Dear Andrea Dworkin,

Your talk, Why Men Like Pornography & Prostitution So Much, makes me so sad. I feel sad for all the women, the victims, the prostitutes. I feel sad for the men who are taught to conceptualize sex in such a mysognostic way. I feel sad for myself because I am no different. I feel sad for you because you look at this head on and with some semblance of clarity, and in doing so take on the weight of every woman who is in denial about the reality of her situation. And you take on the vitriol of every person who defends and denies reality because they are not brave or strong or lucid enough to face such a thing. And your lucidity is a threat to their comfort.

You are strong and brave and beautiful, and when you speak it moves my heart because I know it comes from a place of truth for you, and it resonates as truth to me. It’s a disgusting and outrageous truth, but I don’t have the energy to feel either. I just feel sad, and powerless. I can’t do anything to make your life any less painful. You’re dead. I cannot separate your death from the trauma of your life. You were disposable, and your death was the ultimate act of disposal. I’m sure you aren’t surprised with how quickly we’ve twisted and disfigured your life’s work until it’s become clawless, meaningless, and rejectable. That was already happening while you were alive. You are, in memory, somehow simultaneously a grotesque scarecrow that forbids any sexual act and sees hetrorsexuality as equvical to rape, and a kind hearted grandmother type that isn’t really all that angry after all.

I don’t know what to do. Fight and die young like yourself, or give up; become complicit and live to an old happy age off the backs of the humans I see as disposable? Your death and the post-humorous dialogue surrounding your life and work does not give me much hope. Does your life matter in a society that is doing everything to make it meaningless?

Most people don’t want to live in a world where your life has genuine meaning. The woman who is prostituted out and thinks herself to be in control is happier than one who sees herself as the victim. What good would it do for me to try and articulate to her otherwise? The world that she lives in is a fantasy, but when we’re powerless to change the material conditions, is it actually good to take that away?

I need that fantasy world. I need to live in it sometimes. I would be crushed by the weight of the world if I couldn’t hide it from myself every once in a while.

There isn’t much I can do, and there’s not a lot I intend to do. Your life and your death means something to me. There’s power in that, I suppose. I am overcome with sadness for it all. I will be there to validate the perspectives of others that feel the same. Solidarity and empathy is the most powerful tool we’ve got.

With Love,

Owen Earl