emily2348's reviews
243 reviews

kat baynard being one of the only fourth-wave feminists to actually write about how harmful prostitution and porn is! deeply commendable. (i did skip the section on male “feminists” though…),  anyone in the reviews saying this book shames women read it with their eyes closed i fear.

would be a good introduction into dworkin’s writing as it includes different topics from all of her published works (wish they included the virginity chapter from intercourse as it’s some of her best work). my suicide is one of the most gut-wrenching thing i have read in my life this quote had me sitting here sobbing i hope she is at peace now:

 “I want to live but I don't know how. I don't want more violence to my body, even by me. But I can't bear knowing what I know, in all regards. I ask God to forgive me. Please forgive me all my stupidities and my cruelties. Please don't let there be karma because I don't want to have to do this again. Please take care of Paul and my cats. Please help the women. Please let me die now. “ 

i love you andrea dworkin 🩷

the penultimate chapter was the best of the book, the whole book was like seeing a woman slowly unravel because of constant subjection and abuse from males. took me so long to get through because it was so brutal and true to life as a woman. i am still thinking about it a week on and listening to her talk about this book dworkin is an especially genius fiction writer.

“It’s very important for women to kill men. His death, of course, is unbearable. His death is intolerable, unspeakable, unfair, insufferable; I agree; I learned it since the day I was born; terrible; his death is terrible; are you crazy; are you stupid; are you cruel? He can't be killed; for what he did to you?”

this has scared me so bad, which is probably why it’s so highly rated because it feels, especially with the state of women’s rights globally, quite plausible. i feel like it did a really good job of showing two aspects of women’s oppression like the juxtaposition of what is essentially a brothel and the breeding houses that offred lives in being two sides of the same coin that subjects the female body.

one of the most heartbreaking memoirs i have read, the fact she died without justice and that the cycle of pornography continues is hitting me so hard. i hope she is at peace, and that everyone who continues to stream her rape dies instantly.

picked this up because a review described it as “prudish, porn-hating, sexually reticent sapphist.” and that sounds like my kind of book, but this book was not that good. starting with the positives i agree with the core message that women re-packing male misogyny as “sexual liberation” is not and will never be feminist, the commodification and objectification of the female body even if it’s done by a women is not empowering and that this pornified culture is being rebranded and sold to young girls. however, there were so many mixed messages from the author like she said one thing and immediately contradicts it, the writing was not structured well and jumped around and her chapter on lesbians was just so unnecessary and strange??? anyway there are much better books on these topics (industrial vagina shelia jeffreys or intercourse by dworkin just off the top of my head)

very good analysis on the global scale of sex exploitation and the deep harm it causes towards woman and girls.

“It is hard to pretty up an industry which depends to a large extent on the continual rape of girls and women who are numbed with shock and pain. This unrealistic belief is ideological. It depends upon a liberal determination to respect the free will of the individual and the market above all other values, and on a respect for the power and inevitability of men's sex right.”

first book from catharine mackinnon, i watched her lecture on prostitution and knew i had to read one of her books. the essay "on torture" is one of the best, i definitely want to read some of her other works, maybe i will read one a little less law heavy next because i am not that versed on american law and codes 

"In isolation, in image, butterflies are delicate, vulnerable, even fragile. They can be reduced to decoration or flit by overlooked. In life, their endurance and power lies in collectivity. On its journey, a butterfly can be smashed against a windshield or die of lack of nutrition or be collected and categorized, pinned in a box. But what butterflies together-sometimes even one-can set in motion cannot be stopped"

Need everyone to read immediately, the studies and stats in this shocked me so bad even after i have read multiple books on porn and its consequences. The last section on women getting revenge on the men behind pornographers/consumers was just beautiful i think those women are amazing. This addressed basically every consequence of pornography, prostitution and the commodification of the female body within society and i think more people should be speaking about it. Death to the porn industry and the selling of women amen!

“You can't have authentic sexual freedom without sexual justice. It is only freedom for those in power; the powerless cannot be free. Their experience of sexual freedom becomes but a delusion borne of complying with the demands of the powerful. Increased sexual freedom under male supremacy has had to mean an increased tolerance for sexual practices that are predicated on eroticized injustice between men and women: treating women's bodies or body parts as merely sexual objects or things; treating women as utterly submissive masochists who enjoy pain and humiliation and who, if they are raped, enjoy it; treating women's bodies to sexualized beating, mutilation, bondage, dismemberment. Once you have sex-ualized inequality, once it is a learned and internalized prerequisite for sexual arousal and sexual gratification, then anything goes. And thats what sexual freedom means on this side of sexual justice.”

one of the best reads of the year i think, the way capitalism, patriarchy and colonialism is linked and explained within this book just blew my mind. reading about the witch killings makes me cry everytime, i am going to have to read everything she’s written now aren’t i….

“We cannot, therefore, identify capitalist accumulation with the liberation of the worker, female or male, as many Marxists (among others) have done, or see the advent of capitalism as a moment of historical progress. On the contrary, capitalism has created more brutal and insidious forms of enslavement, as it has planted into the body of the proletariat deep divisions that have served to intensify and conceal exploitation. It is in great part because of these imposed divisions - especially those between women and men - that capitalist accumulation continues to devastate life in every corner of the planet.”