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1 Mich. J. Gender & L. 1 (1993)
Prostitution and Male Supremacy

handle is hein.journals/mjgl1 and id is 7 raw text is: PROSTITUTION AND MALE SUPREMACYtt u4ndrea EDworkin* I'm very honored to be here with my friends and my peers, my sisters in this movement. I also feel an awful lot of conflict about being here, because it is very hard to think about talking about prostitution in an academic setting. It's really difficult. The assumptions of academia can barely begin to imagine the reality of life for women in prostitution. Academic life is premised on the notion that there is a tomorrow and a next day and a next day; or that someone can come inside from the cold for time to study; or that there is some kind of discourse of ideas and a year of freedom in which you can have disagreements that will not cost you your life. These are premises that those who are students here or who teach here act on every day. They are antithetical to the lives of women who are in prostitution or who have been in prostitution. If you have been in prostitution, you do not have tomorrow in your mind, because tomorrow is a very long time away. You cannot assume that you will live from minute to minute. You cannot and you do not. If you do, then you are stupid, and to be stupid in the world of prostitution is to be hurt, is to be dead. No woman who is prostitut- ed can afford to be that stupid, such that she would actually believe that tomorrow will come. t Copyright © 1993, 1994 by Andrea Dworkin, all rights reserved. * This paper is essentially the speech that Ms. Dworkin presented at the Michigan Journal of Gender & Law Symposium entitled Prostitution: From Academia to Activism, held on October 31, 1992, at the University of Michigan Law School. Most of its speechlike characteristics have been preserved so as to maintain its authenticity. In addition, the punctuation and style are the author's. Andrea Dworkin is a feminist activist, speaker, and internationally known writer of both fiction and nonfiction. She has worked extensively against pornography both in the United States and abroad. In the United States, with Catharine A. MacKinnon, she has co-authored ordinances recognizing pornography as a violation of civil rights. Andrea Dworkin's publications include PORNOGRAtUHY: MEN POSSESS- ING WOMEN; WoMAN HATING; OUR BLOOD: PROPHECIES AND DISCOURSES ON SEXUAL POLrrIcs; RIGHT-WING WOMEN; INTERCOURSE; LETTERS FROM A WAR ZONE: WRITINGS 1976-i989; Against the Male Flood: Censorship, Pornography, and Equality 8 Htav. WOMEN'S LJ. 1 (1985); and PORNOGRAPHY AND CIVIL RIGHTS, co-authored with Catharine A. MacKinnon. Her most recent book is a novel entitled MERCY.

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