Dworkin reads Plato

Just thought this was fascinating and kind of humorous: a feminist reading of Plato, not in the sense of an interpretation of Plato, but in the sense of the actual activity of reading Plato. This is from Andrea Dworkin's autobiography Heartbreak: The Political Memoir of a Feminist Militant. She interlaces her first time wearing lipstick, her fear of a shiny nose, and her late-night readings of Plato under the covers when her parents were asleep:

“I’d wear Tangerine, along with a favorite dress that let me see my own breasts, a deep V-neck, a cut I still like, and I’d be making my way through Plato’s Symposium. It had been communicated to me through the odd, secret whispers of women that a female’s nose must never shine….I would pretend to go to sleep; I’d wait for them to go to sleep; I’d turn on my reading light, read, and simultaneously listen for any movement at their end of the house, at which point I’d get rid of any light in my room, hide the book, and wait until I heard my mother or father return to their bed.

I was taunted by this problem: how could someone write something like the Symposium and make sure that her nose did not shine at the same time? It didn’t matter to me that I was reading a translation. I’d read Plato’s brilliant, dense prose and not be able to tear myself a way. Even as a reader my nose shined. …Plato was my idea of a paperback writer: the Beatles were not yet on the horizon, and anyway I’m sure that John would have agreed with me. There was nothing I wanted so much in life as to write the way Plato wrote: words inside ideas inside words, the calzone approach attenuated with Bach.”

From Heartbreak: The Political Memoir of a Feminist Militant by Andrea Dworkin. New York: Basic Books, 2002. pp. 28-29