Andrea Dworkin (born 1946 in Camden, New York) is an American radical feminist and writer. In her numerous books, articles and speeches she has analyzed pornography, prostitution and male violence against women, drawing from her own experience of prostitution and rape. She has met vicious criticism from both right and left, the right vilifying her as man-hater and threat to family values, and the left accusing her of being unreasonably pessimistic, proponent of censorship and against all sex. In response to Dworkin's criticism on pornography, she has been a target of defamation and slander from publishers of pornography, including pornographic cartoons of her in the Hustler magazine.

Dworkin, together with the feminist lawyer Catharine MacKinnon, drafted a proposal for a law that defined pornography as a civil rights violation against women and allowed women harmed by it a chance to sue the producers and distributors of pornography in a civil court for damages. In 1983 the law was passed in Indianapolis, but was subsequently overturned as unconstitutional by the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in 1985, and by the Supreme Court in 1986 which upheld the Seventh Circuit's ruling.

Today Andrea Dworkin lives in Brooklyn, New York with her life partner John Stoltenberg, who is also a feminist activist.

Bibliography

Nonfiction

Fiction

  • Mercy (1990)
  • The New Woman's Broken Heart: Short Stories
  • Ice and Fire (1986)

External link