Dworkin

The foreword to one version of Andrea Dworkin's book 'Intercourse' is by Ariel Levy. This quotation is from page xx.

"If the antiporn crusade was a losing battle, it was also a costly one: it divided, some would say destroyed, the women's movement. The term "prosex feminist" was coined by women who wanted to distance themselves from the antiporn faction. Of course, all feminists thought they were being prosex and fighting for freedom, but when it came to sex, freedom means different things to different people. Screaming fights became a regular element of feminist conferences in the 1980s, and perhaps the single most divisive issue was an ordinance crafted by Dworkin and MacKinnon.

In 1983, when MacKinnon was a professor of law at the University of Minnesota and Dworkin was teaching a course there on pornography at MacKinnon's invitation, the two drafted a city ordinance positioning porn as a civil rights violation. Their legislation, which would allow people to sue pornographers for damages if they could show they had suffered harm from pornography's making or use, was twice passed in Minneapolis but vetoed by the mayor. Dworkin and MacKinnon were subsequently summoned by the conservative mayor of Indianapolis, Indiana, and their legislation was signed into law in 1984 by a city council opposed to core feminist goals like legal abortion and the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment. It was soon overturned by federal courts, but many feminists never forgave Dworkin and MacKinnon and antiporn feminists in general for getting into bed with the right wing."

It's clear that Protestant Evangelicals are using feminism to get what they want. They want to stop sin, and if they can use radical feminist ideology to stop pornography and prostitution they will.

Would the Nordic model have been adopted in Sweden without the influence of Dworkin and MacKinnon?* I can imagine this model being adopted in Ireland, as has happened, without the endorsement of feminism. I don't believe that would have happened in Sweden and Norway though.

Would the evangelical obsession with trafficking have taken off and received the support of the George W Bush government, with millions of tax dollars devoted to it, without the help of feminists?

Both the Nordic model and the international crusade against trafficking have harmed women. Feminism has been harmed.

Dworkin believed that every time a woman has sex with a man she is objectified and oppressed. 

As Daniela Danna writes in her work 'Prostitution and Public Life in Four European Capitals': "The premise is that of radical feminism that equates paying for a sexual act with rape - however, the law [in Sweden] did not adopt this extreme interpretation of prostitution and speaks more generically of violence. According to Andrea Dworkin, Sheila Jeffreys, and other representatives of radical feminism, any heterosexual sexual act is an act of oppression by men over women."

Danna also writes: "After all, both positions are based on extremely negative views of sexuality: for the Church sex outside of marriage is a sin (and Catholic priests are bound to chastity so as not to lower themselves to practise something they consider dirty), while for separatist radical feminism all relations between men and women are expression of the oppression of women a position that women politicians adopted only in part, applying it only to prostitution."

I have searched Dworkin's book Intercourse for evidence that she might think that it's possible for a man and a woman in the privacy of their own house and bedroom to avoid objectification. They are alone together, not part of a patriarchal society. I couldn't find it, neither could I find reference to sex in a post patriarchal society.

In chapter 7 - Occupation/Collaboration - Dworkin quotes feminist authors who hope for better sexual relations between men and women eg Shere Hite. She is dismissive though: "These visions of a humane sensuality based in equality are in the aspirations of women; and even the nightmare of sexual inferiority does not seem to kill them".

Dreams and visions have some value but "They also do not amount to much in real life with real men". For Dworkin and MacKinnon a woman cannot consent to paid-for sex because she cannot truly consent to any form of sex with a man.

There are some people who react to pornography and prostitution with disgust and horror. There are some people who react to pornography and prostitution with curiosity and amusement. That's never going to change.

Radical Feminists will say that childhood experiences of abuse will lead to a woman not understanding 'boundaries'. I could speculate that children raised in households where sex is a taboo subject and where a child has been chastised for something their mother saw them doing when she walked into the room would react to sexual issues with disgust and horror.

That shouldn't make any difference to whether we believe in the Nordic model or decriminalisation. We have enough information to work out which system is in the best interests of sex workers and of society. People who create false statistics and others who believe then communicate them can be identified and dismissed.

Julie Bindel the Radical Feminist stated 'There is no way to make it safe, and it should be possible to eradicate it'. I though believe that there is no way to eradicate it, and it should be possible to make it safe.

They haven't eradicated it in 20 years in Sweden. I have written a lot about this. Prostitution is already safe in some sectors. When women are allowed to work together for safety - as with other forms of work - then they are as safe. This is the core of the debate.

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*I have quoted below from 'PROHIBITING SEX PURCHASING AND ENDING TRAFFICKING: THE SWEDISH  PROSTITUTION LAW by Max Waltman

"Before the Swedish law prohibiting the purchase of sex was introduced, some relatively obscure attempts had been made that did not bear fruit at the time to criminalize purchasers. Some of these had argued along a gender-equality rationale that understood that buying women for sex was exploitative. Responses submitted to a 1981 government report, for example, effectively argued that prostitution would “disappear if there was not a demand” and that a law against purchasers would “improve equality between the sexes and prevent undue exploitation of socially deprived women.” The idea went no further until American lawyer Catharine A. MacKinnon in 1990, during a speech together with writer Andrea Dworkin, organized by the umbrella association Swedish Organization for Women’s and Girls’ Shelters (ROKS) under its first chair Ebon Kram, independently argued publicly that gender inequality and sexual subordination could not be fought effectively by assuming a gender symmetry that empirically does not exist. Thus, in an unequal world, she argued, a law against men purchasing women is called for, together with no law against the people, mainly women, being bought for sexual use and hence, “ending prostitution by ending the demand for it is what sex equality under law would look like.” ROKS held regular yearly meetings with members of the Swedish Parliament, where the criminalization of sex purchasers was an agenda item in 1992, 1994, and 1995. After years of concerted effort pursuant to this theory, in 1998, the Swedish Parliament passed an omnibus bill on men’s violence against women that situated prostitution and the new law in the context of sex inequality, rather than—as has been common around the world—among crimes against morality, decency, or the public order. The bill stated that prostitution and violence against women were “issues . . . related with each other. Men’s violence against women is not consonant with the aspirations toward a gender equal society . . . . In such a society it is also unworthy and unacceptable that men obtain casual sex with women for remuneration.” Further, it was recognized that prostituted women often had deprived childhoods, were neglected, and early on were deprived of a sense of self-worth, as well as it was emphasized that there was a strong association between child sexual abuse and prostitution."

It goes on to use the false statistics of Melissa Farley who pretended that the drug addicts she worked with are typical of sex workers in general.