Andrea Dworkin & Allen Ginsberg
The person who introduced me to Allen Ginsberg, captured me by her testimony of Ginsberg being a great poet who changed the face of American Poetry through “Howl”. This work mesmerized many in our class. When one sees an author such as this we tend to put them on a pedestal. Ginsberg was held in my high regards, until his status compromised with the writings of Andrea Dworkin within her Heartbreak: The Political Memoir of a Feminist Militant.
Beyond poetry, Ginsberg composed prose about his membership to the National Association of Man Boy Love Association and its arguments. Ginsberg validates his connection to NABLA by writing, “I became a member of NAMBLA a decade ago as a matter of civil liberties,” and continued to elevate NAMBLA by associating their foundation in relation to other social movements: “In the early 1980s, the FBI had conducted a campaign of entrapment and ‘dirty tricks’ against NABLA members just as they had against black and anti-war leaders in the previous decade” (Ginsberg 170). Dworkin considers Ginsberg’s reason for membership differently. She says that “He did not belong to the North American Man-Boy Love Association out of some mad, abstract conviction that its voice had to be heard. He meant it. I take this from what Allen said directly to me, not from some inference I made. He was exceptionally aggressive about his right to fuck children and his constant pursuit of underage boys” (Dworkin 45). This is due to not only his proclamation at their godchild’s bar mitzvah that the friends of his godson “were old enough to fuck. They were twelve and thirteen. He said that all sex was good, including forced sex,” his writings include passages such as: “Prepubescent boys and girls don’t have to be protected from big hairy you and me, they’ll get used to our lovemaking in 2 days provided the controlling adults will stop making those hysterical NOISES that make everything sexy sound like rape” (46, Ginsberg 108). After reading Dworkin’s experience with Ginsberg, my image of him is deeply damaged. At times I question how his work can be relevant when ideals such as these must underline his literary contribution to the cannon.
I would like to read more about the association of Ginsberg to NABLA. You include references, such as Ginsberg 108 and Ginsberg 170), but I don't know to what that refers. I am not in Dworkin's camp regarding a lot of things, to be sure, but I tend to believe what she says about Allen and his behavior and statements re underage boys. Mainly I would like to find whatever he may have written about his own association with this group.
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