“Woman Hating” (where the witch hunt stuff is from) was Dworkin’s first book and her worst by far, her analysis got a lot better as she matured. But even in that book she lobbies for the rights of trans people and argues against the idea of biological essentialism, so I’m confused as to why op thought she was transphobic. Andrea Dworkin wasn’t infallible, but she had a lot of heart and did a lot in the feminist movement, and it really hurts me to see her written off as worthless scum.

sidneyia:

thank you for this. i’m not intimately familiar with her work but i definitely don’t like how dismissive this site is toward second-wave feminists in general. a lot of the “ugly hairy man-hating feminist” bogeyman rhetoric that  gets lobbed at dworkin et al. is identical to what MRAs say about feminists. 

as a skeptic i’m generally iffy on anything that references a magically misogyny-free ancient past and blames christianity entirely for the rise of patriarchy because as far as i can tell, everything has always been awful for women. (and i don’t see goddess-worship and fertility worship as inherently non-misogynistic, either, so there’s that.) 

It’s just that as a sex worker, they actively fucking harmed us. I’m really not in the mood to have this argument, my great-grandmother died today, but dismissing my concerns as calling her “ugly and man hating” (which I never said, I said her ideas were bad and misogynist and in that same book she argues for bestiality and says trans people will disappear when we abolish gender roles and that the sexuality of children will be more present in a better society). It’s not about ugly or man-hating (which again, I NEVER said or implied) it’s that her ideas ARE BAD

I am tired and grieving and in no mood for this shit