Talk:Andrea Dworkin/Archive 5

This is an archive of past discussions about Andrea Dworkin. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 1

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Archive 3

Reversion of edits by LukeLockwood/207.112.92.102

I have reverted a series of edits recently made by User:LukeLockwood and a user at IP address 207.112.92.102 (the IP address merely made typographical corrections to edits made by LukeLockwood). Here's a list of the edits that were reverted, and why.

Revision as of 15:25, 20 April 2006: Luke added the unsourced claim that "She also argued that ordinary sexual intercourse was de facto rape of the woman, and that ultimately a healthy heterosexual relationship was not possible." Dworkin's views on heterosexual intercourse are controversial, and she denied believing that "ordinary sexual intercourse was de facto rape of the woman" when she was asked directly (she repeatedly characterized this presentation of her views as a "slander"). This controversy is discussed in some detail in the article, especially in the section on the book Intercourse. Whatever you make of her published views, it is certainly a violation of WP:NPOV to state as fact that she believed this in the opening paragraph of the article. She also explicitly stated that healthy sexual or romantic relationships between men and women were possible; cf., for example, Woman Hating, p. 184: "Unambiguous conventional heterosexual behavior is the worst betrayal of our common humanity. ... That is not to say that "men" and "women" should not fuck. Any sexual coming together that is genuinely pansexual and role-free, even if between men and women as we generally think of them (i.e., the biological images we have of them), is authentic and androgynous" (boldface mine). Cf. also the interview with Michael Moorcock: "Since the paradigm for sex has been one of conquest, possession, and violation, I think many men believe they need an unfair advantage, which at its extreme would be called rape. I don't think they need it. I think both intercourse and sexual pleasure can and will survive equality."
Revision as of 15:28, 20 April 2006: Luke inserted the following paragraph at the end of the section on Dworkin's later life: "She did record in her biography that she felt that all the publishing houses were against her, due to being a feminist. However it does have to be admitted that the things she wrote about tended to be very narrow in focus and as a result would not have a wide appeal." This passage does contain some valuable information (Dworkin's conviction that American publishing houses were hostile to her writing and that her difficulties in finding a publisher had to do with her political views). However, the alternative explanation inserted constitutes original research (or more accurately, bare speculation), if it is not qualified by some actual source that suggests it as an explanation. Further, "it does have to be admitted..." is intrusive POV editorializing. No, it doesn't have to be.
Revision as of 15:30, 20 April 2006: Luke inserted the phrase "extremist" into the opening paragraph, so that Dworkin would be described as "an American radical feminist and extremist writer." This is POV. "Radical feminist" already provides a neutral description of both the content and the tone of her writing. "Extremist" is both superfluous and POV.
Revision as of 15:33, 20 April 2006: Luke revised the paragraph on Dworkin's testimony concerning the Women's House of D to read: "She was sent to the New York Women's House of Detention, where she was given an internal examination by two prison doctors that she alleges was rough causing her to bleed for days afterwards. ... The grand jury declined to make an indictment in the case due to lack of evidence(80), but Dworkin's testimony contributed to public outrage over the mistreatment of inmates." The statement that the prison was closed seven years later was deleted without explanation. Arch use of phrases like "alleges" has been discussed at length above and if you want to revisit this you should begin at the Talk page. The positive claim that there was a "lack of evidence" is POV; that's what the grand jury decided, but Dworkin and many others would beg to differ. (Dworkin says on the pages immediately proceeding p. 80 of Heartbreak, the source cited, that they dismissed her because she didn't meet the cultural expectations of a "good girl.") Further, even if this edit were warranted, the way Luke has implemented it is a grammatical trainwreck. If an internal examination caused her to bleed for days, then it was rough, not just "allegedly" rough. What I take it he means to say is that she alleged that their internal examination caused her to bleed for days because it was (allegedly) rough, not that it did cause her to bleed for days and that she merely alleged that it was rough.
Revision as of 15:35, 20 April 2006: Luke revised the section header "Return to New York and contact with the feminist movement" to read "Return to New York and contact with the extreme feminist movement." This is POV. If you want to use the neutral and meaningful descriptor "radical feminist movement," that would accurately describe the part of the feminist movement she was influenced by in Amsterdam and joined up with in New York. "Extreme feminist movement" means next to nothing, and violates NPOV.
Revision as of 15:40, 20 April 2006: Luke made several changes to the paragraph describing Dworkin's reputation as a speaker. A long analytic discussion is added: "An examination of the content of these speeches leads one to conclude that they were about sex, and the power imbalances in sexual intercourse, and that sexual violence and pornography were inextricably linked. The topics talked about were always based on this and never really diverged, so therefore she became single-issue. She made a lot of passionate claims without proper evidence, and tended to over-generalise: "all pornography leads to rape", to the point of paranoia. She strongly felt that all men were potential rapists, and was never able to convince herself otherwise. However she always refused to go for counselling." The "examination of the content of these speeches" is extremely tendentious original research, unconvincingly hiding under the weasel-worded descriptions of what "An examination ... leads one to conclude." The topics of Dworkin's speeches did not always actually have much to do with pornography (just to pick some titles at random, there's "Feminism, Art, and My Mother Sylvia," "Remembering the Witches" and "Renouncing Sexual 'Equality'" in Our Blood). The assertion tha "she made a lot of passionate claims without proper evidence, and tended to over-generalise ... to the point of paranoia" is a POV synthetic conclusion that you're not entitled to assert in the editorial voice. It's also given without any sources in either Dworkin's work or writings about Dworkin, even though a specific phrase ("all pornography leads to rape") is presented as if it were a direct quotation (from where?). The dimestore psychoanalysis of Dworkin's views is ad hominem, unsupported, and POV. After this analytic passage, Luke also edited the claim that her speeches "inspired her audience to action" to state (ungrammatically) that "She inspired her female audiences into action, such as her speech ..." But not all of the speeches listed as examples of her public speaking had female audiences. One of them, "I Want a Twenty Four Hour Truce During Which There Is No Rape," was given before an audience of about 500 men at a men's pro-feminist conference.
Revision as of 15:43, 20 April 2006: Luke inserted into the paragraph about Dworkin and Stoltenberg's 1998 marriage that "Their relationship was never sexual however, and it appeared that Dworkin could have a caring relationship with men as long as no sex was involved. Stoltenberg had quite severe issues relating to his own gender, and possibly suffered with gender dysphoria. His books are incredibly introspective and polarised." Besides more hamhanded psychiatric diagnosis in absentia, this passage is presented without sources and appears to be pure speculation about Dworkin and Stoltenberg's private life from beginning to end. In all the interviews I have read they refused on principle to discuss such details of their life together. Dworkin wrote elsewhere that she did not have intercourse, but that tells you nothing about whether their relationship was "sexual" or not, since there are more forms of sex than intercourse. As a whole this passage is simply rubbish.
Revision as of 15:45, 20 April 2006: Luke wrote the following into the opening paragraph in the section "Critique of pornography": "However Dworkin never spoke about pornography of men designed for women, or the sexual aggressiveness of women e.g. ann summers; hen parties. In her mind she had split all sexual desire and lust onto the part of men, and all passivity and weakness onto the role of women." This is not true. Speculation about how Dworkin divvied up the world "in her mind" is just that. In any case her public writings do explicitly discuss sexual aggressiveness by women; cf. for example "Renouncing Sexual 'Equality'" in Our Blood.
Revision as of 15:51, 20 April 2006: Luke adds an arch "allegedly" to the description of Dworkin's autobiographical statements in the New York Times Book Review. See above. If you want to make it clear that the source for the claims about her life history are her own autobiographical statements, then the best way to do this is to rewrite the paragraph using attributed verbatim quotes, or to use sentence constructions that sidestep the issue (e.g., "Dworkin stated that her experiences of being violently inspected by prison doctors, battered by her first husband and numerous other men were the origin of her fierce opposition to prostitution and pornography").
Revision as of 15:53, 20 April 2006: Luke changes "Dworkin published controversial articles ... stating that one or more men had raped her in her hotel room in Paris the previous year" to "... alleging that one or more men had raped her in her hotel room in Paris the previous year." "Stating" is exactly equivalent in meaning to "alleging" in this sentence. There is no need and no warrant for this wordsmithing, unless you intend to use the phrase to archly suggest that her claims are not true. A closing sentence is added to the final paragraph about her failing health, asserting without sources that "Her failing health was principally due to her being vastly overweight, she always refused to lose weight, possibly because she wanted to remain as unattractive to men as possible." The last clause is speculation and crude antifeminist caricature. The claim that her failing health was due to her weight is speculation and no source is provided (she was, among other things, suffering from the effects of repeated surgeries and numerous pain medications; her health after her years of abuse and homelessness in the Netherlands was never robust). The claim that "she always refused to lose weight" is false. During the last couple years of her life Dworkin dieted and went as far as to have bariatric surgery to reduce her weight, on doctor's advice, because her weight exacerbated her crippling osteoarthritis. At the end of her life she actually was quite thin: cf. Ariel Levy's article and the photo at the head of the page.
Revision as of 15:55, 20 April 2006: Luke adds the statement that "Knee replacements are common in those who are overweight" after a mention of Dworkin's knee replacement surgery. No source is provided for this claim; in any case, it's hard to know what purpose this trivia serves. After the quotation of Dworkin's own belief that wounds from her rape in Paris were related to the crippling leg and joint pain she later suffered, Luke adds "Osteoarthritis cannot be cause by rape or childabuse however, as it is a genetic condition or one derived from joint friction and injury." This is unsourced, and in any case involves the patent absurdity of suggesting that sexual or physical abuse couldn't be a cause of joint injury. (Dworkin reported being beaten severely all over her legs by her former husband in the Netherlands; that might just be a possible cause of joint injury). In any case, Dworkin's statements do not need to be "corrected" by subsequent editorializing. She herself states that the doctors doubt what she thinks and mentions other explanations that have been offered. The link to osteoarthritis provides a place for readers to go if they want a more in-depth discussion of the etiology and possible causes of osteoarthritis. For what it's worth, the ultimate causes of degenerative osteoarthritis are not at all well known, and controversial, so the apodictic tone of this statement would be inappropriate even if the statement were needed to serve some informational purpose.
The remaining two revisions are typographical corrections by an anonymous IP of sections that were added by LukeLockwood.

Both the subject of this article and the article itself are controversial, and the editing process has been a hard one involving many disagreements over precisely the issues that Luke's edits broaches. If you have new information to add, non-combative edits to make, etc. please don't hesitate to do so. But if you are treading on ground where it's likely that you're revisiting some old debates, please consult the Talk page and take the issue up there before you decide to head once more into the breach. Radgeek 07:23, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

You don't need evidence that being overweight causes osteoarthritis - it is common knowledge and common sense. Secondly, you're hardly neutral yourself for describing my comments as ANTI-FEMINIST as this is not a neutral term - you could accuse me of it being unsourced, which would be more professional. Secondly, if you know anything about John Stoltenberg I think it is pretty damn OBVIOUS that he has got psychiatric issues as no normal man would behave like that. LukeLockwood

Radgeek, while I agree with you that, in some places in Wikipedia, the word "allege" is overused, but I think it is appropriate in several of the places Luke used it. In cases where a crime is claimed, "allege" is quite appropriate.

Also: "The grand jury declined to make an indictment in the case due to lack of evidence(80)" This phrase is not really POV. It appears to be common practice in Wikipedia to treat legal decisions as reliable sources, unless a specific controversy about the case is notable. Note also that decision such as this does not claim her allegation is factually false, it merely claims that proving it true would be impossible.

Disruptive Talk page editing, part II

A user at IP address 62.6.139.11, who later claimed in his comments to be User:LukeLockwood, recently erased my extensive comments explaining my reversion of a series of edits by LukeLockwood. Besides being conversationally unfair and puzzling to readers (since it presents the response to my claims without making the claims themselves available to read), it is also a violation of WikiPedia etiquette, a disruptive use of the Talk page, and an abuse of the Wiki mechanism. Please do not erase or otherwise modify the content of other people's comments on this Talk page. That's not an acceptable way to conduct this conversation. Radgeek 16:06, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

User:LukeLockwood again vandalized this Talk page by altering and deleting information written by me (cf. [1] and [2]). The first edit removed his username (mangling some sentences in the process) from the section discussing my reversion of the edits he made (along with the corrections of typographical errors on his edits by an anonymous IP). The second edit again mangled sentences and deleted uses of his username. I don't know why these edits were made, but they are not in any case a proper use of the Talk page. Please stop disrupting this Talk page with edits to the content of other people's writing. Radgeek 02:52, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Dear Radgeek,

I have e-mailed you telling you why I have deleted my username. I do not wish my full name and details to be on the Internet, as I have now been advised by the police to try and remove as much identifiable content about me on the Internet, due to a pending court case. I have now e-mailed customer services to tell them about this and they have replied and said they are going to help me out. Incidentally LukeLockwood does not exist anymore, it is now LukeL.

LukeL

Politically-Correct Hate Speech

Something should be said about the fact that much of what Andrea Dworkin said and wrote meets the criteria of hate speech. -- LKS 5/13/06

The ongoing debate

I'm hesitant to return to editing this page. However, I note that somebody has taken to critiquing comments I made several months ago. I don't wish to enter into yet another debate regarding the particular points that they raised. All I wish to point out is why I stopped contributing.

Following claims regarding "original research" and so on, I went to the trouble of looking through the literature again and cataloguing various writers' interpretations of Dworkin. This was, it was claimed, what was lacking in previous contributions regarding Dworkin's alleged dislike of vaginal intercourse. There never was a substantive response to any of that, or any attempt to include that information in the entry itself. I also cited "Intercourse" in detail to show where my interpretations came from. Again, there was no response.

While radgeek continued to combat the evils of vandalism, I saw no serious effort to include less congenial interpretations of Dworkin's pronouncements. I therefore concluded that it was futile to continue my efforts. I have no doubt that, had I actually inserted any of this material into the article, it would have been reverted on grounds of NPOV or original research. As such, the attitude to such negative interpretations stands in contrast to various other pieces of exculpatory editorialising, which are naturally deemed neutral and not original research, and apparently don't require the voluminous citations that I provided. Even if they had made it in, they would have been of the "he said/she said" form (see the "Controversy" section of the "Intercourse article), unlike, e.g., radgeek's narratory framing of the controversial "vagina is a muscle" quote, which in radgeek world is unimpeachably detached truth-telling.

radgeek never showed how his unsourced interpretation was straightforward and reasonable, whereas all others were biased and/or original research, in spite of Dworkin's deeply ambiguous writing style. When the "original research" canard was shown to be false he simply fell silent.

The quibbling from IP 85.64.246.205 is wearyingly familiar. I have gone into great detail about that particular point. Either you take on this argument properly, or there is no point in saying anything at all.

Against my better judgment, let me answer the specific point: I did not refer to the "female condition"; I referred, as Dworkin did, to possession of a vagina. You appear to be using this false disjunction to exaggerate an at best small, and certainly arguable, difference between degrees of suffering versus degrees of overall badness. This sort of nitpicking is quite irrelevant while the Dworkin and "Intercourse" articles remain manifestly biased. In any case, I would point you to what I actually added to the article all those months ago (and which was removed by radgeek):

"Elsewhere she apparently suggests that women are, on account of their penetrable sexual organs, consigned to suffering worse than that of concentration camp victims."

This (which was already quoted above, if you'd cared to read it) is almost precisely what you are now defending (you mention submission, but she does not, if we're to move to your level of pedantry, actually say anything about a "degree of submission inherent in having a vagina"). The broader inferences to be drawn from this statement and others were dubbed, when I added them, "original research". As copiously explained above and previously, they were not; they were no less valid than radgeek's. The continuing lack of response to these points is eloquent.

Stuarta 14:17, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Stuarta, your specific claim about Dworkin's views on having a vagina was responded to above more than once. This was done both in reply to your direct comments on the quotation, and also on the general theme of Dworkin's views about how women and men come to experience what are in fact political conditions as if they were part of their own inner nature. Having other things to do in this article, let alone in my life in general, I have left some of your replies to my replies without further replying to them, because I think the point is clear and that resolving the interpretive dispute is not really the purpose of this Talk page.

Since you're bringing it up again, however, let's look back to what you said, and then what I said in one of these exchanges. Here's Stuarta on 2 February 2006:

The following quotation from her book, "Intercourse", was removed with the comment that it did not mean that she felt being constructed for vaginal penetration was worse than being an Auschwitz inmate. Out of interest, can somebody (radgeek?) please explain what other interpretation could be reasonably put on it? She says there is "no analogue" to having a vagina, not even in the Nazi death camps or Gulag. It might, of course, mean that having a vagina is far nicer than being in Auschwitz, but given the context -- the description of intercourse as "humiliation", her apparent suggestion that men select vaginal entry specifically to debase or dominate women -- and the overall thesis of the book, it seems a reasonable conclusion to reach. Why mention these bywords for horrific torture if not to emphasise the awfulness of having a vagina?

"There is no analogue anywhere among subordinated groups of people to this experience of being made for intercourse; for penetration, entry, occupation. There is no analogue in occupied countries or in dominated races or in imprisoned dissidents or in colonized cultures or in the submission of children to adults or in the atrocities that have marked the twentieth century ranging from Auschwitz to the Gulag."

The quotation, for reference, is taken from Chapter 7 of Intercourse, "Occupation/Collaboration," p. 123. On the same day, I replied:

I don't think that this point requires "interpretation." Dworkin says what she means: there aren't ready analogies between the conditions that she says women experience in patriarchy and the conditions of other oppressed peoples. She suggests that the reason for the difference is that some forms of patriarchal oppression are sexualized. She makes no claims at all about what is better or worse; she merely says that they are, in this respect, not the same.

Five days later you came back to answer:

The quoted excerpt does not refer to patriarchy. It says there is “no analogue” to “being made for penetration, entry, occupation”. Just before, we are told that during intercourse “[t]he vagina itself is muscled and the muscles have to be pushed apart”, and that “[s]he is occupied -- physically, internally, in her privacy”. All of this is a clear reference to the biological reality of women, and its relation to vaginal intercourse. Why, if she were referring to women’s subordinate position in the patriarchy, would she talk in such explicit language about their genitals?

But, first, you misrepresent Dworkin here by selective quotation. Dworkin does not say that there is "no analogue" to "being made for penetration, entry, occupation" in the passage you quote. She says: "There is no analogue ... to this experience of being made for intercourse: for penetration, entry, occupation" (emphasis added). Having an experience of being so-and-so is not the same thing as being so-and-so; you might have an experience of being so-and-so without actually being that way. In Chapter 8, "Law" she makes a clear argument that "The creation of gender (so-called nature) by law was systematic, sophisticated, supremely intelligent; behavior regulated to produce social conditions of power and powerlessness experienced by the individuals inside the social system as the sexual natures inside them as individuals" (156). She makes a similar point in her speech, "The Root Cause," when she argues that "while the system of gender polarity is real, it is not true. ... In other words, the system based on this polar model of existence is absolutely real; but the model itself is not true. We are living imprisoned inside a pernicious delusion, a delusion on which all reality as we know it is predicated" (Our Blood 110). Dworkin devotes a great deal of space in Intercourse and elsewhere to discussing how the social reality of male dominance shapes the meaning and effect of intercourse for women. She is explicit in the very paragraph you cite that this is connected with the inferior status of women -- a social condition which she takes to be political and not natural or intrinsic, as she explains throughout her work. Thus: "Intercourse is a particular reality for women as an inferior class; and it has in it, as part of it, violation of boundaries, taking over, occupation, destruction of privacy, all of which are construed to be normal and also fundamental to continuing human existence" (123, emphasis added). Further down in the chapter, you'll find that she says: "Intercourse occurs in a context of a power relation that is pervasive and incontrovertible. The context in which the act takes place, whatever the meaning of the act in and of itself, is one in which men have social, economic, political, and physical power over women. Some men do not have all those kinds of power over women; but all men have some kinds of power over all women; and most men have controlling power over what they call their women--the women they fuck. The power is predetermined by gender, by being male" (125-126). And: "The uses of women, now, in intercourse--not the abuses to the extent that they can be separated out--are absolutely permeated by the reality of male power over women. ... How to separate the act of intercourse from the social reality of male power is not clear, especially because it is male power that constructs both the meaning and the current practice of intercourse as such." (pp. 127-128). Here is how she closes the chapter, after all these considerations and more: "If intercourse can be an expression of sexual equality, it will have to survive--on its own merits, as it were, having a potential for human expression not yet recognized or realized--the destruction of male power over women; and rape and prostitution will have to be seen as institutions that most impede any experience of intercourse as freedom--chosen by full human beings with full human freedom. Rape and prostitution negate self-determination and choice for women; and anyone who wants intercourse to be freedom and to mean freedom had better find a way to get rid of them. Maybe life is tragic and the God who does not exist made women inferior so that men could fuck us; or maybe we can only know this much for certain--that when intercourse exists and is experienced under conditions of force, fear, or inequality, it destroys in women the will to political freedom; it destroys the love of freedom itself. We become female: occupied; collaborators against each other, especially against those among us who resist male domination--the lone, crazy resisters, the organized resistence. The pleasure of submission does not and cannot change the fact, the cost, the indignity, of inferiority" (143).

This should make it clear to you, first, that she is explicitly mentioning women's status under patriarchy, as critical to the discussion, in the paragraph in question. She also makes clearer elsewhere in Intercourse (and throughout her work) what the source of "this experience of being made for intercourse" is: not some set of anatomical facts about women's genitalia, but rather a particular set of social conditions that shape how men and women experience their sexual natures and intercourse in particular. Nowhere does she rule out the possibility that intercourse can be an expression of sexual equality--and her explicit statements elsewhere indicate that she does indeed think that it can. What she wants to do here is only to raise the question clearly, and to make clear that there are real social and political demands imposed by any effort to make intercourse compatible with freedom.

Now then, secondly. You object to my claim that in this passage Dworkin makes no claim at all that "this experience of being made for intercourse: for penetration, entry, occupation" is worse than the conditions of Jews in Auschwitz, of prisoners in the gulag, of colonized peoples, etc.:

Finally, you are being ridiculous in suggesting her comparison with, among others, Auschwitz and the Gulag, “makes no claims at all about what is better or worse”. The strong implication, as I’ve already said, is that women’s situation is worse. If she were drawing a value-free comparison why was every counterpoint a deeply negative one?

But I deny that there is any such "strong implication." The claim made in the passage you quote is only that the experience is different, that "there is no analogue," that "there is nothing exactly the same," that "There is nothing that happens to any other civilly inferior people that is the same in its meaning and in its effect." There are plenty of reasons that you'd want to make this comparison other than trying to imply, somehow, that women's situation is even worse than that of death camp inmates (or the less dramatic "counterpoints," e.g. the condition of people in colonized cultures, or the submission of children to adults). For example, she may want to make it clear that the issue cannot be understood on the model of other forms of oppression. She may want to make it clear that the meaning and effects of intercourse for women in our society go deeper than (which is not to say that they are worse than), are closer to one's own self-conception than, are harder to question than, or have any number of other differences from, the meaning and effects of other forms of oppression with which we are familiar. (All of these are points that she lays some stress on later in the chapter.) Maybe she wants to suggest that women's situation is worse than that of other subordinated peoples', even worse than that of Jews in the Holocaust. Maybe she doesn't. The passage you're citing simply does not assert anything one way or the other on this question, and you cannot pull one out of it without moving beyond summary to having the article make an analytical claim over a disputed point. Which you are not entitled to do under WP:NPOV and WP:NOR.

As a further note, you have never refuted my claims that you were engaging in original research in the edits of yours that I reverted. Long after I challenged unsourced claims that clearly violate WP:NOR you came back to this Talk page and you posted a great deal of material that you had culled from third party sources of varying credibility, which, if added to the article, would not have violated WP:NOR (and which I stated might make good additions to the article if done properly). But coming up with new edits that would not violate WP:NOR is not the same thing as having proven that your old edits did not violate WP:NOR. They did, since they repeatedly made analytical claims over disputed points without providing sources, repeatedly attempted to anonymously editorialize about what passages "seemingly imply," "strongly suggest," etc. over and above what the text actually says, etc. Here's what I said about this some time ago, without reply from you: "I'm not here primarily to convince you of what I take to be the right way to read Intercourse. Nor do I think that the article should not discuss the published views of specific critics of Dworkin. What I characterized as original research (and continue to regard as such) is your unsourced editorializing. It is disingenuous of you to suggest that you are merely including the interpretation of other readers, since you previously made no attempts to cite those readers or characterize their specific views. That would be a responsible way to help present an NPOV discussion of the controversy. A personal argumentative essay on what you think the upshot of those parts of Intercourse that you have read or found quoted elsewhere is, is not."

I hope this helps illuminate the issues for those who may be reading this exchange. Radgeek 17:28, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Thank for responding. It was evidently a mistake to raise the vagina issue again, as you've wasted a lot of time going into great detail about that while skating over the far bigger problems. While your Clintonesque semantics have added nothing new to this subject — much less "illuminated" anything — I wish to return to the central issue, in the hope that you will actually address it.

Having complained that the original interpretations I drew were "original research", you now dismiss my extensively referenced catalogue of writers' attitudes to Dworkin as being "culled from third party sources of varying credibility".

Firstly, if you have a direct criticism of their credibility then please, raise it. If you don't, then it would help this process greatly if you'd refrain from baseless insinuation.

Secondly, the idea that citing writers is "culling" from "third parties" is ludicrous. Your demand for sources was precisely a request for recourse to third parties, as you well know. It is therefore hard to understand what you say as anything other than a contemptible rhetorical ploy.

I don't wish you to slip away from the confronting the main problem, however, so I'll once again restate it. Nothing you say about unsourced assertions, or what I said previously about the vagina quote, has any bearing on the well-sourced catalogue of critical writers and their attitudes that you have ignored. To reiterate: I am only speaking now about those contributions, not because you have in some way negated previous posts, but because these most clearly illustrate your partisan attitude to the article.

Why, if you actually wish to produce a neutral article about Dworkin, did you ignore *sourced* criticisms from numerous writers?

The excuse that you were too busy hardly convinces given your other contributions in the months since I did that work, not least your tediously documented investigation into the depradations of Luke Lockwood. You have demonstrated a clear lack of interest in including critical material, whatever generalities you may have emitted on that subject.

The other problem, which I raised again, and which you again ignored, is your inability to show why your editorialising (see above, ad nauseam) is somehow distinct from mine. You have argued at length that my interpretation was wrong. I have argued that it was right. The distinction you attempt to draw, and which you have never justified, is that somehow *your* editorialising, based on your viewpoint, is neutral and reasonable, and mine is "original research" and biased.

You imply that your framing of the vagina passage is "summary", whereas mine was an "analytical claim over a disputed point". But your allegation that the reference was to "literary depiction" and the "discourse of male truth", rather than to biological reality, is also an "analytical claim over a disputed point". I dispute your interpretation of Dworkin's attitude to sex, as have numerous others, as I documented. While I pointed to Mullarkey and a host of other writers as having a similar interpretation of Dworkin's work, you provided no sources at all. Why, given all this, and given your previous apparent criteria for judging contributions, would I take the long-winded exposition above, or its alleged outcome — the introductory passage currently in the "Intercourse" article — as anything but "original research"?

Your framing of the vagina quote is arguable and not sourced. Mine was too, inasfar as what I said was not precisely the same as what Mullarkey said about the quote. So why should we take yours on trust and dismiss mine out of hand?

Please note: none of your obfuscatory word wrangling above has *anything* to do with this question. All that matter are the criteria that you use to judge when editorialising is justified and when it isn't. Until you state them I'm not going to accept that you have a monopoly on neutrality.

Stuarta 19:30, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Stuarta,

1. You misunderstand me if you think I'm trying to ignore or to dismiss the work that you did in finding third-party discussions of Dworkin's views. I'm sorry if my wording suggested a dismissive attitude toward them--that wasn't intended. Quite the opposite: I've repeatedly said that the third-party discussions you've mentioned (particularly those from notable figures such as Laura Kipnis) are, if properly condensed, valuable material for incorporating into the article. I am not criticizing you for introducing this material; all I am pointing out is that your later efforts to do so don't retroactively refute the charges of original research in the older, unsourced editorializing you engaged in on the main page.

2. Let's separate two issues here, because you seem to be confusing them.

First, there is the issue of what standards we should employ when we discuss Dworkin's work in the main article. This is governed by WikiPedia policy, in particular WP:NPOV (including the section on undue weight), WP:NOR, and WP:AWW.

Second, there is the issue of what standards we should employ when we discuss Dworkin's work on this Talk page. Although the Talk page should be focused primarily on determining what should or should not be incorporated into the main article, there's no reason why (for example) original research from primary sources cannot be incorporated into these discussions, either as a side note, or as part of an explanation for why attempts at editorial summaries need revision, clipping, or what have you. It's not inappropriate to try to hash out what Dworkin actually means here, as long as the hashing out doesn't derail the primary purpose of the discussion (improving the article).

My complaints about violations of WP:NOR in your editorializing on the main page involve the first set of standards. Controversial synthetic claims about Dworkin's meaning, implication, etc. should not be made from the editorial voice. The edits of yours that I reversed, I reversed because they seemed to me to clearly overstep this line. If you think that my own attempts at summarizing her on the main page for either Andrea Dworkin or Intercourse (book) have overstepped this boundary, then I wouldn't be surprised: good writing for WikiPedia, especially about controversial figures or theories, is hard to do, and I'm a finite being like everyone else here. Specific suggestions for improvement or edits would be welcome; the main thing to keep in mind is that while viewpoints should be fairly represented, the main pages should not turn into a set of dueling argumentative essays on Dworkin's Real Meaning.

However, the standards for discussing what Dworkin meant on this Talk page, as per the second set of standards, can include a lot of material that cannot properly be incorporated into the main page. This is why your complaints that I haven't provided "sources" for my discussions of Dworkin's meaning on this page are inappropriate. I certainly have provided sources: specifically I've repeatedly cited from Dworkin's own work, and for the purposes for which I was citing it on this page, that is a source far more interesting than the assertions of Stanley Aronowitz, Laura Kipnis, Maureen Mullarkey, etc. about what Dworkin meant. If my discussion of these quotations were being incorporated into the main page, it would be objectionable as original research. But since I had quite a different purpose (i.e., offering you and others some reasons for my reading of Dworkin, and offering some reasons why specifically I rejected your claims about what certain passages could be safely said to "imply," "strongly suggest," etc.), the best source is the one that I actually offered, at some length.

You may find these discussions to be implausible, or even sophistical, attempts to controvert the obvious meaning. I, of course, disagree: you are the one insisting on reading more into Dworkin's statement about "no analogue," etc. more than she actually says, and the points I have been stressing about Dworkin's view on the social construction of sexuality are points that Dworkin considered extremely important and returned to, again and again, throughout nearly all of her work from Woman Hating onward. The best way to settle this issue, here, insofar as it needs to be settled, is to appeal to a careful reading of Dworkin's work. But, as far as what should go on the main page, the only important upshot is that you cannot offer editorial assertions that these passages say, "imply," "suggest," etc., if there is some dispute about it with some credible reasons from Dworkin's text to think that she may not have meant what you suggest she meant.

Since you've suggested that this affects my discussion not only on this Talk page, but also spills over into my attempts to summarize Dworkin's argument in Intercourse, maybe you could explain what specific sentences, clauses, or phrases of the following you find objectionable:

Extensively discussing works such as The Kreutzer Sonata, Madame Bovary, and Dracula (and citing from religious texts, legal commentary, and pornography), Dworkin argued that the depictions of intercourse in mainstream art and culture consistently emphasized heterosexual intercourse as the only or the most genuine form of "real" sex; that they portrayed intercourse in violent or invasive terms; that they portrayed the violence or invasiveness as central to its eroticism; and that they often united it with male contempt for, revulsion towards, or even murder of, the "carnal" woman. She argued that this kind of depiction enforced a male-centric and coercive view of sexuality, and that, when the cultural attitudes combine with the material conditions of women's lives in a sexist society, the experience of heterosexual intercourse itself becomes a central part of men's subordination of women, experienced as a form of "occupation" (cf. Chapter 7, "Occupation/Collaboration") that is nevertheless expected to be pleasurable for women and to define their very status as women. Dworkin describes the view of intercourse enforced by saying ...

Radgeek 02:21, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for your reply.

I'm happy to tell you that any confusion was yours alone. I am not exercised about the “standards we should employ when we discuss Dworkin's work on this Talk page”, and did not mention them. Instead I'll keep to the subject that I did mention: the standards we employ for the main article (and the “Intercourse” article). These are not a “spill over” from a fuss over the Talk page, but all that I'm interested in.

You say that you “wouldn't be surprised” if I feel your “summarizing” attempts have “overstepped the boundary”. You certainly shouldn't be surprised, as I have repeatedly stated this is my position; but if what you mean is that you may actually have “overstepped the boundary”, then perhaps we are making progress (I doubt it, however).

You say that you provided sources for your “summarizing” because you cited Dworkin's work. This, of course, does not distinguish your summarizing from mine: it too cited Dworkin's work. It is not, therefore, a determinative factor. I was referring, rather, to what you earlier termed “third party sources”. I was apparently obliged to provide these because without them what I wrote was dubbed “personal exegesis”. Evidently this obligation doesn't extend to you, because you cite no third party sources to bolster your own “personal exegesis”, which currently stands in the “Intercourse” article. This point does not hinge on the fairness or otherwise of either piece of “summarizing”: it is simply a double standard.

In the light of this it is extraordinary, quite apart from its irrelevance to what I actually raised, that you continue to assert that my “later efforts” do not “retroactively refute the charges of original research in the older, unsourced editorializing you engaged in on the main page”. The sources that I subsequently supplied, alongside the Mullarkey source that I originally supplied, make plain that the attitude to sex mooted in my editorialising is indeed commonly attributed to Dworkin by various writers. It would therefore be perfectly reasonable to assert (not that I ever did – it is your hobbyhorse, not mine) that the charges of “original research” have been refuted by following contributions. Allow me to quote the “original research” Wikipedia policy page, of which you are so fond:

“Citing sources and avoiding original research are inextricably linked: the only way to demonstrate that you are not doing original research is to cite reliable sources which provide information that is directly related to the topic of the article, and to adhere to what those sources say.”

I demonstrated that I was not doing original research by citing reliable sources directly related to the topic of the article. Thus the charge was refuted. By contrast, the charge against your editorialising remains outstanding, on your own terms, because you have provided no sources aside from Dworkin herself. The gamut of writers with a differing interpretation from yours demonstrates that the interpretation you have inserted into the “Intercourse” article can by no means be assuredly inferred from the book itself. But even if it could, you are in the absurd position of simultaneously dismissing my interpretation for its initial paucity of non-Dworkin sources, while simultaneously maintaining that your own interpretation requires none.

In spite of your implication to the contrary, I have, of course, already made clear specific problems with your editorialising about “Intercourse”. I do not believe one can be at all sure that Dworkin was, as you say in the article, referring to a “male-centric and coercive view of sexuality” “enforced” by “cultural attitudes” or “depiction”. Her meaning is at best ambiguous. I am not going to rehash the specific arguments about this with reference to her text. If you wish to read them, they're still above, in the 21st February post that you never replied to.

You conclude that the 'upshot is that you cannot offer editorial assertions that these passages say, "imply," "suggest," etc., if there is some dispute about it with some credible reasons from Dworkin's text to think that she may not have meant what you suggest she meant.' But I have offered credible reasons from her work, and from other people's work, that suggest she may not have meant what you say she meant. Therefore *you* are, by your own admission, not in a position to offer your “editorial assertions”. Moreover, you did not even hedge your editorialising in the way I did, and are thus more vulnerable than I am to the allegations of making contentious assertions. You baldly aver, for instance, that:

'Dworkin argued that the depictions of intercourse in mainstream art and culture consistently emphasized heterosexual intercourse as the only or the most genuine form of "real" sex'

I don't agree that she did. She made, as I noted above, a collection of “paratactical, oracular pronouncements regarding the nature of intercourse”, interspersed with literary criticism, that might be interpreted to mean what you say, but which might also be interpreted to mean she viewed vaginal intercourse as inherently violative. Your editorialising remains unsupported by “third party sources” (unlike mine) and less equivocal than mine. Yet unfathomably you continue to assert that it is implicitly somehow more neutral than mine.

There remains the separate issue of your lack of enthusiasm for including sourced critical material not in the editorial voice. While I again hear noises about how this would be welcome, I again note that, in between your various contributions over the past four months or so, you never found the time. Why would that be, if you seek a balanced article? As I have said, I hesitated to do this job myself because I felt you would almost certainly object to whatever form of words I chose – a feeling not dispelled by your continuing role as partisan gatekeeper to the article.

Stuarta 13:48, 13 June 2006 (UTC)