Feminism: An Agenda
From: Letters From a War Zone by Andrea Dworkin
First published in 1988
Read by: Monica K.
"This too was a speech, given April 8, 1983, at Hamilton College in upstate New York. It was published at the invitation and by the initiative of a male student in the college literary magazine, "The ABC's of Reading," in 1984.
I remember flying up in a plane that was more like a tin can, just me and the pilot. I remember the semicircle of hundreds of young faces. That night, fraternity boys tried to break into the rooms I was staying in on campus in a generally deserted building.
There were two immovable, institutional doors between me and them. I couldn't get an outside line and the switchboard didn't answer to get security. I waited.
They went away.
I still think that prostitution must be decriminalized, as I say in this speech; but, increasingly, I think there must be simple, straightforward, enforced criminal laws against exploiting women in commercial sexual transactions. The exploiter— pimp or john— needs to be recognized and treated as a real criminal, much as the batterer now is."
