new york (ap) | Andrea Dworkin, a radical feminist who advocated for resistance against sexism and anti-Semitism, died Saturday, April 9.
In “The Jews, Israel and Women’s Liberation,” Dworkin wrote that “violence born of anti-Semitism and from the hatred of women are similar.”
Dworkin was 58 and had been ill for several years from ailments including osteoarthritis.
She died at her home in Washington, said her husband, John Stoltenberg. She and Stoltenberg, who were openly gay, began living together in 1974 and married in 1998.
Dworkin’s radical lesbian brand of feminism brought attention and discord to the women’s movement. Some women objected to her crusade against pornography as an infringement on women’s choice of how to use their bodies, and civil libertarians opposed it as an assault on the First Amendment.
Once described as the Malcolm X of the women’s movement, Dworkin devoted her work and more than a dozen books to fighting what she considered the subordination of women, notably in marriage and pornography.
“She really committed her life to giving voice to the women at the bottom,” Stoltenberg said.
Originally from Camden, N.J., Dworkin graduated from Bennington College in Vermont in 1968 with a degree in literature.