Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1426489 in Books
• Published on: 1989-12-13
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 300 pages

Customer Reviews

Extreme, but that's Dworkin for you
This book is certainly not bedtime reading. It is uncompromising. Unbelievably so. However, despite its polemical nature, the book is of immense value. Indispensable for anyone who wants an alternative side to the pornography debate, Dworkin illustrates with frightening savageness the dark, macabre side of male sexuality. After reading this book, you will never see the world in the same light again. This is no casual platitude. Be prepared - this book is disturbing.

However, this book is not without flaws. As with all her work, Dworkin is too extreme for most readers. Anti pornography sentiments are expressed far more objectively and coherently by Susan Griffin, in "Pornography and silence" and by Catherine Mackinnon in her work. Her ravaging of the male sexuality is actually self defeating; she will alienate many men who might have been convinced by the truths in her arguments. Her work is not backed up by real facts. The causal relationship of pornography and physical violence towards women is logical, but evidence does not actually support this. Also, her concentration on pornography with a violent content takes the focus away from pornography in general.

Nevertheless, it is essential reading to anyone with more than a passing interest in the pornography debate. I don't know if I agree with all she says, but what she has succeeded in doing is to make all who read "Pornography" stop and think about an issue that has gone too long ignored.

Eye-opening and innovative
Extreme admittedly, but not twisted, Andrea Dworkin's sexual philosophy is an indispensible aid to students of gender studies, power relationships and pornography. Although many readers (particularly male ones..) may not agree with her arguments, she is possibly one of the most misrepresented writers of our time. Direct and harsh on the surface, but if you think she's a twisted individual, open your eyes - this philosophy is echoed in centuries of literature. There can be nothing individual about that.

Not exactly Jilly Cooper...
This is the only book I've ever started reading and not been able to finish, simply because I found it so upsetting, disturbing, and depressing. Dworkin is often accused of rhetorical excess, but it is precisely this very explicit rhetoric which makes her arguments so compelling and elegant. Her writing is not merely factual, it is artistic and journalistic. She points a searchlight onto the world of pornography and finds the hatred, violence, and misogyny that dominates the masculine sexuality which men are forced into accepting. It is a call to arms to men as much as women, to escape the shackles of their own sexual oppression. Maybe I'll be able to finish the book one day...but in the mean time it's only served to reinforce my disgust and fear of pornography.