from the Guardian Unlimited, posted "10 mins ago" according to Yahoo news:
Feminist icon Andrea Dworkin dies
Simon Jeffery
Monday April 11, 2005
The American feminist icon, writer and campaigner Andrea Dworkin, who linked pornography to rape and violence, died at the weekend, her agent said today. She was 59 years old.
Her radical-feminist critique of pornography began with her first book, Woman Hating, published when she was 27. She campaigned frequently on the subject, helping to draft a law in 1983 that defined pornography as a civil rights violation against women.
The law, later overturned by an appeal court as unconstitutional, was inspired by the case of Linda Marchiano, who as Linda Lovelace said she had had been violently coerced into pornography, including the film Deep Throat, but had no recourse to the courts.
Article continues
The drive of Ms Dworkin's writing and activism was to break the silence around violence against women but her wider career saw her become a figure of adulation and loathing in equal measure. To opponents she was an archetypal man-hater, killjoy and proponent of censorship, but supporters rallied to her impassioned lectures and books. Gloria Steinem, a fellow feminist, said she was one of a handful of writers each century "who help the human race to evolve".
Ms Dworkin's life as a political activist began early. In 1965, when she was 18, she was arrested at the US mission to the United Nations, protesting against the Vietnam war. She was sent to the New York City Women's House of Detention, where she was given a brutal internal examination.
Her testimony about the experience was reported worldwide and helped to bring public pressure to bear to close the prison down. An unmarked community garden now grows where it once stood.
As well as political works, Ms Dworkin was also the author of two novels and a frequent contributor to magazines and newspapers, including the Guardian.
Ms Dworkin's agent, Elaine Markson, said the cause of death was not known but she had become increasingly frail as her knees had weakened and she suffered a series of falls. She died at the home in Washington DC she shared with John Stoltenberg, her partner of 30 years and husband since 1998.
I think this is the husband:
John Stoltenberg is the acclaimed author of Refusing to Be a Man: Essays on Sex and Justice (Meridian, 1990), a revolutionary examination of male sexual identity that has been adopted in hundreds of courses-in gender studies, philosophy, religion, psychology, sociology, law, and political science. Stoltenberg is cofounder of Men Against Pornography and a frequent speaker and workshop leader at colleges and conferences. He has taught at the New School for Social Research and has appeared on hundreds of radio and television programs. He holds a master of divinity degree from Union Theological Seminary in New York City and a master of fine arts in theater from Columbia University School of the Arts.
http://www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/dworkin/LivingWithAndrea.html
Living with Andrea Dworkin by John Stoltenberg
When I was 29, in the spring of 1974, I walked out of a poetry reading in Greenwich Village because it had turned hateful toward women (a benefit for War Resisters League no less). Outside on the sidewalk I ran into Andrea, then 27, who had walked out for the same reason. We began to talk, then talk deeply--and our conversation has continued until today.
Andrea and I had been introduced earlier by a mutual friend, a theater director, at a meeting of the then-fledgling Gay Academic Union. Her first impression of me, she has told me, was as a rather dim blond beach bum. We were an unlikely match.
(snip)