The Political Memoir of a Feminist Militant

the strip, and St. Carlos in San Jose. There were [many] times

that I would get raped or beat up. ” Daddy pimped.

One night she was trying to bring home her quota of

money when a drug-friend of her father’s came by. “He raped

me, he beat me up, he held a gun [in] his hand [to my head].

And I swear to this day I can stil hear that gun clicking. ”

She then worries that she is taking up too much of my time.

I’m important; she’s not. My time matters; hers doesn’t. My

life matters; hers does not. From her point of view, from the

reality of her experience, I embody wealth. I speak and some

people listen. I write and one way or another the books get

published from the United States and Great Britain to Japan

and Korea. There is a splendidness to my seeming importance,

especial y because once parts of my life were a lot like parts of

hers. How many of her are there? On my own I’ve counted

quite a few.

These women are proud of me, and I don’t want to let them

down. I feel as if I’ve done nothing because I know that I

haven’t done enough. I haven’t changed or destabilized the

meaning of “white, ” nor could anyone alone. But writers

write alone even in the context of a political movement. I’ve

always seen my work as a purposeful series of provocations,

especially Pornography: Mlen Pos es ing Women, Ice and Fire,

142

Counting

Intercourse, and Mercy. In other books I’ve devoted myself to

the testimony of women who had no other voice. These

books include Let ers from a War Zone, currently being published in Croatia in its lonely trip around the world; the introduction to the second edition of Pornography: Men Pos es ing Women, which can also be found in Life and Death: Writings

on the Continuing War Against Women, a collection of essays;

and In Harm’s Way: The Pornography Civil Rights Hearings,

edited with Catharine A. MacKinnon and published by Harvard

University Press. I still don’t get to be white, because the

people who care about what I say have no social importance.

I’m saying that white gets to say, “Yes, it happened” or 'No,

it didn’t. ” I’m saying that there are always either too many or

too few. I’m saying that I don’t count sheep at night; I see in

my mind instead the women I’ve met, I see their faces and I

can recollect their voices, and I wish I knew what to do, and

when people ask me why I'm such a hard-ass on pornography

it’s because pornography is the bible of sexual abuse; it is

chapter and verse; pornography is the law on what you do to

a woman when you want to have mean fun on her body and

she’s no one at al . No one does actually count her. She’s at the

bot om of the barrel. We’re al stil trying to tel the white guys

that too many - not too few - women get raped. Rape is the

screaming, burning, hideous top level of the rot en barrel,