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Andrea Dworkin and Me.

Article Excerpt
I MET ANDREA DWORKIN for the first time at the Madison airport in 1991. I was not entirely sure what she looked like, and I was worried that I would not recognize her when she got off the airplane. Earlier that morning, I'd grabbed one of her books off the shelf at A Room of One's Own and memorized her author's photo: a black-and-white shoulder shot of a woman with dark, curly hair and a kind, yet mischievous smile. I hoped she had not changed much since the photo.

I was nervous. Twenty-one years old, new to feminism, new to a life without drugs and alcohol, new to being out as a lesbian or bisexual (I couldn't make up my mind). There I was, standing at Gate Three, in faded Levis and a cable knit kelly green sweater; the late afternoon sun was shining in sheets off the steel sides of the airplanes parked at angles around the terminal. My girlfriend Sue, thirty strangers, and I waited for Flight 590 from La Guardia to arrive. It was a heady moment--waiting to meet a famous feminist. I had not been doing much other than lying on my back staring at the ceiling or curled in a fetal position. I was having so many flashbacks to sexual abuse and beatings, I barely knew which way was up.

When I met Andrea at the airport, I knew very little about her or her work. I knew she wrote about sexual violence, including incest, domestic violence, prostitution, and pornography, but I had only read one of her articles printed the previous semester in an alternative Madison newspaper called The Edge. I'll never forget that moment. I was in the Rathskellar, a bar and grill in the University of Wisconsin's union, waiting for my next class to begin. I couldn't find any of my stoner, slam-dancing buddies, so I sat by myself. I read her article about battery in The Edge by accident. It was on the table where I'd sat. I'd never heard of Andrea before, couldn't have named a single feminist, and knew nothing about feminism. I don't remember the title of Andrea's piece; I don't remember if she talked about her personal experiences of being battered by her husband. I do remember feeling stunned that there was someone else in the...

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