Write an Essay to Talk about Feminism and Pornography

Start writing about Andrea Dworkin and why does she want to make censorship at Feminism and Pornography
I suggest ( just this example for how you write).

An introduction to the broad topic – Feminism is…. Pornography is… Feminists believe… but there are also arguments against this such as….

The work of Annie Sprinkle can be considered Pornographic. …. Described it as “QUOTE”, but the artists herself described it as “QUOTE”.

…. Tried to stop the artists from performing in …. The venue was raided and the audience and artist prosecuted….

The artist was charged with… their legal defence was ….

The work of Romeo Castellucci is sometimes described as pornographic, …. Said it was “QUOTE”. But other people have criticised this saying “QUOTE”

…. Tried to stop the artists from performing in …. The venue was picketed by protesters and the audience and artist harassed on arrival….

The ….. are sensitive about pornography because they believe ….. but the artist defends their work saying ….

The Importance of Andrea Dworkin's Mercy: Mitigating Circumstances and Narrative Jurisprudence

The external world keeps reflecting back what we bring to it. What is out there is not a thing apart. Nature may not be merely a mirror of the mind, but neither is the mind merely a mirror of nature. - Milner Ball, Lying Down Together:Law, Metaphor and Theology

Andrea Dworkin knows that the world can be a cruel and harrowing place for women. She writes shocking essays, proposes controversial antipornography leg- islation, and, every now and then, creates a novel filled with rage. Mercy is one such contentious novel. It has been dismissed as engaging in "rhetorical trickery" that "calls women together in a crusade of pointless retributive violence"' and as "a long, largely unpunctuated, scream" in which Dworkin "wants to thrust her fist down the throats of feminists."2 The most comprehensive condemnation was issued by Martha Nussbaum who asserts that Mercy is a "striking modern ex- ample of the strict retributivist position" in which "there is no mercy." Nussbaum is disturbed about the narrator's "angry refusal of mercy" and her lack of "con- cern for the identity of the particulars" of the various men who molest, beat, and rape her.3 Nussbaum complains that, "like the women in male pornography," Dworkin's "men have no history, no psychology, no reasons for action; they are just knives that cut, arms that beat, penises that maim by the very act of penetra- tion."4 This view, of course, is premised on the assumption that these men are the offenders who should be shown leniency.

Yet, if the perspective is shifted and the karate-kicking narrator, Andrea, is viewed as the perpetrator of crimes against innocent victims, rather than a re- venge-seeking victim, a new view of the text emerges. Mercy becomes, to borrow Nussbaum's phrase, a "vision of the particulars"-Andrea's particulars.5 And so, Dworkin's readers are positioned as triers of fact whose purpose is not only to adjudicate Andrea's culpability for murder, but also to consider the mitigating factors presented by her life. Accordingly, after exploring some of the "particu- lars" of Andrea's life, the first argument of this essay considers the way in which Mercy can be read as illustrating the importance of mercy in the criminal justice system. To conclude the analysis here, however, would be to overlook the impor- tance of Mercy as social commentary-the "vehemence and candor" of "Andrea's high-pitched voice" that builds "a convincing indictment of a society that toler- ates violence against women."6 Thus, in the second argument of this essay Andrea's "subjective experience" as expressed in her narrative is used to challenge the be- liefs that prevent voices like Andrea's from being heard.7 Dworkin takes on both academic feminism and damaging, entrenched myths about women. The ulti- mate power of Mercy lies in its ability to thrust us into the swirl of Andrea's life where we can understand why she develops into a vengeful monster. By living through Andrea's experience, readers can both empathize with her plight and reconsider the biases inherent in the American system of criminal justice. Andrea's narrative provides a jurisprudential basis for questioning the operation of the law, which is frequently tainted by stereotypical preconceptions about how women should live their lives.

Andrea's "Particulars"

While there are numerous instances of what Robin West calls "hurting selves" in Andrea's narrative, three general categories stand out as key areas for consider- ation: child molestation, wife abuse, and rape.8 In the opening chapter, someone keeps asking nine-year-old Andrea, "did anything happen," only to conclude "thank God nothing happened."' Yet to this little girl in Camden, New Jersey, something happened. She guesses she "wasn't really raped ... just touched a lot by a strange dark-haired man" in the movie theater (5). The adults are relieved, and Andrea's unsettled mind moves from one concern to the next in an almost classic paradigm of victim concerns. Even "without the knowledge" that the molester's conduct was wrong, Andrea experiences this abuse, as West explains, as "consti- tutive of her reality of being under the thumb of a sexually abusive man."'10 She struggles but cannot find language to describe what happened ("you don't know the right words but you try so hard") or what her attacker said ("it was a creepy whisper in some funny language and he was saying sounds I didn't understand") (6, 7). Andrea does not have the "descriptive vocabulary necessary to convey the quality" of her pain, and she is unable to articulate why she feels violated." Such inadequacy of language prevents many women from conveying the "quality of the pain" that they sustain, following West, which in turn results in an emotional disparity between felt experience and the perpetuation of the fiction that "nothing happened."12 Despite this lack of words, Dworkin "conveys the child's breathless panic by intensifying the pace of her words: She elongates the structure" ofAndrea's sentences, forcing the reader to forge ahead with "no space to pause for breath," to use the words of Cindy Jenefsky.13 Andrea's silent horror can actually be felt.

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