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> Zionism is pretty dumb as far as this Jew is concerned. But surely you're > aware that the separation of sexes, which has pretty powerful biological > implications, perhaps least of which is the denial of a pretty powerful set > of instincts, is a different class of thing entirely. I have to read the book before I comment. It doesn't, in the contexts in which I've seen it presented, sound like the sort of idea I usually think of as a good one. But I don't trust those contexts (the Guardian least of all). I don't think Dworkin's stupid enough to devote a book to interrogating the violent exclusions that constitute the nation state and *then* at the end of it start endorsing a feminist nationalism. Perhaps my problem is that I don't think Dworkin's stupid at all, and almost everybody else does. Well, we shall see. At least one version of Zionism I'm aware of involves the idea that Israel must be there (somewhere, somewhere real), in principle, in order for Jews to live safely in places other than Israel. That may or may not be a "dumb" idea, with all sorts of problematic ramifications; but in any case it's not a separatist idea exactly. Neither is it irrelevant to the situation of women. There are refuges of various sorts for women within the boundaries of existing nation states, and it is understood - by a few people, anyway - that their existence makes the lives of women in those countries safer (it is easier to leave an abusive partner, for instance, if doing so does not make you homeless, if you have somewhere else to go). Nobody is suggesting that all women everywhere should spend their entire lives huddled within the confines of an enlarged rape crisis centre (it would be a funny sort of radical feminism that thought that was any kind of achievement anyhow). To connect the recognisation that such spaces may need to exist with a rethinking of the nature of international politics is certainly an interesting move, and I am looking forward to seeing how it plays out in Dworkin's writing. - Dom %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%