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Andrea Dworkin Pornography

Men Possessing Women

PENGUIN MODERN CLASSICS

Pornography

‘One of the world’s most notorious radical feminists . . . How refreshing her style of speaking and writing – intoxicating and unapologetic – is compared with the “fun-feminist” prose we see so often on modern bookshelves’ Guardian

‘Dworkin’s books do matter. They contain certain truths, of the kind many women recognize as they hear them, about the bewildering ubiquity of sexual violence, the lie this violence gives to the promise of women’s equality, and the continuities between the most grotesque aspects of women’s treatment at the hands of men and the more quotidian assaults on dignity with which nearly all women are intimately familiar. Dworkin’s books speak in a singularly powerful voice: she is one of the more underappreciated prose stylists in postwar American writing. Her books matter too in the more straightforward sense that they have been of real material consequence. Through them, Dworkin helped shape the trajectory of American feminism, giving definitive expression to the radical feminist tenet that sexual domination was the beating heart of patriarchy, and placing the legal battle against rape, domestic violence, sex work and, above all, pornography at the top of the feminist agenda’ Amia Srinivasan, LRB

‘There could be no serious debate on matters such as sexual violence or consent without acknowledging the unflinching courage and originality of her thinking’ Observer

‘Andrea was like an Old Testament prophet. She was always warning about what was about to happen and because of that she was frequently misunderstood. But she also had a breadth and depth of intelligence that was refreshing’ Gloria Steinem

‘Her dystopian vision of a women’s experience dominated at all times by male violence, or the fear of it, could feel like a bold stance against feelgood corporate feminism . . Dworkin’s work leaped off the page’ Jacobin

‘Her writing is a strident and raw look at the systemic bias affecting the everyday experiences of women . . . discomfiting and exhilarating’ The New York Times

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Andrea Dworkin (1946–2005) was an American radical feminist activist and writer, and leading thinker in the second-wave feminist movement. She is the author of twelve books, including Pornography, Right-Wing Women, Woman Hating, Intercourse, and more.

Andrea Dworkin Pornography

Men Possessing Women

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First published in the United States of America by Putnam 1981

Published as a Picardor paperback 2025

This edition published in Great Britain in Penguin Classics 2025 001

Owing to limitations of space, all acknowledgments for permission to reprint previously published material can be found on page 291.

Portions of this book have appeared in slightly altered form in New Political Science, Sinister Wisdom, Mother Jones and Ms.

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For John Stoltenberg

In Memory of Rose Keller

Troubles walk in long lines.

—Russian proverb

No two of us think alike about it, and yet it is clear to me, that question underlies the whole movement, and all our little skirmishing for better laws, and the right to vote, will yet be swallowed up in the real question, viz: Has woman a right to herself? It is very little to me to have the right to vote, to own property, etc., if I may not keep my body, and its uses, in my absolute right. Not one wife in a thousand can do that now.

—Lucy Stone, in a letter to Antoinette Brown, July 11, 1855

Sexual freedom, then, means the abolition of prostitution both in and out of marriage; means the emancipation of woman from sexual slavery and her coming into ownership and control of her own body; means the end of her pecuniary dependence upon man, so that she may never even seemingly have to procure whatever she may desire or need by sexual favors.

—Victoria Woodhull, “Tried as by Fire; or, The True and the False, Socially,” 1874

He said that life is very expensive. Even women are more expensive. That when he wants to f— a woman they want so much money that he gives up the idea. I pretended I didn’t hear, because I don’t speak pornography.

—Carolina Maria de Jesus, CHILD OF THE DARK