Dworkin II

[KXX4493553 at aol.com]

>From Booklist
In Life and Death (1997), Dworkin vowed to find a new way to write about
violence against women, and the result is this towering indictment and call
to action. Dworkin's prose has never been sharper, or her feminist vision
more arresting, than in this extensively referenced synthesis of history,
philosophy, religion, literature, and politics. At the heart of her inquiry
stands the figure of the scapegoat, the lowest of the low, the rank
routinely accorded to women, especially those who are poor, and to Jews.
Dworkin examines, to profound effect, the scapegoat dynamic in two related
but seemingly opposite arenas, the Holocaust and contemporary Israel, but
her scope is global, and her insights pierce centuries of male sovereignty.
Unflinching in her detailed chronicling of the Nazis' systematic murder and
torture of women, Dworkin then links the apocalyptic to the domestic,
offering astute and groundbreaking perceptions into women's loyalty to the
men who harm them. Nothing has worked to free women from their scapegoat
status, Dworkin concludes, and so she advocates a "concrete militancy" based
on women accepting responsibility for putting a stop to male crimes against
humanity. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

>From Kirkus Reviews
Feminist writer Dworkin (Life and Death, 1997, etc.) exploits a common
analogy between the inferior status of diaspora Jews and women to highlight
the function of both groups as scapegoats.Dworkin draws on an extensive
bibliography to demonstrate how, for thousands of years, marginalized groups
have been systematically abused, violated, and deprived of human dignity.
Her sources, however, seem to be used pell-mell and quoted out of context.
Even worse, when Dworkin speaks in her own words, she frequently exhibits an
ignorance of many of the subjects (from Jewish law to social conditions in
Russia) most relevant to her argument. Her tendentious narrative rapidly
deteriorates into a one-sided, angst-filled generalization of Dworkin's own
bitter personal feelings (rooted in her experience as a battered woman). As
a result, she ends up committing the very sin she seeks to expose,
"scapegoating" all men for all injustice in every period of history. She
declares, for example, that it is degrading for a woman to hear the words "I
love you" from a man, because these words are "a sign of appropriation." The
reader is left to wonder whether men should be equally insulted by women's
declarations of love. Furthermore, Dworkin completely ignores the force of
the female libido, instead portraying women as passive prey to men's desire.
Both pornography and high art depicting the female form are declared equally
hostile to women, with no attention paid to paintings and statues of nude
men or the purely aesthetic value of the human body. Dworkin even advocates
sending Israeli women to the front lines for the sake of her cherished
principle of equality.This deplorable piece of man-hating propaganda
ultimately does a disservice to women as well. Inciting them to violence
against men, Dworkin contributes to furthering the rift between the sexes,
making the dream of a truly humane society based on mutual respect as
elusive as ever. -- Copyright © 2000 Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights
reserved.

kwp
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