OUR BLOOD: Prophecies & Discourses on Sexual Politics

Dworkin represents that extreme form of radical feminism which embraces lesbianism as a political act; it follows logically from the theory that male phallic dominance is the paradigm for imperialism, political and economic exploitation, the plunder of the earth--in a word, all forms of oppression. As Betty Friedan, Angels McBride, and other have pointed out, this is an orientation which alienates and angers vast numbers of women (particularly working-class women) from the sublime ""sisterhood"" Dworkin so craves. As it is, she stops just short of stating fiat out that men and women should stop copulating and making babies. (""Childbearing, peculiarly, becomes the form and substance of female negativity."") Otherwise, her insights--on the burning of witches, on Chinese footbinding, on rape-are largely borrowed. She sees them all as examples of ""gynocide"" which encompasses all crimes perpetuated ""by the gender class men against the gender class women."" A crusading polemic for a very circumscribed audience on the furthest fringes of ""herstory.