“I’M A RADICAL FEMINIST. NOT THE FUN KIND.”: I propose a new rule for the internet: If you have not read at least four books by Andrea Dworkin–read them stem to stern–you are not allowed to type her name. If you have read zero books by ditto, typing her name will cause you to spontaneously combust.

This rule would make the world a better place.

I mean… in a shocking coincidence, four is exactly the number of Dworkin books I’ve read! And my point is not to defend her conclusions. Right-Wing Women and Woman Hating are both kind of awful and not worth your time.

But the thing to remember is that Andrea Dworkin was basically, at heart, a student of literature. She’s Camille Paglia, if Paglia wrote more from the perspective of the lambs rather than that of the lions. Intercourse and several essays in Letters from a War Zone are worth reading for anyone who cares about literature–let alone the marginalia we call women. Read some of her work on pornography in conjunction with Elaine Scarry’s work on torture in The Body in Pain–both talk about the way even the most seemingly innocuous household items could be turned into instruments of pain and humiliation.

Dworkin’s unconvinced and unconvincing attempts to describe the coming feminist utopia are heartbreaking–she couldn’t express hope, at all. She was a critic and a poet of despair.

But if you haven’t read Intercourse, I’m pretty sure you’ll be surprised. Fans of Dorothy Allison’s collection Skin might really like it, for example.