Andrea Dworkin and the Critique of Left-Wing Misogyny - What would Andrea say?
Andrea Dworkin, a radical second-wave feminist, is best known for her uncompromising critique of male violence, pornography, and systemic misogyny. While often associated with the political left, Dworkin was deeply critical of what she saw as the left’s failure to confront gender-based oppression. Her work exposes what has come to be known as the paradox of left-wing misogyny—the contradiction between leftist ideals of liberation and the persistence of patriarchal power within leftist movements.
Andrea Dworkin’s critique of leftist men centers on her argument that, despite their professed progressivism, they are deeply complicit in the sexual exploitation and subordination of women. In her 1983 book Right-Wing Women, she contends that the so-called sexual revolution championed by the Left was not about women’s liberation, but about expanding male sexual access to women without consequence.
Leftist men, according to Dworkin, embraced causes like abortion rights not out of solidarity with women, but to ensure unrestricted sexual availability—famously asserting that “the sexual revolution required abortion on demand so that fucking would be available to men on demand.” She viewed this as a form of betrayal, where leftist ideology normalized promiscuity, pornography, and prostitution under the guise of liberation, effectively turning women into public property rather than recognizing them as autonomous human beings.
Dworkin’s comparison of left and right-wing men is stark: “The difference between left-wing and right-wing when it comes to women is only about where exactly on our necks their boots should be placed. To right-wing men, we are private property. To left-wing men, we are public property.” She argued that both systems dehumanize women, but the Left’s hypocrisy is more insidious because it masks oppression under the language of freedom.
She also criticized the Left’s dismissal of women’s experiences, noting that right-wing women often had a clearer understanding of male hypocrisy than their leftist counterparts. While rejecting alignment with conservatism, Dworkin believed that mainstream feminism’s reliance on leftist male allyship was fundamentally misguided—because the Left, like the Right, prioritizes male interests.
The Core Argument: Public vs. Private Property
Dworkin’s most cited insight on this issue is the assertion that “the difference between left-wing and right-wing when it comes to women is only about where exactly on our necks their boots should be placed.” According to this view:
Right-wing men treat women as private property—confined to traditional roles of wife and mother under male control.
Left-wing men treat women as public property—freely available for sexual use through promiscuity, prostitution, and pornography, all framed as “liberation.”
This distinction reveals a shared foundation: women are not seen as full human beings, but as objects to be possessed, one way or another.
Right-Wing Women: Understanding the Appeal of Conservatism
In her 1983 book Right-Wing Women, Dworkin explores why many women align with conservative politics. She argues that right-wing women are not irrational or self-hating, but are making a rational calculation:
They recognize that the so-called sexual freedom offered by the left often means increased exposure to male sexual aggression.
Traditional marriage, while oppressive, offers a lesser evil: monogamous male ownership instead of being sexually exploited by countless men.
As Dworkin writes, “traditional marriage means selling to one man, not hundreds: the better deal.”
This analysis challenges the assumption that conservatism is inherently more sexist—instead, she highlights the hypocrisy of the left, which claims to liberate women while normalizing their sexual commodification.
The Sexual Revolution and the Left’s Betrayal
Dworkin viewed the 1960s sexual revolution not as a victory for women, but as a masculinist project disguised as liberation. She argued that Left-Wing men are guilty of:
-Prioritizing market freedom or gender identity ideology over women’s sex-based rights.
-Silencing feminist dissent as “transphobia” or “puritanism.”
-Normalizing the digital brothel of social media and OnlyFans as empowerment.
While Dworkin remains controversial, her analysis offers a crucial lens: liberation cannot be built on the sexual exploitation of women, no matter how progressive the rhetoric."
Resources:
After the revolution: The modern Left’s misogyny problem
Liberation will not be found on the x-axis

The Wildezine
After the revolution: The modern Left’s misogyny problem
Second-wave feminism emerged from the political Left, from radical progressives who criticized tradition and sought a reorganization of society tha...
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