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Subject:
From:
Hank Burchard <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Museum discussion list <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Sat, 5 Nov 1994 22:42:04 -0500
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On Thu, 3 Nov 1994, Marc Becker wrote:
 
> I was just reading Andrea Dworkin's article "The Unremembered:  Searching
> for Women at the Holocaust Memorial Museum" in the most recent Ms. magazine.
>  She believes that Jewish women are somewhat invisible in this exhibit, and
> particularly notes that although many tortures and abuses are documented,
> sexual abuse/bodily invasion of women in the camps is absent.  I have not
> yet seen this exhibit, but am interested in whether this is a fair
> assessment of this exhibit.
>
> Cheryl Musch
> Oakland, CA>
>
       It is a perverse exercise in feminist victimology to assert that
the Holocaust Memorial Museum slights women in cataloguing horrors.
       I review museums for a living, and have gone through the HMM about
a dozen times; of all the many images that memory summons up, the
strongest is of women doubly doomed, deprived of any possibility of
resistance or escape by the choice and necessity of trying to comfort and
protect their children.
       Of what entries in the catalogue of horrors does Dworkin think
women have been shortchanged? Sexual abuse in the camps is pictured and
described, although apparently not at sufficient length or in
sufficiently lacivious detail to satisfy Dworkin's twisted desires.
       As for "bodily invasion"--Gott in Himmel! How about bullets in
heads; bayonets in breasts; Zyklon B gas in lungs? That ought to be
enough bodily invasion to satisfy even so ironheaded and emptyhearted an
idealogue as Dworkin. Are we so sunk in mindless political correctness
as to seriously entertain complaints about unbalanced corpse counts?
 
 
Hank Burchard * Weekend Section * The Washington Post
1150 15th Street NW * Washington DC USA 20071-0001
VoiceMail (202) 334-7243 * Email: [log in to unmask]

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