Belle Meets Belz
Southern Feminist Adventures with New York Chasidim
As a teenager I read an article in Cosmo about how guys with stubble like the red they can bring to a woman’s cheeks during kissing: It’s a she’s-so-tender-I’m-so-tough type of thing.
The first time I saw a Chasid, his beard looked vaguely terrifying. I’ve always hated beards, macho like my Dad’s, like Hulk Hogan’s, Alabama (the band) wailing Dixieland Delight. From a ways off you’d think a Chasidisher’s beard would feel even scarier, steel-woolier (or was that my response because I’d already heard so much about how backward these guys were supposed to be?) I’d forgotten the hair on my legs, pubic hair, how hair you don’t shave stays like cotton, and then the first time a Chasidic man’s beard brushed against my face, I remembered. Nestling up against him felt the way pine straw looks prickly resting on the earth back home, but feels soft when you lay on it. While the moon and stars move over you. And I wonder sometimes if I came all this way just to find men who felt a little more like home.
He arrives on a twenty degree night in black pants, clean black shoes, cabled sweater, all over immaculate. White colored shirt and faint ripples of material underneath with soft sounding names like tzitzis and gatchas. Because the night is so cold, a black scarf with delicate grey pattern tucks around his neck. I can greet him in comfortable sweat pants and a loose fitting T-shirt and he still thinks I’m lovely. This is what I like best, not having to be something other than my PJs and me. Can we really have known each other since summer?
He’s two years younger than me, married, with two children. A formerly Orthodox male friend warns that I ought to be careful, These Chasids say they’re okay with a friendship, but he’ll want more eventually… What guy doesn’t? These Chasidish men, These Chasids—Are they animals? Different species I should be on the look out for? Yet, I know it’s alright for my friend to be angry—he was one, but then there are the other Jews, or just other folks in Williamsburg. A young woman at a party asks me, “Are they inbred? How come all their kids look so cross-eyed? How can they be so rich & still look so ugly?” My ex-Chasidish friend tells me how, when he still had his payess, people rolled their car windows down, yelled Dirty kike! Now it’s nice to look normal.
If my Chasid wants more, he never says it. Everything is my speed. Took months for him to look me in the eye when we’re speaking—not having been around women makes it nerve-wracking, special I guess. Once I’m snuck into his cousin’s wedding—I like that there are only women dancing around me. They smell clean, like fresh lavender. I remember being in a club with some girlfriends when a man came up behind me, ran his hand over my breast.
Once I told my Chasid my feet hurt; he said he was good at rubbing people’s shoulders, feet too. I settled back, got the foot massage of my life for over 45 minutes. The touches kept changing, fingers pressed into the arches, not a scrap of roughness, though he worked hard with his hands during the day. It’s not to say Chasidic men never hurt women, call us filthy, beat us up, act with misogyny—what I’d like to say is, manhood is a fucked up concept—other men, a lot of men, hate and hurt women too. Where did my Chasid learn to be so gentle? Surely they didn’t teach it in yeshiva, where boys sometimes touch and kiss each other, then feel terrible guilt because God is a Heterosexual Male and He told Moses via Leviticus that he wants only women to be rape-able. Maybe God wouldn’t like this, but I’m safely warmed beyond tickleshness, so he alternates with lighter caresses. Mein fies filt git. Man oh man, do they ever!
You’re not tired? I ask, used to men bored with giving, groping around before shoving up fingers. I don’t want intercourse, and this is one of those rare sexual relationship where I haven’t been pressed for it. I’m not tired, he smiles up at me. He doesn’t have a lot of poetic words, but they’re right, and his accent feels sweet, like we stepped into a Kafka novel. M. tells me I shouldn’t feel pressured to name it, anything the relationship is, is what it is. Maybe he likes the softness of your hair, she suggest, Just being with you, hearing you talk about things you’re passionate about.
What did I think the first time I saw a real Choosid? Ten years ago, M. could look down from her loft apartment and see all the Chasidic men in their cars getting blowjobs from the women in prostitution. Some are hypocrites, some love Torah. Maybe it’s easier to pretend only these uppity, religious Jews think they’re better, won’t assimilate. But haven’t they already assimilated? Buying sex from women is every red-blooded American male’s right. Officially, pornography is taboo in the Chasidic community, but that doesn’t make it any less popular. It is a festering secret, its existence rampant and unacknowledged. Growing up I encountered my saintly father’s extensive porn stash numerous times, and yet each time I did I would close the drawer quickly… swiftly erase the images from my memory. How did she erase them? I still see all those women spread apart in my father’s magazines.
Is it better when the men don’t even have to feel guilt about it? We grew up on a dirt road, far from New York. I’m a southern feminist remembering the same things a Chasidic feminist does. Atheist male friend in Williamsburg in his thirties used to work for the Red Cross, dealt extensively with the Chasids. Hates the men, they all asked about “hookers,” could the women give them a disease? He thinks it’s disgraceful, making women shave their head. In his bedroom, there’s “erotica”, some guy’s naked pictures of his ex girlfriends. The cover reads, “Like the sex, all photography here was consensual”—You can see his little harem on display.
My Chasid smiles when I make a sour face over the exclusion of women’s experiences in the Torah. In that way, he’s the same.
At North 7th and Bedford leading down to the L, an American Apparel ad slicks to the wall, young woman, white, legs spread wide to reveal hairless inner thigh ligaments, spandex-covered, sex-crazed animal saying fuck me. An ex Chasid warns me the culture he comes from is extremely sexist, They think all secular women are whores. Don’t the men all around me? There are two choices—be invisible, or be visible as fuckable commodity. For whom exactly is this freedom? Chasidic women walk over the Williamsburg bridge in their protective clothing. Comfortable sneaker-clad feet, and I dream them one better, suddenly thrusting forward their wrists, watching the baby carriages sail over, all men’s spawn wailing down into the river.
Mt. Sinai is an eyesore hospital across the park and Z. tells me: He grew up Satmar, wasn’t allowed to play any games involving a ball at summer camp. I want to know what the girls played. Nothing, they cooked! He smiles when he tells me a story about how at thirteen he bought a portable radio, listened to sporting events. Inside I’m relieved he couldn’t watch the games—no cheerleaders. Most of the time he’s studying to be a lawyer. In private, in my room, he tries on a pair of my blue jeans. His own are too big for him, but mine are “feminine,” meaning tight, I like his body, it’s slight and the hair on his chest is jet black, twirled around burgundy nipples. I’m unable to form complete sentences in close proximity to these, their supreme softness messes with me. You’re nipple drunk! he giggles as I lean, when I hold his penis in my hand it’s only after we’ve talked about it. It’s my suggestion, but he knows it’s my first, asks if I’d like him to guide my hand. Yes, please. There’s my bellybutton…There’s pubic hair… then he stops, coy and tender lets me go on wherever I please. There’s a soft bird’s head arching from a nest of silk thistles. Both this and his testicles rise for my hand with the rhythm of his heartbeat. It’s so flexible, I chuckle. I wouldn’t test it’s flexibility too much if I were you. You can break it if you bend it too far, and then I’d need to have surgery.
He talks through intimacy, remembers his mother’s crying and his father’s yelling. We’re alike in that, except my mama didn’t cry, only tried to make peace. I hold him. He says a penis isn’t really anything special. That’s what’s running the world, but it’s basically just something you use to pee. I love his face. It’s a big face, he says, sticks out his chin to exaggerate the under-bite. Knows he has his father’s jaw, and so can’t ever totally escape the family, even though they’ve disowned him. We hold each other. I don’t say anything, except with my arms, and my whole body, I try to say to the boy I still feel inside him clinging so close to me, How could anybody hit you?
In the car on Lee Avenue, a woman stands by some garbage bags, waits until a group of men have passed her. She’s opposite a huge billboard on the building in front of us, Young Orthodox Jew brings a meal to Old Orthodox Jew, both men of course. When asked, Who is a Jew? the rabbis say, A Jew wears teffilin. This is bigger than the American Apparel billboard, but not as big as one I walked under a few years ago, above the virgin MegaStore. Advertisement for a reality TV series, two black suited surgeons with a woman stripped down, draped over their laps, one with a silver scalpel in the air, aligned directly over her vagina. If it were a giant photo of a Jewish man with shaven head and numbers on two SS men’s laps, wouldn’t somebody say something?
In the car M. points out a couple. Newlyweds. You can tell because they don’t have any children. I ask what it’s like on the wedding night, is it true they teach the men to keep shoving in, even if she screams? M. says different marriage teachers teach the men different things. But she wants to know from me, doesn’t it have to hurt for the woman the first time regardless? Even when you leave, you don’t leave behind that feeling we’re all supposed to be paying for Eve.
I tell her no, it doesn’t have to hurt, they could teach the women about their bodies, how to go slow with yourself, they could tell the women how to masturbate and not have the very first thing there be a penis. I tell her about my friend in college, who had an orgasm her first time with her boyfriend, because she’d already spent years getting to know her body.
M. says my words are beautiful; she wants her daughter’s first experience of sex to be like that, but her daughter is being raised Chasidish. She says most of the women don’t even know they could be on top during sex, which happens in the dark—because a woman’s genitals are something too powerful to see? I tell her I think maybe that’s why the men out in my world have shaved it, tried to make it look weak. While the origins of this division are thus hidden from us—they remain part of the broader historical question of the roots of female subordination—the division itself is imaged in clear, specific terms… Judaism tenders a similar distinction between rukhniut and gashmiut, spirituality and physicality, men and women. It’s an old concept, why we’re considered to be expressing our true nature when we sell sex, learn to accept all the ways men fuck us, and fuck us over. You can be boxed in with long skirts or short ones, thick beige stocking or fishnets, covered up or stripped down. M. and I both try thinking what freedom for us would really mean. She’s not sure yet, but likes being able to think about it now, cranks the car up, as we pull away on Shabbos.
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> and I dream them one better, suddenly thrusting forward their wrists, watching the baby carriages sail over, all men’s spawn wailing down into the river.
Um, you really see kids as “men’s spawn?” As something men do to women? Because biology doesn’t work like that.
> That’s what’s running the world, but it’s basically just something you use to pee.
Cute, but your friend is mistaking confluence for causality. Men have historically been dominant because in most societies those with the ability to impose their will on others have been in charge. The warrior class were men because the average man is physically stronger than the average woman (upper-body muscle strength – not the ability to withstand pain or moral strength, but the ability to swing a sword or pull a bow). Granted, might-makes-right is not a morally defensible position, but men were dominant for the practical reason that they could be, not because of their genitals.
> because a woman’s genitals are something too powerful to see? I tell her I think maybe that’s why the men out in my world have shaved it, tried to make it look weak.
1. Men go around shaving women’s genitals? That some women may shave themselves because they think men will like it doesn’t mean that the men made her do so.
2. Hair implies strength?
I’m all for everyone having equal rights, but fantasies of infanticide because of the imagined imposition of a man making a woman have “his” child (while the reality is that it’s “their” child) or the concoction of a genital-based conspiracy against women when in reality the current state of affairs is the result of social norms derived from historic circumstances (for all that those norms should be changed) is taking things too far.
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It’s refreshing to see a Feminist viewpoint with positive experiences with an ex-Chasidic male. I think you’re on target when you recognize that the frailties of human nature exist across the board. The self-righteous of all societies have skeletons in their closets. And Chasidim are no different.
Although, I’d disagree that pornography is, as your friend M. put it, “rampant” in Chasidic society. Maybe I had the wrong friends, but when I was a Chasid, I knew very few people who even knew what porn is, let alone procure it on a regular basis.
I don’t doubt that many a Chasid will indulge in secret. But they’re still the minority. Your friend’s “saintly” father’s porn stash, while I have no reason to doubt, is merely anecdotal.
We all know that workers in sex industry claim that a large percentage of their clientèle is Chasidic. But that doesn’t say much about the percentage withing Chasidic society itself. It’s akin to the old logic question: If all kanoodles are kazoobles, are all kazoobles kanoodles? (Or however that goes…)
Reminds me of all the stereotypes of Arab men fucking sheep. We can speculate that the stereotype comes from somewhere — yes, perhaps an Arab once fucked a sheep, or two Arabs, or two sheep — but unless we have real evidence of such phenomena as widespread, it’s just a nasty racist stereotype. Same with judging Chasidic society.
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Our Southern Belle’s experience is not only refreshing but also redemptive as she finds meaning & inspiration in her tete a tete with a scion of the forces of darkness – Belz is not belle – who is struggling to release himself from being Caught Up in the Thorns.
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Belzer Rebbe doing Apple Throwing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAGsW7VW3Aw&feature=player_embedded
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Wonderful essay. You had me at the style. So much, that I could hardly focus on what exactly I was reading. Stylistically excellent (with a touch of ADHD
). I had to reread some of sentences twice. Which when I did, were well worth it.
Well-balanced and creative. A pleasure.
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I LOVED it.
In fact, I was actually curious if any other secular (jew or gentile) ladies had been friends, or intimate with a Chasid.
A few years ago, a had 2 Chasidic male friends & 1 Orthodox guy I talked to often via email. I was in FL & them in NYC.
I was always fascinated by Judaism in general so that’s how we started talking. And actually I was an “escort”, or in laymen’s terms, a “whore”.
I hooked up with the 2 Chasids but never the Orthodox fella because he was in love with an Catholic coworker.
All were totally different…Can’t generalize here. None were disrespectful or rude…I kinda liked being “the teacher” in both sexual and social ways.
XoXo
Tayler
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I think this essay is good, but maybe a little schizophrenic with the viewpoint. I kept thinking “M” was the ex-Chasid, but then you use feminine pronouns in reference to “M.” Is M the guy or the girl? It seems to be written from a woman’s perspective, then changes in a way that isn’t clear to the reader. Can you clarify?
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Tayler – in your career, did Chasids have to be taught sexually more than others ? Ever since Irwin Wallace described it , sexual therapy has become a growth industry and U seem to have found a niche in which to specialise .
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Hey to everyone, Thanks very much for reading, for comments, & many thanks to the editors for posting the piece. @ Hasidic Rebel, apologies for not doing a more professional job of citing my quotations–I ended up pressed for time & wanted to get things to you quickly. The quote you mention about pornography isn’t actually something a friend said, I’d read it a while back, on a blog called Hasidic Feminist, here’s a link if you’d like to see the quote in it’s original context (though I do not agree with all the points she puts foward in the post): http://hasidic-feminist.blogspot.com/2009/03/role-of-pornography-in-hasidic-society.html
What struck me about her words was how similar they felt to my own experiences of growing up with a father who used pornography; I wanted to speak about women’s shared experience of the belief many men seem to hold, that buying sexual access to the bodies of women & girls is their right. My opinion is that the only thing one gets in exchange for sex should be a sexual experience with the other person. If one has to be coerced through economic need, there’s a problem there.
I agree with you that it is racist to demonize Hasidic men as all being johns (will say more on this further down), but would rather not call men’s use of women and girls in the sex industry a human frailty, as I worry that could blind people to the seriousness of the problem, or make the abuse sound more trivial than it is. My own father’s pornography use had painful consequences for me, and I think many people are not aware of the kinds of suffering women (& children, & men) in the sex industry go through. I think the term “prostitute” is dehumanizing, because it makes the woman invisible by equating her with her position within a harmful industry (whether or not most laymen would use the term “whore” I choose not to use that language to describe any woman, given the history of misogyny attached to it–think you already know my thoughts on this); I support the term “woman in prostitution” or “prostituted woman;”refering to prostitution as sex work seems to me to dignify the industry itself, without actually changing much about the experience of the average woman in it.
All that said, I have been privileged to work alongside a few women survivors of the sex trade on feminist activist stuff, and haven’t actually heard from them about the preponderence of Hasidic johns, per se–The main place I hear that criticism is actually from secular male Jews, and secular people in general. In the secular world, the average age for a boy to download his first pornography is now around age 11 I believe. Girls grow up interacting with a generation of men weened on pornography, most stats suggest somewhere around 87% of adult US men admit to having used porn sometime in the last 5 months. I HAVE had a formerly hasidish man speak to me about using women in prostitution while he was still observant. I don’t wish to excuse the misogyny of his acts there–but I will say, neither did he wish to excuse them. This man admitted to me that he felt intense guilt while doing it, that he felt the woman looked humiliated, & that he actually wished he could apologize to women he had used in this way. It’s the only time I have talked to a former john who expressed remores about paying for sex or using women as fuck objects. In the broader culture, this is increasingly becoming normal & acceptable. Certainly as a poet, in artistic & academic circles, I’ve heard men excuse, justify, & celebrate prostitution (I remember a particular benefit for victims of Huricane Katrina I went to a few years ago at The Poetry Project, where a male poet named Greg Fuchs characterized what happens to women in brothels on Bourbon Street as “lovemaking”–to a room full of applause from supposedly progressive poets). I find the “Hasid men all go to prostitutes” accusation very interesting. It seems to me, just as an outside observer, that a lot of non-Orthodox Jews do feel a bit judged or looked down on by the Hasidim. The Hasidim are, if nothing else, fairly in-your-face about their Jewishness. They stand out, and want to, as I understand it; With the experience of the young man who got called names on the side of the road when he was frum, but not when he changed his appearance, I wanted to bring attention to the fact that the hasidim are an easy target for antisemitism, but that’s not always limited to overt slurs. Do secular Jews feel guilt over not assuming that burden? I don’t know. I do think maybe somewhere in people’s consciousness there’s still the nazi idea of the Jewish-man-as- sexual-predator/animal out to “pollute” humanity (in the US, I think the brunt of this type of racism is directed at black men, as they make up a bigger chunk of the nationwide population, but in nyc, hasidm are a big enough group to be noticed). I think, if a man feels the hasidim are looking down on him, maybe there’s a desire to bring those men down a peg or two, to prove they aren’t so holy, (& in the process, non-hasidish men who only critique misogyny among the hasidim don’t have to examine their own attitudes towards women. As you mention, this is similar to stereotypes about Muslim men, it’s always easier to critique a minority or distant group of men “over there” than to look at one’s own sexist behaviors, but when there are hasidic men who do choose to demonstrate contempt for women’s humanity by using women in prostitution & pornography, I’d argue that they are doing so, not because they are Jews or even because they are Orthodox Jews, but because they are acting like men (and I am refering not to biological maleness here, but to manhood as a cultural institution that socializes men to feel superior & distant from women–certainly I think men can resist that socialization, and question patriarchal modes of sex including pornography and prostitution, and some do, for example, Noam Chomsky in this interview: http://angryforareason.blogspot.com/2008/07/noam-chomsky-finally-talks-about-womens.html ). This problem of women being sexually subordinated to men, transcends culture and religion as patriarchal systems of male dominance do. I wanted to speak about a woman narrator having at least partially positive interactions with hasidish men (there are two in the story, one frum, one no longer practicing) because I think those experiences are important, both to counter racist stereotypes as well as to look for alternative, more egalitarian ways of thinking about sex.
Thanks for your thoughtful response,
Stephanie
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& ps thanks Skeleton for compliments on style, appreciated–Mostly I reserve my ideas for eroticism as I’d like it to be for poetry–this is the 1st time in a long time I’ve tried short story. Sara, there’s one female narrator throughout, three main characters she interacts with–an observant hasid male, a young man who was raised hasidish & left (Z), and a young woman who did the same (M). Hope that helps!
I liked very much the hands holding each other picture that’s up with this, btw–nice.
Re babies & motherhood…for interested parties I’m reading some poems at the CUNY Grad Center in Midtown on Feb 26, between 3:00 & 4:30PM as part of a one day symposium on motherhood in honor of the current “Mother” issue of Women’s Studies Quarterly. Thanks!
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Stephanie,
I appreciate your very interesting post, which certainly expresses a viewpoint that would not otherwise be found on this site. But I must take issue with the fact that you refer to a Chassidish friend as “my Chasid.” It reminds me of all the fag hags who makes sure everyone knows about their gay friend they call “my gay.” It demeans the person’s individuality. Your use of the term “my Chasid” suggests that you are into having a Chassidish friend for the exotic nature of it. I assume you would find it weird if you friends started to refer to their friends as “my Mexican” or “my Korean.”
I also have a comment for Hasidic Rebel who finds it “refreshing to see a Feminist viewpoint with positive experiences with an ex-Chasidic male.” Ms. Cleveland’s views appear to a form of radical feminism that a lot of mainstream feminists take issue with because they see an essentialist form of gender identity.
The radical feminists and Chassidim have in common that they both are anti-sex. They differ only on the reason. Radical feminists oppose sex because they believe sex is a way that men attempt to dominate women. Chassidim oppose sex oppose sex, because they oppose anything fun that is not religious in nature. But ultimately, they have more in common than you would think.
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Veganovich,
Yup, I accept your criticism of my calling a character, “my chassid” as racist/politically wrong–You are absolutely right there, thanks for calling me out on that–Seriously. My apologies to anybody the phrase might have hurt/offended, & rest assured I will apologize to the person it refers to–a very dear friend, hasidish or not–the next time I see him as well. I wrote this essay in one week, after being encouraged to do so by one of the eds. at a party. A week is a much shorter time than I’d normally take to write something, and I’d like to take to write anything this size, & I’d like to think that if I’d had a little more time to reflect, I’d have seen why, as you point out, it was dehumanizing to refer to him in that way. My main concern at the time as now, was/is preserving this person’s anonymity, I didn’t want to refference him by an initial even, as just being my friend could basically ruin his life & his children’s lives in his community. That said, it’s still not an excuse for my fuck-up there, so I’d like to correct that, and do apologize.
Moving on to other fuck-ups however, the rest of your comment is sexist, either just ignorant or purposefully misleading, & frankly, inaccurate…yes, of course many many people, many of them women, mainstream, popular, academic feminists, often disagree with & try to distance themselves from radical feminism (many, many people thought Jews were subhuman & antisemitism was completely justified for a couple of hundred years before the holocaust too–large numbers of supporters doesn’t make something right, true, or defensible). Many postmodern “feminists” will badmouth radical feminism with the same (bs) arguments you’ve putting forward here. It’s much easier to supscribe to third wave or “do-me” feminism & other more popular forms of “feminism” that basically define feminism as any choice any woman anywhere makes (um, no–feminism is actually the struggle for women’s equality against male dominance–let me REPEAT, against MALE DOMINANCE as a social institution, & not simply against people who are biologically male). Attaching catch phrases about “agency” to compliance however doesn’t actually mean that gleefully learning to bend over &/or try to live up to the feminine gender role that’s been defined for women for centuries is now somehow “feminism).
Essentialist? Please. Educating oneself about what radical feminism is & what it is not is important, if you want to critique it. Essentialism (for those of us, myself included, without an MA who may not be all that familiar with the postmodern jargon as we don’t use it on a daily basis) is the idea that people are defined by inborn, innate, gender identities, ie, in the case of men, that men are hard wired to hurt & oppress women & that male dominance over women is biological. Let me state here clearly (as I’ve probably done a hundred times for people by this point in my life as an activist…) absolutely NOTHING could be further from what I believe. I believe that & women are both human. I believe men aren’t destined to dominate women. I believe men can change. And I believe they should. I believe men can say “Fuck you!” to masculinity, to treating women like we’re some other species, different, less than, that men can work right alongside women to help us be treated like equal human beings–I believe men can make the choice to behave in pro-feminist ways, & because I believe men ARE NOT naturally dominators & abusers of women, I hold men accountable when they choose to act in male-supremicist ways. I hate male supremacy, not men. I am all for working towards a world where gender is a thing of the past; I don’t identify with or enjoy anything whatsoever about femininity, and I think trying to live up to the standards masculinity sets for what a “real man” is hurts a lot of men & boys too. BUT, I am not about to pretend we ALREADY live in that perfect, genderless society, nor will I accept somebody who was raised with male privilege not acknowledging that privilege to me, as a woman-born-woman. Male privilege, (like white-privilege, like Christian-raised privilege), isn’t just about conscious choices & attitudes–it’s a whole lifetime of social conditioning as well, & it takes a very conscious, life-long struggle to unlearn that privilege. The 1st step to unlearning it is admitting that it’s there.
As for truly essentialist statements, YOU paint “the chassidim” with one big brush, as though all chasidic jews are inherently “anti-sex;” I have encountered several individuals who would feel insulted & deeply offended by the way you invisibalize their lives & experiences with that remark. As for me being antisex–Dang! Where were you? Go back & read the story again, I had way too much fun writing it (& mentally (re)living a couple of the wonderful, tender, gentle erotic experiences the narrator has with male characters–Men who did NOT use their sexuality to try to dominate her) for that criticism to hold water. Again, how INSULTING of you to invisibilize the men I wrote about in this story, men who wanted, & GAVE the freedom to explore egalitarian sex with a female partner. I feel sad for you if you truly believe “sex” only happens when a man sticks his erect dick in somebody, or that critiquing the racist, sexist, capitalist horseshit the porn industry cranks out is synonimous with critiquing all sex. What can even be said to that?
anybody kind of interested in what radical feminism actually is, might check out the “Lie Detector” link on Nikki Craft’s Andrea Dworkin site, I’m pasting the “Andrea Dworkin is Essentialist” lie & response here, as I think it’s so similar to Viganovich’s misrepresentation. Thanks for allowing me the chance to clarify!, Stephanie
Andrea Dworkin is an “essentialist”–she believes, for instance, that men are biologically driven to dominate.
FALSE. From her very first book, Woman Hating (1974), Andrea has said that gender is a social lie, and she has explicitly rejected the notion that “men” and “women” exist in nature. “It is not true that there are two sexes which are discrete and opposite,” she says in a speech given in 1975. And in a chapter published in 1981, she mourns the tragedy of the socialization that male children endure (“How does it happen that the male child whose sense of life is so vivid that he imparts humanity to sun and stone changes into the adult male who cannot grant or even imagine the common humanity of women?”).
http://www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/dworkin/LieDetect.html
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