Author(s): Andrea Dworkin

Feminism

Andrea Dworkin, once called "Feminism's Malcolm X", has been worshipped, reviled, criticized and analysed - but never ignored. The power of her writing, the passion of her ideals and the ferocity of her intellect have spurred the arguments and activism of two generations of feminists. Now the book that she's best known for - in which she provoked the argument that ultimately split apart the feminist movement - is being reissued for the twenty-first century. "Intercourse" enraged as many readers as it inspired when it was first published in 1987. In it, Dworkin argues that in a male supremacist society, sex between men and women constitutes a central part of women's subordination to men. (This argument was quickly - and falsely - simplified to "all sex is rape" in the public arena, adding fire to Dworkin's already radical persona.) In her introduction to this twentieth-anniversary edition of "Intercourse", Ariel Levy, the author of "Female Chauvinist Pigs", discusses the circumstances of Dworkin's untimely death in the spring of 200, and the enormous impact of her life and work.