Pornography: Men Possessing Women, by: Andrea ... - Feminish

us—let us be dumb and die. ”181 changed my mind, becauseI decided that no woman deserved what pornography doesto women: no woman, however stupid or evil, treacherousor cowardly, venal or corrupt; no woman. I also decidedthat even if some women did, I didn’t. I also rememberedthe brave women, the women who had survived, escaped;in the late 1970s, they were still silent, but I had he^rdthem. I don’t want them, ever, to be dumb and die; andcertainly not because some other woman somewhere is acoward or a fool or a cynic or a Kapo. There are womenwho will defend pornography, who don’t give a damn.There are women who will use pornography, includingon other women. There are women who will work forpornographers— not as so-called models but as managers,lawyers, publicists, and paid writers of “opinion” and “jo u r­nalism. ” There are women of every kind, all the time; thereare always women who will ignore egregious wrongs. Myaspirations for dignity and equality do not hinge on perfectionin myself or in any other woman; only on the humanitywe share, fragile as that appears to be. I understandElizabeth Barrett Browning’s desperation and the rage behindit, but I’m removing her curse. No woman’s betrayalwill make us dumb and dead—no more and never again.Beaver’s endured too much to turn back now.—Andrea DworkinNew York CityMarch 19891 8 . E l i z a b e t h B a r r e t t B r o w n i n g , Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning i n M a r y D a l y ,Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism ( B o s t o n : B e a t o n P r e s s , 1 9 7 8 ) ,p ' 1 5 3 .