I have actually read some of what she wrote and listened to some of what she said and, while I don't agree with everything she said and have reservations as to how she said some of the good things she said, I have a great deal of respect for her and think much of what she did say is not only extremely important, it's far more important, today, in the age of Trump and Incels and Jordan Peterson's boy possee and the Republican-fascist attacks on Womens' right to own their own lives, bodies and persons than it was when she said it.
There is virtually no one that an intelligent person would agree with on every point, the more that someone else says, the higher the chance that you will disagree with some of what is said. I'm even surprised to find out that obvious fact of life even applies to what I say. Someone who is intelligent, faced with disagreements with someone they respect will listen to find out if they might change their own minds. Really intelligent people will even listen to those they don't respect in that regard, from time to time.
Stupid people will discount what someone like Andrea Dworkin says on the basis of the disparagment of her they read or hear from third parties, who, in her case NEVER IN MY EXPERIENCE have had pure motives in attacking or trying to discredit her. I would say that is true from everyone from the snuff porn merchants up to the level of Barry Lynn who I have some respect for, though less than I used to back when I was a knee jerk lefty.
I went farther left than that largely on the basis of listening to people I had been told not to listen to because they had cooties, especially "First Amendment" cooties and "Separation of Church and State" cooties and other, similar crumbly pillars of the post-war left. My current position is far farther to the left because, among other things, I took Andrea Dworkin's demand that Womens' lives be taken with total seriousness, their rights, their welfare, THEIR THINKING ABOUT WOMEN AND MEN AND LIFE. My absolute bottom line in judging anything, up to and including the artificial, secular sanctity for the friggin' First Amendment is that where those lead to the deaths, oppression, discrimination against and destruction of other people and entire groups of people, that is where those sacred holdings and objects give way to the vital rights of those people.
I pay Andrea Dworkin the respect of not reflexively agreeing with everything she says as I would anyone else. I regret that she died fourteen years ago, she would have had a lot of insight into this period of angry-online-boy violence and hate mongering and bullshit artists like Jordan Peterson and fascist scum like Donald Trump.
Here is a speech she gave in 1987, consider it in light of the treatment of Anita Hill by the, then, establishment liberalism of Joe Biden in the Senate, as well as other such things. I am not advocating every idea she set out and am not endorsing how she said things I agreed with, I'm advocating listening to what she said, considering it in the time she said it and how her ideas have stood in the following 32 years.
Update: I wouldn't put much credence in FACT, it was mostly useful for showing how utterly wrong they were. Here's an interesting analysis of what they actually did and the results of it. What I say above taken into account, I am not inclined to take much of anything Wendy McElroy says seriously, she's a right-wing zealot. I say that on the basis of having some familiarity with her junk. She's a right wing faux-feminist of the kind who inevitably end up supporting male supremacy and capitalist oligarchy.
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