostitution, poverty, racism, anti-Semitism, and child sexual abuse.

Wondrous soul. How could anyone withstand and absorb all the
violence she knew viscerally, emotionally, and intellectually? How does a spirit co-exist with such knowledge: holding, as she did, in her astoundingly sensitive and sophisticated psyche,
thousands of stories of rape, told to her, face to face, by the
survivors, after her lectures and speeches? How does one find a way to work with that diligently unrepressed, undenied knowledge of so much harm, done every minute of the day, day after day, to a population which, were it not for female infanticide, would even more greatly outnumber the primary population of those who actively oppress women and girls, or passively remain silent on these issues?

Militant soul. Andrea was fierce in battle, always understanding the larger war each battle was designed to end, slowly, always too slowly.

Personally, she was one of the most influential people in my life.
Her books and other work altered, permanently, how I saw the world. She opened my eyes to gendered cruelties so ubiquitous that they go unnoticed, unchallenged, and unpunished most of the time. She has inspired me, for over twenty years, to work towards a world without male supremacy and the many, many atrocities which flow from its premises, promises, and practices.

Andrea worked so much harder than I did; I have some shame about this, but what tempers that shame is the awareness that Andrea worked harder than anyone I have known, to make sure those cruelties were named as such, and WERE noticed, and WERE challenged. What even she could not do, what the last thirty plus years of feminist activism has not been able to do, to date, is make sure the sadists and pornographers and pimps are appropriately held accountable. That has yet to happen. And so there is still no justice (let alone equality), although there is more awareness now than thirty years ago. And if we make sure others read all of Dworkin's fifteen books, younger activists can learn what is increasingly not spoken about in the mainstream media, unless to further exploit women by eroticizing and sensationalizing misogynous crimes.

Andrea Dworkin was a hero. She was my hero.

Her courage exceeded the limits of self-care. Her life was given to the cause of women's freedom from male supremacist cultures.

There is a lot of work yet to be done, and it will be done with one less living example of how not to give up. We need role models, more now than ever.

It is never a good time to lose a strong leader with integrity, which Andrea certainly was. But we all must try and move her work forward, and keep her legacy alive, and realize that distant dream of a world without male dominance.

I heard Andrea Dworkin the first time in 1988 in Sweden when she was the main speaker on the subject of Pornograhphy, a Conference hosted by the National Organisation of Battered Women's Shelters in Sweden - ROKS. I still have her voice recorded and I was filled with admiration and awe of how we tackled the issue of pornograhpy in Sweden. She turned my head around. I suddenly understood.
I later heard her talk at a Conference in Brighton, UK in 1996, "Violence, Abuse and Women's Citizenship."
I hope to keep her work going.

Things I learned from Andrea Dworkin:

Sometimes our pain is just that, it is not something we move through, or grow from, it is just pain...

You can be a radical feminist and a kind and loving woman at the same time...

Misogyny is like the air we breathe, it is so present most people don't even notice that it exists...

It is okay to question whether rape and sex is the same thing...

Being brave doesn't always lead to reaping benefits for me, but sometimes it does...

If I challenge myself to make a difference every day, I do...

When I am courageous enough to speak for myself and about myself, I learn more about the world...

The only way to justify being alive, as a woman in this world, is to work for change...

The only point to exploring ideas and theories is to understand experiences...

I'm not sure these are the lessons Andrea Dworkin intended to teach me. Every time I saw Andrea Dworkin after the first time, she remembered who I am and how she knew me. She made me believe that I mattered to her, and I matter in the world. I believe to my core that I am a better person because of Andrea Dworkin. She was an amazing, smart, beautiful, funny, brilliant, articulate and caring woman; her passing is a great loss to the world, her life a great gift.

I am profoundly saddened by her death; my thoughts are with those she loved and those who loved her.

I am so deeply shaken and saddened. My thoughts go out to those who were close to Andrea. For people like me who never met or saw her, even though I still have her amazing, inspiring, beautiful writing to go to, I feel like there's an Andrea Dworkin shaped hole in the fabric of the universe. We have to keep fighting and talking and teaching and doing all we can to speak the truth about how gender works in this world. We have to join with other women, learn from and support each other, and together take some wicked action that would make Andrea smile.

Andrea Dworkin changed my life and was a hero to me, just by writing the truth, uncompromised and regardless of what it cost her. I never thanked her for it, and now I never can. She was on the side of women, to the wall and to the end, with integrity, compassion and spirit. She made huge steps against sexual violence, and we must try in our ways to be the army she spoke of, to carry on our fraction of her work. Rest in peace, sister.

Andrea came to address a meeting at my University in the UK in the mid eighties. Before the meeting she came to meet and talk to some of us students on the Womens Studies Course. I was scared of meeting her - I thought she would be intimidating and would have little time for someone, like myself, who was really just feeling her way along the path Andrea herself had trodden so well. Well, instead of the fearsome creature I anticipated, there was this warm, funny, softly spoken women who had a beauty and a luminescence all of her own. She was generous with her time and her mind, and when she did address the larger meeting she was formidable in her arguments, cutting in her humour when dealing with ignorant abuse, and truly inspiring. I didn't agree with everything she wrote or said, but then I don't think Andrea would have thought much of a bunch of simpering fans who never disagreed with her. She made me think about things in a new way, and because of that I changed my life's direction, working with women survivors of rape and abuse, finding the courage (sometimes!)to accept ridicule and hostility for my views, and becoming more confident and comfortable with who I am. I am so very deeply saddened to hear of her death, and so angry to think that the media (in my country at least) will by and large ignore it in favour of gossip about vacuous 'celebrities'. Love and deepest sympathy to all those who knew and loved her. She was one hell of a woman.

Remember: Resist do not Comply

I concur with much of what I read here, and I share the deep sadness. I am not so upset, however, that Andrea Dworkin will not receive her due in the popular media. Celebrity was not her ambition, I suspect, and the media are so easily prone to undermining any genuine reflection on her value.

I'm happy to have met her, albeit in what prove now to be doubly grievous circumstances. She appeared at Sisterhood Bookstore in Westwood, California, not long before the store saw its final day after more than 25 years of pioneering work. It's encouraging to know that, in spite of these losses, there are so many folks who remain influenced by her life and her literature.

*Letters From a War Zone* changed my life. *Right Wing Women* changed it again. I heard about Andrea's death this morning in the car on the BBC World News Report and burst into tears. Not only because Andrea is gone so suddenly, but because I heard a ten minute story about her life and death on the BBC, and NOT on NPR, which was carrying the BBC report. If the British recognized how important this American activist was, why didn't her home country? I'm so ashamed.
I didn't realize how important she was to me until I heard she was gone. I am so heartened to see how many people have already written here to pay her tribute. Thank you Andrea and thank you all who loved her and will fight on in her name.

After I finished reading Life and Death I felt like I had opened my eyes for the first time (excuse the cliche). Andrea Dworkin had not only challenged my "love the sinner hate the sin" , "girls are just as good as boys" bubblegum feminist ideology, she had blown it to pieces. But more importantly I felt empowered. I felt I had the right to feel angry and passionate about things that had only ever made me feel deeply depressed and deeply,deeply sad. As a young feminist I think the women of the world have alot to thank her for and on a personal level I honestly can't thank her enough.

she transformed my life too...
a sweet warrior is gone, the fight goes on

Andrea made me really uncomfortable. She forced me to look into things I feared and see stuff I would have wanted to pretend didn't even exist. She was a brilliant, brave, articulate woman, and I'm deeply saddened by her passing. I'm so thankful to her for helping me be more courageous, more passionate and more awake. What an inspirational, important feminist warrior she was.

I remember Andrea Dworkin vividly at 19. I was a freshman at Bennington, it was 1965, and I had come to that place at that time hoping for a refuge from a world where Elvis lived, lesbians were per se criminals, marital rape was an oxymoron, and political rebels were men.

Only a year older, Andrea didn't appear to need refuge. She appeared purposeful, energetic, intense, confident. She hated the war, racism, and the Women's House of Detention on West Tenth Street. She was intimidating and inspiring.

Through the years I followed her development. I sometimes didn't agree with her positions when first articulated. But I always eventually came around because, once I looked at her observations and connections and logic, her conclusions were inevitable for me; although sometimes it took me years to get there, as with pornography vs what passes for free speech.

But I always think of her as 19. Even when I saw pictures of her looking older, the images that stayed with me were of this vibrant, already formed young freedom fighter in 1965 rural Vermont.

I know aging and death are the way of nature. I'm just not sure these days that nature is on the side of us crones. Especially when it takes someone from us who had so much more to say, and whom it cannot replace.

Andrea Dworkin taught me a lot of things. She taught me what it means to be a woman in this world--what I have to face (head on), what I have to speak out against, who my enemies are, and most importantly, she taught me that rape and domestic violence wasn't my fault. That these weren't shameful secrets I needed to conceal. That I had a right to be angry, not just at my rapists, but at the world that creates these monsters and creates the climate in which crimes against women are enacted and enacted and enacted again. Andrea Dworkin also taught me all about the sex industry and why it is so damaging to the collective sisterhood.

Andrea Dworkin taught me more than any other woman in my life did about ME. I feel indebted to her for this. What an incredible woman.

She will be deeply missed by so many of us. May her warrior spirit and brilliant outspokenness live on forever.

This loss is so huge that I can't quite grasp it. I still don't quite believe it. So I can't write about it yet, but I will.

Thank you Andrea Dworkin, for being outspoken and courageous.

Andrea sat front row, stage left in French class. She always came to class late, with an imperious look, daring the teacher to question her whereabouts. With a black poncho covering her body and arms full of books, unlike the rest of us, she never seemed to be fourteen years old.

Andrea was brilliant. Her mind was like a huge container, continually filled from the powers of the universe, revealing an interior wisdom that was always in the process of transformation.

As a seminarian in 1976, I saw a poster at Harvard announcing a lecture by Andrea. Unfortunately, it had already taken place. I was motivated to read her writings and was captivated by their passion and intesity, characteristics that she exhibited even as a teenager.

In 1962, I could never have imagined that I would "grow up" to be an Episcopal bishop, and she would "grow up" to be Andrea Dworkin.

I was very sad to hear of Andrea's death.

+Geralyn Wolf
Bishop of Rhode Island

It was with great sadness that I learned of Andrea Dworkin's death. Andrea was one of the first feminists I read upon being introduced to feminism, and it was her feminism which eventually lead me to a more global politicization. Though I came to disagree with Andrea on many issues, I learned invaluable lessons from her, lessons which continue to guide my vision and my life. Beyond possessing an unparalleled degree of courage and commitment, Andrea was the most powerful writer and speaker that I have ever known, displaying an unsurpassed talent to convey what was truly horrid about women's oppression, and why women's issues matter. Andrea has deeply moved me and shaped me, and I am incredibly grateful for her numerous gifts. May all those who were closest to Andrea, those who supported her for many years, feel her ongoing presence and be comforted and inspired. With love...

May GOD bless your soul and comfort you. I enjoyed reading yours and Professor McKinnon's work for the first time in 2004. You have left a mark on world history...and that your memory goes on means you fulfilled some greater purpose.

I did not know about this woman until I read about her death a few minutes ago. I believe that the cause against pornography is a worthy one, and that it is a form of oppression against woman, and against men in certain ways also. Though Ms. Dworkin and I may have disagreed about a host of things, I, as a Christian, am saddened that someone who stood against sexual oppression was also not respected by many conservatives and Christians. Pornography is one of capitalism's most insidious expressions, and it grieves me that we justify it's flourishing in the name of free speech, when it is such a clear transgression against the human spirit.
I would have liked to have known this woman. Fortunately, I can begin reading her works. I can say without knowing her, but knowing some of the things she stood for, that I appreciate the guts she had to stand up against the things she did, and the passion with which she did so.

Women of the world, it is our sad duty to bury our beloved sister Andrea Dworkin. Our consolation is that she died in her sleep – a testimony to her peaceful, loving nature.

If Andrea was anything, she was like a big, purring cat. Because she refused to be crimped and pimped, her beautiful body was tortured and her soul tormented. When this happened, the home loving pussy cat turned into a raging tiger, burning brightly on behalf of womankind.

It is an outrage that Andrea suffered doubly. The genetic inheritance which gave her a body that caused her immense pain, also ensured that she was castigated for this same reason. In a world where animal variety is a source of pride and pleasure, why must we women be categorised and uniformised into the one, standard package: starving, brain-starved, on our knees or on our backs with our legs in the air?

Dworkin is woman. Her big beautiful body may have died but her words live on. Perhaps her reputation went through a hiatus for a while but now she is back. Large as life. The bedrock. The truth.

The time will come, as this capitalist, consumerist, exploitative culture splutters and implodes, when Dworkin's plea for equality for women, for gentleness as opposed to force, for cooperation rather than coercion, will be heard loud and clear.

Her looks were her fortune. The way she insisted on being was her loudest, most vibrant political statement. Her radical call to arms against the threat of received maleness was a way forward for people - male and female.

Her call for women to insist on being treated more gently, with greater respect was a call for the planet to be treated more gently and with greater respect.

Andrea was me. Andrea was you. She was the real we that we dared not be. Throw out the hair dyes and cosmetics and diets and botox. They belong in the ghettoes which lead to the factory farms and gas chambers.

Andrea's vision will live. She focussed on one part of the picture. That part is key. How men treat women shows how they treat themselves - how they treat everyone and everything.

I refuse to say rest in peace Andrea Dworkin. Instead let us call out loud and clear so that she will hear us... Carry on the fight! Shout louder! We need to hear you. God bless you for what you suffered and endured. God bless you for all you gave to women and to all the people on this earth.

Enetia Robson

A year ago April-2004-I sat and talked with Andrea for at least an hour. We had our heads together talking about the health concerns we were encountering. Anyone looking on might have thought we were discussing writing--some of that occurred also. We talked about the type of writing each of us did throughout life.

Andrea was graciously interested in the health articles that I wrote. She laughed whe I told her not to fall for the doctor's version of "Hit the Bricks." It's when they stand to let you know the visit is over. I told her to stay seated, and I'd bet they would sit back down out of embarrassment. She laughed at my "mountain-woman" way of dealing with various problems. We discussed just about every type of pain medication offered.
Andrea, I wish that we didn't know so much about pain. I'm thankful that you are no longer suffering. The pain we are feeling, at losing you, is one that time or medicine won't heal. Rest in peace Warrior Woman.

Judith K. Witherow

Dear Andrea,
You were instrumental in shaping my thinking and my passion, and my courage to do the work I do today. I am an anti-rape activist, and a proud feminist. I am sad that you are gone, but please know that you live on in your writing. I am a 35 year old mother of a 22 month old daughter, and she is going to know who Andrea Dworkin is. And because of your courage, power, and strength to tell the truth, I have benefitted and so will my daughter, and so will all women, children, and men. I can "keep on keepin' on", because you have been a role model for fighting the good fight.
Thank You,
Love-
Corina Klies

She said what the rest of us didn't have the nerve, heart, or intelligence to say. I'm grateful I grew up at a time when her writing was available to me, from her searing accounts on rape and pornography, to her lyrical and beautiful writings on Tennessee Williams. Gloria Steinem said that she helped us evolve; in fact, I believe she was actually more evolved than most of us. It is for this reason that her words will resonate, hopefully creating justice for generations to come. We have a long way to go--as the new "documentary" Inside Deep Throat shows (omitting almost entirely the true story of Linda Marciano in the making of the film)--and Andrea was brave enough to say so. Thank you, thank you, Andrea.

I am so deeply hit by her loss. I was only recently introduced to Andrea's work last year, my senior year of college. Thinking back on the way that I consumed her work, as if it were food, I am struck by two things that she taught me. One was the power of anger. Having read Audre Lorde's essay "The Uses of Anger" several times it was wonderful to read Dworkin's work and hear what, for me, was a new voice claiming anger, validateding my own inner fears and understandings about walking around as a female bodied person in this society. The other thing I reflect back on is her writing itself. Throughout my years in college I struggled with finding a voice in my writing, how to write academically but still be me! No one has taught me how to do this better than Andrea Dworkin. By reading her work, the beauty of her words, the unique nature of her voice, I found a way to locate myself and be beautiful within angry academic writing. Thank you so much Andrea, you are already deeply missed. I am sitting her at work with tears running down my face.
Peace.

I feel like a part of my heart died Saturday. I am working to revive it, to honour the agenda Andrea drew up of demythifying male supremacy, opposing it with a notion of humanity almost lost to male culture, and tearing it down with all the strength of our hearts. But for now, I am just grieving.

Andrea was our voice. Now that she is gone, WE must be her voice.

O how I will miss the passion and the outrage of her oracular speech. A true inspiration and heroine for all women. Trust you are with the goddess, Andrea. Thank you so much for your life.

Just last week, a friend I hadn't seen in several years took note of the fact that I'm "still so angry." You betcha! Years ago, shortly after I was raped on my college's campus, Andrea Dworkin convinced me, through her powerful, passionate, beautiful prose, that anger is, indeed, righteous when it occurs in response to injustice, inequality and the violence that results from those ways of being. I was empowered by her honesty and intellect, and though I never met her, I feel as if I've lost a dear teacher.

Condolences to her family and friends, and to all to whom she deeply spoke. Rage is sometimes a kind of reason in the context of an outrageous subject. One thing that made her so "controversial" was the identification of the outrageous among normally acceptable everyday things. It takes courage as well as perspicacity to see that commonplace outrageousness, and to force us to acknowledge the remarkable but unremarked damage.

I was saddened to hear of Andrea Dworkin's passing.

Several years ago I met her in San Francisco. I didn't know who she was at the time, but I felt we had an instant rapport.

We talked about the exploitation of people in society-- and about Erich Fromm.

Andrea was quite rare in the world of thought-- taking broad and courageous humanistic stances-- without illusions about the pressures that impinge on people in our society.

She was also very much ahead of her time-- one whose ideas deserve greater serious study and dissemination.

When I was seventeen and a senior in Highschool I read Intercourse. It changed everything that I thought about my hip leftist politics. I embraced radical feminism with every inch of being and it has done nothing but improve my life.

Now I am a freshman in college and I have just recently read Heartbreak. It has inspired my own personal journey to be a better man. I hope I can live up to Andrea's expectations. God I miss her.

Dear friends and family,

I just read today in my little corpus christi paper a short announcement of Andrea Dworkin's death. She made a lasting impression on my life and so I felt pulled to send my gratitude for her life and work out to everyone I could in honor of her.

Going through law school with a toddler and a teenager was not easy, especially since I was much older than most students at the time and I had an educational background rooted in "poor schools" with little college preparation. On several occasions, after having read Dworkin's work, I sent her a letter explaining my fears and angst.

Having experienced deeply embarassing uses of pornography at my workplace at Dresser Atlas in which my boss placed XX rated pictures in the file cabinets I had to search before ordering needed parts and stood behind me as I found them, rubbing his grotch, I knew the horror Andrea tried to describe. And I deeply appreciated her work. It felt freeing to me.

So when I discovered her and C. MacKinnon while I was in law school I read everything I could of theirs, resenting the fact that I had to do it outside of the 60+ hours I had to spend on my assigned materials. Their work was never part of my official classes. It was particularly galling, in my first amendment class, to have my favorite professor refer to her work on the anti-pornography ordinance in passing, dismissing it as a prudish criminal statute when in fact it contained only civil penalties and was not a criminal statute at all. That was the only official mention I ever heard of her work.

So you can imagine my amazement and joy to receive 2 postcards from Andrea Dworkin, one each in response to my 2 letters to her. She wrote encouraging words and in one instance, her words came to me right before my business organizations exam. I went into it with unusual calm and confidence.

Andrea Dworkin seemed to me, in my limited experience of her, as a woman of deep integrity, a woman who paid attention to the cries of every woman, no matter how small.

Whether I agreed with her analyses completely or not, and most times her work struck me as deeply insightful, I felt some small part of her personal strength and good will toward women and men in my own life and I want to praise her for it now in the hours after her death, being now aware that she is no longer around to continue providing it personally. Just through her work.

In awesome remembrance of Andrea Dworkin upon her death,

Monica

Andrea and I lived on the same street in Brooklyn. She would slowly walk by on her way to Starbucks for her coffee and the newspaper (she always read the Post for they are the only ones who published the sex crimes in NYC). We started meeting for coffee frequently and discovered we had gone to the same schools in Camden, NJ at about the same time – I’m a little older. This, and my background in liberal politics from the same era was our bond.

When my teenage son was in danger – when the police and the board of ed were trying to prosecute him as a terrorist, Andrea (and John) were there for us. As I slowly and painfully tried to extradite my son from these horrendous accusations, Andrea would sit and listen to my problems with such compassion. She gave me the strength to succeed in this process, as she would always encourage me to not give up and to continue for she firmly believed we could win the fight. When it was over, and we had won, I took her for a gloriously evil caramel frappachino and we celebrated our victory against the forces.

Who would’ve thought the outspoken feminist could have so much compassion for a mother fighting for her son’s innocence? But, Andrea had a fount of wisdom and love of amazing depth. Once, I asked her how she knew so much about women’s mistreatment by men. She replied, that when she had gone on her speaking tours after her speech women would come up to her and talk to her about their sufferings at the hands of the men they had loved. Physical, horrific suffering as most of us never would hear about in our narrow lives. And, Andrea took pen in hand and released this numbing suffering into the world for all to view – it would not be hidden any more.

She was the bearer, and she knew this responsibility was a heavy burden on her emotional resources. She did not shun the burden; she welcomed it and with her incredible brilliance and ability to think “outside the box” wrote so compassionately for women’s equal rights, and against pornography that so enslaves the female.

John, my sincerest condolences. Both of my children and I have been crying on hearing the news. And, the pussy cats she loved and looked after so well …they will miss her so much. And I will never have a friend as caring and faithful as Andrea. I have missed her so much since you all moved to DC. But, I always had the hope of seeing her. Now, that hope is gone and I will always miss her. May her next body be a better body to carry her brilliance.

I love you. Gerry McCleave

no freedom without risk, and what you risk reveals what you value.

andrea risked everything every day because of what she valued--us.

now she's free.

my eternal gratitude.

I always felt incredibly honored and awed in the presence of Andrea Dworkin. Even in the wake of her death I feel unworthy of a tribute to her.

Andrea Dworkin was a presence, a force to be reckoned with, energy you felt. When she spoke, you heard and listened. I cannot imagine anyone hearing Andrea speak and not being moved, changed, and forever viewing the world differently, more clearly.

Andrea Dworkin had a brilliant mind for analysis. It was her analysis combined with fierce passion and commitment that moved me. She had an unwavering dedication to fighting for equality and justice in women’s lives, and made monumental sacrifices toward that end. She was hugely influential in my radical feminist education and an enormous inspiration. I will forever hold her in absolute awe.

I had read and admired Andrea Dworkin’s work for several years before first meeting her in October 1987 when she spoke at a rally in Champaign, Illinois. The day of the rally was windy and cool. Onlookers sat huddled close for warmth and protection. Andrea arrived in a tee shirt and bib overalls, more focused on what she had to say than her appearance or the elements. She stepped to the podium and all paused to listen. She raised her fist into the air, “I want to tell you what the rape and battery of women looks like,” she said in a fierce and booming voice. The audience was immediately captivated. She proceeded to describe in great detail the myriad ways in which capitalism and patriarchy join forces to degrade, brutalize and market women’s bodies for power, pleasure and profit. She told us that we knew the truth because we had heard it, seen it, lived it; that we didn’t need any research studies to verify it, psychologists to explain it or politicians to decide if it is harmful. She told us that we were in a war, and that we must fight for our lives. She told us that we must commit ourselves to going the distance in this war, that we must transform our world from a torture chamber and a tomb into our rightful, joyous, and peaceful home.

As she spoke, audience members rose from their places and stood, no longer aware of the cold or wind. They too raised their fists into the air, and screamed back at her, “Yes! Yes!” Somebody was finally telling the truth! She did nothing to sugarcoat the truth, to minimize the damage to our bodies and our souls, to blame us as women or excuse men as rapists, batterers, pimps and pornographers. And she told us we must never let anyone tell us that the truth about our lives is a lie.

When she finished, perspiration dripped from her body, her clothes wet with the effort of her emotion. Steam rose off of her into the cool air. She was like a warrior, hot sweaty and spent, from having given her all in battle. Stunned in the wake of her remarkable energy, the audience paused briefly in silence as she turned to exit the stage, and then erupted into screams of gratitude and newfound determination. Andrea Dworkin had set a match to the fire within us that only minutes before had no flame. The fire of her passion and commitment was contagious, and we had caught it. We saw the world clearly through the power of her words.

Some people dismissed Andrea Dworkin as angry and bitter. They say it sadly, as if it was a condition she suffered. The only condition Andrea Dworkin suffered was not being able to look away from the ugly reality of exploitation and violence against women. She never flinched from the brutal, honest, ugly truth. She said it articulately, passionately, strongly, and loudly. Yes, she was angry, and she didn’t back down from it. For the first time, she made me feel justified in my own anger. She made anger seem as if it was the only sane response to the atrocities being inflicted upon our bodies. By doing so, she took my life and the lives of all women seriously. Men beat us, rape us, steal our souls and sell our bodies while the world silently watches, wondering what we did to deserve it. If our lives are important, everybody should be angry! Her anger, my newfound anger, was liberating, empowering, and justified.

Perhaps Dworkin’s refusal to look away from the truth about male violence against women contributed to her premature death at the age of 58. She paid enormous costs for her commitment to the truth and her fight for justice. Some people, the ones who maintain, perpetuate and benefit from male violence against women, hated Andrea Dworkin. They hated her for the truth she spoke, the anger she asserted, and the exploitation she revealed. They distorted her work and vilified her. They refused to publish her work, emotionally harassed her with name-calling and threats, and finally mugged, drugged and raped her. But they were never able to silence her. She never stopped being angry. She never stopped telling the truth. She never backed down.

The last time I saw Andrea Dworkin, she was frail and had difficulty walking - due at least in part to the residual effects of a physical and sexual assault against her several years earlier (an incident which many said she fabricated to further her political agenda.) She was tired and in pain. Her voice was weak, but her message remained articulate, strong, and passionate. She said that others must pick up the struggle, speak the truth and fight for freedom; she was tired and in pain. She said she felt a sense of urgency for younger women to take up the cause. She feared we were losing the war and she wasn’t going to be able to see it through.

I hope that wherever Andrea Dworkin is today that she is free, safe and at peace. I hope that where she is there is nothing to fear, no longer a need for anger. I hope she sees that we are taking her life seriously by continuing her battle for women’s safety and freedom.

In memory of Andrea Dworkin, we must fight until we win. We must take our lives seriously and claim our own anger. We must tell the ugly truth about violence against women. Like Andrea Dworkin, we must confront others with the system of male violence, the system that supports it and the people that profit from it. We must pick up her loud and booming voice for freedom and justice. We must all raise our fists into the air and demand that the injustice and the brutality stop. In her memory, we must never back down and never let them silence us. In this war we cannot fail. In the name of Andrea Dworkin we must do this for our own sakes and for the sake of every woman who has ever lived.

Thank you, Andrea, for taking our lives seriously, and for dedicating your life to creating a world where we all can live in safety and freedom. I will never forget you, for your thoughts and your words shape and drive me. I will do my part to carry on the battle for you.

Peace be with you, sister.

This is my blog for April 12, 2005.
I just cannot believe we are left here to carry on without Andrea. Only in her leaving could I truly measure how much I have relied on her being here. I hope she infuses each of us with her fire and fury and what it means to be female.

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Goodbye my amazing inspiration, Andrea Dworkin. How could you leave me here without you? And you were only 58 – I will be 58 in 2006. Now I once again want to stand on my soap box and shout, “The Second Wave is dying!!” Somebody please do something – the Second Wave is dying!

The first time I read Andrea’s work I was just a cute fem (LOL) who adored “Woman Hating” – the book, that is. A rather butch friend told me to never tell anyone that I knew how to sew – it would mean I would never be asked out. My long hair, painted nails, ruffled curtains would exclude me from a world I wanted. On the other hand, so to speak, I also remember one of the most erotic dates I ever had – when a woman took me to dinner. She took me to a French restaurant, pulled out my chair, ordered for me and lit my cigarette. I was swept off my feet. Somehow, since it was a woman, I felt no offense, no oppression.

It doesn’t take a genius or even Kinsey to see that gender is as varied as are human