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Stoltenberg is a full on 'trans ally', and it's shameful that he has implied, without any evidence, that Dworkin would have opposed contemporary radical feminists who don't buy into the 'gender' cult. His adherence to 'gender identity' politics was formed decades ago. A chapter in his book 'Refusing to be a man' (1989) was based on his 1980 interviews (in a magazine published by Penthouse owner Bob Guccione) with 'gender' guru and paedophile apologist John Money. Aspects of Money's now notorious abuse of a young boy, the Reimer experiment, were by then well known. But Stoltenberg didn't refer in his chapter to this cruel experiment aimed at validating Money's 'gender identity' theory. Instead he chose to relay that flawed theory. And now he chooses to drag Dworkin's name into that mire.

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founding

Your essay rings true. There is no way Andrea would see the politicized trans movement as a positive for women. It’s dripping with misogyny.

JJ and I befriended Andrea several years before she died. We had wonderful meetings, fortunately mostly without Stoltenberg. Andrea would be so freaked out about how he’s mishandling her legacy. Shame on him.

My personal experience of occasionally being in his company: hugely uncomfortable, actually I back then and to this day carry a big question mark about him in his role as friend and partner to Andrea. JJ and I were similarly full of questions.

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founding

Are you sure that Stoltenberg actually legally owns Dworkin's correspondence with other people? That would seem a bit much to me. Has he been challenged on this?

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Ah how fortunate you and Dworkin were to meet and befriend each other. Outrageous about Stoltenberg but not surprising.

Watching Dworkin on film decades ago (in a women's studies course) I was struck by her compassion, her heart, her devotion to bringing back the women and girls lost to trafficking and sexual violence.

"We miss them," she said. "We want them back."

Long live her work and her legacy.

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Thank you for this article and the clarity in it. I wish Andrea would have left the rights to her writings to the public domain and not to a man who is now trying to control the narrative. It’s ironic, yet not surprising. Let this be a lesson to all of us.

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It's unbelievable that John Stoltenberg owns Andrea Dworkin's legacy. How could she have not know of his opportunistic unreliability? Having known and admired both Dworkin and MacKinnon, though not always agreeing with them on every point, their work against pornography and prostitution had my enthusiastic support as I campaigned to introduce their human rights amendment allowing women to sue if personally harmed by pornography. In return, they also professed their support of my work to stop violence against women. It's now incomprehensible to me the betrayal of women's interests that MacKinnon is demonstrating by supporting the transgender attacks on women's physical safety and political advancement by female impersonators. The mind-warp is unfathomable.

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Thank you for writing this essay. I didn’t realize history was being re-written to paint Andrea Dworkin as a gender ideologue. Gay and lesbian history is also be re-written by gender ideologues. I am grateful for you and others who were there at the scene and are acting as a corrective to this growing body of revisionist history.

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Jan 10·edited Jan 10

Hi Julie. It would be difficult to find a sentence better illustrating Dworkin's deranged thinking than this, from your article:

“Male-to-female transsexuals were in rebellion against the phallus, and so was I."

"Rebellion against the phallus". As often the case, a simple gender switch reveals the insanity - "Female-to-male transsexuals were in rebellion against the vagina, and so was I."

We can, however, agree on the odious Dr Charlotte Proudman, who's as mad as a March hare on acid. She was our inaugural Toxic Feminist of the Month in September 2015 https://j4mb.org.uk/2015/09/14/charlotte-proudman-inaugural-toxic-feminist-of-the-month-award-winner/, our extensive library of pieces on her is here https://j4mb.org.uk/?s=Charlotte+Proudman, while your own Toxic Feminist of the Month award certificate (October 2015) is here https://j4mb.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/151017-julie-bindel-toxic-feminist-of-the-month.pdf.

Have a nice day.

Mike Buchanan

JUSTICE FOR MEN & BOYS http://j4mb.org.uk

CAMPAIGN FOR MERIT IN BUSINESS http://c4mb.uk

LAUGHING AT FEMINISTS http://laughingatfeminists.com

Adolf Hitler reacts to radical feminist Julie Bindel

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZjcPaBrGqI

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