Tuesday, October 18, 2005

Bog Face: RIP Andrea Dworkin:

She was heartbroken and full of wrath when the ERA failed, and sitting in the office of the non-profit literacy organization where I work, looking around at all those worn-out books with their silly covers I suddenly was full of wrath too. Where did they go all those women? Where are the "feminists" who started the place where I work? WHERE DID THEY GO? WHO WERE THOSE MASKED WOMEN? God, I miss them, those 70's superheroes, brilliant and fucked up and shrill and fabulous I miss those avenging harpies, I miss my 70's mom, I miss her fury.

In fact, it kind of makes me want to yank on a pair of brown corduroy pants and big collared brown shirt and march angrily to work to teach Yemeni women how to read. Sometimes when I sit down close to them I can smell that morning's breakfast clinging damply to their hijabs and I have a sudden vision of a kind of thick and spongy darkness, a dream of endless days of housework without even the relief of being able to read or write IN ANY LANGUAGE, without being able to READ or WRITE AT ALL. And when one of their husbands comes to me and says, "Please teach my wife the alphabet" I desperately want to fistfight him but instead I say, "I ask the same of you, sir. Please teach your wife the alphabet."