Latest news with #Dworkin
New Statesman
05-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New Statesman
Andrea Dworkin's dispatches from the sex wars
When Andrea Dworkin published Pornography: Men Possessing Women in 1981, her argument was uncompromising: pornography must be banned, literally and urgently. As she would in 1987's Intercourse – in which she infamously outlined heterosexual sex as a key site of oppression for women (an argument that was reductively reframed by popular media to the line 'all sex is rape') – Dworkin writes passionately, painting with broad and beautiful brush strokes. To understand her fervour, we must remember how suddenly pornography had come to the fore with Dworkin's lifetime: she was born in 1946 and died 20 years ago last month. In the years before Pornography's publication, a slew of US Supreme Court cases had battled over the legal treatment of sexually explicit material. In 1957's Butler vs State of Michigan, the Court struck down a state law preventing the printing of material not fit for children, and in the same year, Roth vs US held that material with 'the slightest redeeming social importance' was protected by the First Amendment's right to freedom of expression. In 1964's Jacobellis vs Ohio, the Court overturned Ohio's conviction of a theatre owner who had screen Louis Malle's film The Lovers; while the majority created the 'community standards' test for pornography, Justice Potter Stewart's concurrence created the better-known 'I know it when I see it' one. But not all decisions were for liberalisation. On a single day in 1966, the Court upheld the conviction of the publisher Ralph Ginzburg, who mailed the magazine Eros from post offices in Blue Ball and Intercourse, Pennsylvania, under a federal obscenity statute, but rejected Massachusetts' finding that Fanny Hill was obscene. Stanley vs Georgia (1969) held that states could not prohibit the private possession of pornography. But the landmark ruling Miller vs California (1973) allowed for obscenity statutes based on local community norms, which would severely curtail nationwide theatrical releases of pornography. Nationwide theatrical releases of pornography? It may seem unimaginable today, but Dworkin was writing in the so-called Golden Age of Porn, inaugurated by Andy Warhol's Blue Movie (1969) and Howard Ziehm's Mona the Teenage Nymph (1970), the first 35mm adult film released in theatres nationwide (though, due to pornography's still uncertain legal status, screened without credits). High-production value pornography was entering the mainstream, screened across the country, nearly making top-ten lists, and even garnering critical praise. In 1972, Deep Throat – a major preoccupation of Dworkin's – became a box-office success reviewed in the New York Times; Roger Ebert gave a positive three stars to The Devil in Miss Jones (1973) and a more ambivalent two-and-a-half stars to the X-rated Alice in Wonderland (1976). Marlon Brando's notorious Last Tango in Paris was, according to Andy Warhol, inspired by Blue Movie. By 1980, things had begun to take a turn. Introduced in 1976, the consumer VHS would soon usher in the video era, with theatrical screenings of dirty movies now a relic remembered mainly from the date scene in Taxi Driver (1976). But it was of more interest to Andrea Dworkin that Linda Lovelace, the supposedly insatiable star of Deep Throat, published the memoir Ordeal in 1980. In it she claimed that her husband and producer Chuck Traynor had taken advantage of her when she was a teenager recovering from a serious car crash, becoming violent, abusive, and forcing her to move away from her family to New York City, where he became her pimp. The story she told here – one in which Traynor watched her even while she used the bathroom, held a gun to her head as he eavesdropped on her phone calls, and initiated her into prostitution through a brutal gang rape – was starkly at odds with that of the two pro-porn autobiographies she had previously published, Inside Linda Lovelace and The Intimate Diary of Linda Lovelace (both 1974), and many doubted her revised account. Dworkin did not. To her, Lovelace's anti-porn turn proved the truth of pornography: that, as Robin Morgan put it, 'Porn is the theory, rape is the practice.' For Dworkin, pornography was 'the blueprint of male supremacy… the fundamentalism of male dominance… the essential sexuality of male power'. The book is alive with Dworkin's propulsive, almost incantatory insistence: 'Pornography is the orchestrated destruction of women's bodies and souls; rape, battery, incest, and prostitution animate it; dehumanization and sadism characterize it; it is war on women, serial assaults on dignity, identity, and human worth; it is tyranny. Each woman who has survived knows from the experience of her own life that pornography is captivity – the woman trapped in the picture used on the woman trapped wherever he's got her.' For her, pornography was never about the individual woman: 'The very power to make the photograph (to use the model, to tie her in that way) and the fact of the photograph (the fact that someone did use the model, did tie her in that way, that the photograph is published in a magazine and seen by millions of men who buy it specifically to see such photographs) evoke fear in the female observer unless she entirely dissociates herself from the photograph: refuses to believe or understand that real persons posed for it, refuses to see the bound person as a woman like herself.' That meant, for Dworkin, that one could not be a feminist and support pornography; could not be a leftist and support pornography. 'The new pornography is left-wing,' she wrote, 'and the new pornography is a vast graveyard where the Left has gone to die. The Left cannot have its whores and its politics too.' Pornography was far from the harmless, even healthy, expression of natural urges (as claimed by those who cited, for example, that violence had reduced in Denmark since the country legalised pornography). Instead, she wrote, 'Pornography exists because men despite women, and men despise women in part because pornography exists.' Others disagreed. Ellen Willis, whose essay 'Lust Horizons: Is the Women's Movement Pro-Sex?' is an ur-text of so-called sex-positive feminism, wrote in her New York Times review of Pornography that 'in Andrea Dworkin's moral universe the battle of the sexes is a Manichaean clash between absolute power and absolute powerlessness, absolute villains and absolute victims.' Rejecting the book's conclusions, Willis writes that 'cultural images influence behaviour… only because they articulate and legitimise feelings that already exist. Pornography that offers concrete images of how to act out hatred of women may invite imitation and re-enforce an atmosphere of complacency towards sexual violence, but the hatred and complacency that produce violence are built into the culture. In short, pornography is a symptom, not a root cause.' For Willis, the anti-porn feminists, despite their good motives, were unwitting allies of the pro-family values Christian right. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe These were the wings of the Sex Wars, in which second-wave feminism came to an impasse over the issue of sexual freedom. On one side was the Women Against Pornography (WAP) movement led by Dworkin, Morgan and Susan Brownmiller. For them, true sexual freedom meant reshaping society towards sexual equality. Dworkin was, as Willis noted, highly critical of the supposedly sexually liberated (writing in Right-Wing Women that 'the Left only champions women on its own sexual terms – as f**ks; they find the right-wing offer a tad more generous'; she expressed admiration for the conservatives Richard Brookhiser and Maggie Gallagher, and in opposing pornography, indeed did ally with the right). In her view, the idea that pornography was a simple outlet of pre-existing, immutable desires was naive and retrograde, a male fantasy in feminist clothes. The sex-positive feminists rejected the anti-pornography view as a traditionalist, exclusionary prudishness. In 1979 and 1980, Willis and Deirdre English published pieces in the Village Voice and Mother Jones arguing against the anti-pornography feminists. Prominent feminists from the lesbian S/M community rejected the equation of consensual sexual fantasies of violence and actual violence. The new right was ever-more in ascension, and attacks on abortion rights, feminism and sexual minorities were a live concern. The clash came to a head at a 1982 feminist conference at Barnard College titled 'Towards a Politics of Sexuality', organised by a group including Willis and Gayle Rubin. WAP picketed outside, wearing shirts that said 'For a feminist sexuality' on the front and 'Against S/M' on the back. Despite this conflict, the movement against pornography carried on. Together with Catharine MacKinnon, a law professor, Dworkin worked to craft city ordinances that allowed women to sue creators and distributors of pornography for violating their civil rights, spending 1983 and 1984 drafting anti-pornography ordinances for Minneapolis and Indianapolis that never made it into law. But it is the sex-positive faction that has, of course, won the day (as has its close relative, 'choice feminism'). Popular feminism is pro-sex, pro-pornography and pro-sex work (and to judge the reaction to the Oscar-winning Anora, under pressure only to be ever more so). In the 1990s, the second wave of feminism gave way to the third, and academic feminism shifted more towards discussions of kink, non-heteronormative lifestyles, and the search for autonomy. The tide may yet turn. In recent years, the pornography industry has been wracked by controversy. Disturbing allegations around underage pornography, rape videos and revenge porn led Pornhub to remove over 75 per cent of its content library, remove its download feature, require verification for uploads, and moderate its content more rigorously. Mia Khalifa, a prominent performer, has spoken about her regrets about briefly participating in the industry and the difficulty of having content removed, stating 'corporations prey on callow young women and trap them legally into contracts when they're vulnerable'. The legal landscape is again in upheaval, too. The new right manifesto Project 2025 states, unambiguously, that 'pornography should be outlawed'. Since 2023, 19 American states, home to more than one third of Americans, have passed laws requiring websites that display pornographic content to verify that visitors are over 18 years of age, including Texas's stringent age-verification law, which requires site visitors upload their IDs and sends warnings, such as about the link between pornography and prostitution, to even verified adult users. As before, much anti-pornography legislation appears to be driven by the right; but with radical feminism – including that of Dworkin – finding favour among young feminists, it remains to be seen whether they might take up the mantle. Purchasing a book may earn the NS a commission from who support independent bookshops [See also: Donald Trump vs Columbia] Related
Yahoo
07-03-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Doctors worry about spring break as measles cases spread: Not ‘dealing with business-as-usual'
Experts are warning about the burgeoning threat of the measles virus, as families and students gear up for spring break. The viral disease has resulted in nearly 160 infections in Texas and more in other states around the country. An unvaccinated child died last month in the Lone Star State and a second person in neighboring New Mexico may have also died as a result of the outbreak. Approximately one out of five people who get measles will be hospitalized. Last year, the government issued a travel advisory after just 58 cases were reported. Now, experts are warning about this year's spring break travel. "It's not so much about who you're traveling with as it's about the people you don't know that you're going to be around as you're traveling," Mark Dworkin, associate director of epidemiology at the University of Illinois Chicago School of Public Health, told CBS News this week. "You get on a plane. You're with a whole lot of people. Everybody's got a different feeling about everything, and that includes about immunizations." This year, roughly 173 million Americans are expected to take to the skies in March and April, Airlines for America told ABC News. Those who have been fully vaccinated have lifelong protection, and two doses of the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine are 97 percent effective against measles. While the majority of the nation's adolescents have two doses of the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine or more, breakthrough infections have occurred in the recent outbreak. Those types of infections are more likely in areas with outbreaks. Breakthrough infections are usually associated with milder disease and symptoms, including fever, runny nose and other symptoms. Still, measles is one of the most contagious infectious diseases, with the ability to live for up to two hours in the air after someone who is infected leaves. Some people may not know they have it, as the viral incubation period is typically between 11 to 12 days from exposure to the point when symptoms start. 'About three out of 100 people who get two doses of MMR vaccine will get measles if exposed to the virus. However, they are more likely to have a milder illness, and are also less likely to spread the disease to other people,' the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says. Officials are warning those who remain unvaccinated against measles about the risk of traveling. "We're not dealing with business-as-usual right now," Dworkin said, "and this is a disease that people who are incubating this disease who are going to get it, they can be infectious days before they even start to get sick."
The Independent
07-03-2025
- Health
- The Independent
Doctors worry about spring break as measles cases spread: Not ‘dealing with business-as-usual'
Experts are warning about the burgeoning threat of the measles virus, as families and students gear up for spring break. The viral disease has resulted in nearly 160 infections in Texas and more in other states around the country. An unvaccinated child died last month in the Lone Star State and a second person in neighboring New Mexico may have also died as a result of the outbreak. Approximately one out of five people who get measles will be hospitalized. Last year, the government issued a travel advisory after just 58 cases were reported. Now, experts are warning about this year's spring break travel. "It's not so much about who you're traveling with as it's about the people you don't know that you're going to be around as you're traveling," Mark Dworkin, associate director of epidemiology at the University of Illinois Chicago School of Public Health, told CBS News this week. "You get on a plane. You're with a whole lot of people. Everybody's got a different feeling about everything, and that includes about immunizations." This year, roughly 173 million Americans are expected to take to the skies in March and April, Airlines for America told ABC News. Those who have been fully vaccinated have lifelong protection, and two doses of the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine are 97 percent effective against measles. While the majority of the nation's adolescents have two doses of the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine or more, breakthrough infections have occurred in the recent outbreak. Those types of infections are more likely in areas with outbreaks. Breakthrough infections are usually associated with milder disease and symptoms, including fever, runny nose and other symptoms. Still, measles is one of the most contagious infectious diseases, with the ability to live for up to two hours in the air after someone who is infected leaves. Some people may not know they have it, as the viral incubation period is typically between 11 to 12 days from exposure to the point when symptoms start. 'About three out of 100 people who get two doses of MMR vaccine will get measles if exposed to the virus. However, they are more likely to have a milder illness, and are also less likely to spread the disease to other people,' the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says. Officials are warning those who remain unvaccinated against measles about the risk of traveling. "We're not dealing with business-as-usual right now," Dworkin said, "and this is a disease that people who are incubating this disease who are going to get it, they can be infectious days before they even start to get sick."
The Guardian
23-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘It feels like a vindication': Andrea Dworkin's widower on the radical feminist's rediscovery
Though it's now two decades since Andrea Dworkin died, her widower John Stoltenberg still finds it difficult to talk about her. 'I sometimes break down,' he warns me, his mellow voice bumpy for just a moment. In a way, of course, she's all around. He has stayed on in the Washington DC condominium where she died (he lives there with his husband of 15 years, Joe Hamilton); her books and music – she loved country – are a constant reminder of the life they shared. But her absence is deeply felt nonetheless. 'It was a huge loss. Sometimes, I turn to her work just to hear her voice again. I connect to the way her mind was working, and I kind of invent a conversation with her.' In truth, it's a blessing that she was a writer. In 2005, at the mortuary to discuss her cremation, he heard the horrible word 'cremains' for the first time. 'In that moment, I had the insight that Andrea's remains would really be her words. They live on as she doesn't.' At first, admittedly, those words continued to be read only by a select few. At the best of times, Dworkin was a polarising figure, her uncompromising feminism despised by right and left alike (the right insisted she was a man-hater who believed all sex was rape; on the left, sex-positive feminists loathed her crusade against pornography). But slowly, this changed. 'She joined several zones of conversation,' as Stoltenberg puts it. First, the scholars started working on her, devoting chapter after chapter to Dworkin in their academic books. Then, a new generation of feminists began rediscovering her. 'I've subscribed to a service that tracks mention of Andrea, and I really shouldn't spend so much time with it, because it giveth and it taketh away,' he says. 'I mean, people still write the most vile stuff about her. But there's also the most amazing engagement and rapture around her work, especially from younger women. Only yesterday, I came upon her entry in the Urban Dictionary…' With a smile, he reads it to me. It calls Dworkin 'the most iconic radical feminist EVERERRR' and deploys several exclamation marks for emphasis. Her time, it seems, may have come at last. Next month, three of her books will be published as Penguin Modern Classics, a literary imprimatur that puts her in the company of Simone de Beauvoir and Virginia Woolf – and Stoltenberg, the keeper of her flame, could not be more delighted (not even Zoom can dim his radiance). 'She had such a struggle getting published in life,' he says. 'There were brave editors along the way, but there were also campaigns to destroy her reputation, especially around her position on pornography. It made her a pariah in the publishing industry here: that's why several of her books were published in the UK first. So to have these new editions come out at the same time, and for them to be so beautifully packaged [their covers feature work by the American feminist artist Judy Chicago, who's also enjoying something of a renaissance]… It feels like a vindication. It's thrilling and emotional, and though she always anticipated that if she was ever going to be acknowledged, it would only be after she was gone, I wish she could have seen it for herself.' When Dworkin died of heart disease at the age of just 58, feminist Gloria Steinem likened her to an Old Testament prophet 'raging in the hills'. Her friend, she said, often saw what was about to happen before others did – and it's true that the titles Penguin has chosen to reissue do seem now to have been unnervingly prescient. If her first book, Woman Hating (1974), and the later Pornography: Men Possessing Women (1981), speak to a culture that has only grown the more violently misogynistic since they were published – their arguments have new urgency in a world of 'incels' and 24/7 porn – then Right-Wing Women (1983) has plenty to say inadvertently about the devotion of Donald Trump's female supporters, even after allegations of sexual misconduct were made against him. 'Right-Wing Women is predictive of how women flocked to the patriarchy in the form of Trump, becoming his chief cheerleaders,' says Stoltenberg. 'This a movement that's devoted to defending the idea of real men – an idea which, as both Andrea and I have written, is a dangerous fiction.' Does he think Dworkin's jaw would be swinging in disbelief at the first flourishes of Trump's second term, or would she have seen it all coming? 'Oh, I think she would have believed it,' he says. 'I often imagine what she might be saying or doing if she was here now, and I think she would have been very engaged; I don't think she would have sat out his first term, and I don't think she would be sitting out this one either.' The world looks very different to the way it did in 2005; George W Bush, abhorred by liberals at the time, has a whole new complexion thanks to Trump. But some things never change. 'I was glad when Andrea was done with her pornography project. She worked from VHS tapes, magazines and books, and a lot of material accumulated in the house, to my discomfort. But she found the DNA of pornography, and though that DNA has since been replicated with new technologies and vast circulation, on to handheld screens and so on, the central core of how it works is no different. Her insight was into the acculturated male brain and body, and that hasn't moved much. The power relationship between men and women hasn't really shifted at all.' Stoltenberg, who is now 80, shared his life with Dworkin for 31 years. When they met, he was in his late 20s and a member of an experimental theatre company: they were introduced by its artistic director. ('Ha, there was a time when I thought I was in love with them both!' he says.) Things were certainly changing – it was 1974; hair was long and jeans flared – but he hadn't yet come out, or not properly. 'I'd told a few people I was homosexual – I think that was the word I used – but I hadn't done a whole lot with it. I'd previously been married to a woman; I'd believed the relationship would straighten me out, and there was no one around to tell me that it wouldn't.' With Dworkin, though, he could be 'transparent', in part because by this point she identified as a lesbian. Their first encounter was at a meeting of the Gay Academic Union in New York, but it was only later that they talked. 'We were at an anti [Vietnam] war poetry reading in Greenwich Village; our mutual friend the artistic director was up on stage reading from [Chilean poet] Pablo Neruda when suddenly the poetry turned hateful towards women. I was uncomfortable, so I walked out, at which point I discovered that she'd walked out for the same reason. That was our first connection.' Things moved fast. It was April. By June, they'd decided to live together, a momentous decision for them both. 'I was in transit a lot, because I lived on the Upper West Side, and she lived on the Lower East Side. But one day there was a party at my place: I seem to recall it was to mark the birthday of Elizabeth Cady Stanton [a leader of the US women's rights movement in the 19th century]. I drank way too much. I went into my bedroom, where I pretty much passed out. She came to check on me, and in that inebriated moment, I realised I couldn't live without her.' He shakes his head, mournfully. 'In a way, it's a sad story.' What was she like? In the media, Dworkin's mushroomy tabards and denim dungarees combined with the reporting of her more extreme utterances to fix her in the public imagination as a half-crazed Valkyrie. But Stoltenberg insists the reality was very different: 'She was nothing like that caricature, and she wasn't like her podium personality either [at marches, she was known for her oratory]. In her private life, she was gentle and sweet and funny.' Was he a feminist when they met? He thinks about this. 'I'm racking my brain… But, no, I believe it was Andrea who introduced me to it. In particular, it was hearing her tell me of the abuse she'd received that was mind-blowing because it was completely outside my frame of reference [Dworkin had been molested by a stranger as a child; her first husband, a Dutchman whom she married while living in Amsterdam in the early 70s, was so violent, he would knock her unconscious]. I didn't know anything about wife battery, and I didn't know anything about rape, and when she told me, I realised I didn't want to be any of those men.' What was their relationship like? 'Well, we knew from the beginning we weren't going to be monogamous,' he says. 'But we did have a life together that was deeply sensual: it was physically affectionate, as well as intellectual. I mean, she died in my arms…' It all sounds terribly modern. Did they feel they were pioneers? 'No, not really. We weren't public about it. There was nothing about us that was trying to be instructive, and I also don't want to leave out the fact that there was a lot of animosity towards us. When we lived in Northampton, Massachusetts, a city some people call the lesbian capital of the world, we would walk along the street holding hands, and women would hiss at us, and gay men would pass us and just… settle their scorn on us.' Why? Were he and Dworkin supposed to have betrayed some kind of gay ideal? 'I guess I don't know. But there was a lot of imputation about it.' Living together worked well. They shared household tasks – he cleaned the fridge, she dealt with the cat litter – and their working hours were highly compatible (Stoltenberg began writing, too, and has since published several books about the politics of masculinity). 'I wrote in the morning on several cups of coffee; she would start at midnight, working on till dawn.' His apartment – she moved in – was Dworkin's first safe home, and she cherished it. 'That with-floor walk-up [apartment] on the Lower East Side was pretty vulnerable, and in Europe she'd effectively been homeless.' Did he worry about her safety? 'Yes, especially when she travelled for speaking engagements. The world was hostile to her in a way that it wasn't to me.' Did her activism take a toll on her health? The second-wavers who first inspired her – Shulamith Firestone, Kate Millett – seemed in the end to suffer for their feminism. 'She didn't experience problems with her mental health, but her work was hard on her. Most people shy away from looking at certain things, myself included. But she went in there.' When she finished Scapegoat: The Jews, Israel and Women's Liberation (2000), a book that dealt with the Holocaust – Dworkin was Jewish, and once said she would have been a rabbi had she been allowed – friends urged her for her own sake to stay away from atrocity in the future. He and Dworkin always said they would not marry unless one of them was terminally ill, or imprisoned for political activity. But in 1998, they did: as his wife, she would be covered by the health insurance that came with his then job. 'We were on vacation in Florida; some friends had let us use their home. I was reading some tour literature, and I said: 'Hey, look at this. The state of Florida has no waiting period on marriages. You can just walk into a justice of the peace and get married.' We thought: why not? We didn't tell anybody except immediate family. It was as unceremonial as it could be. The justice of the peace said: did you pick her up out in the parking lot?' By now, however, Dworkin's health was beginning to fail. 'She'd had several major surgeries, including bariatric and knee replacement. I was at the point where I was terrified that I couldn't take care of her any longer. I think she had that fear, too. We didn't discuss it, but I was her carer…' His voice tails off. Her death was both sudden, and expected. How did he feel about the public response to it? 'I guess I was pleased. There was an outpouring, some very deep expressions of connection and gratitude for what her work had meant to women.' After so long, he was inured to any commentary that was less kind. 'Somewhere along the line, I developed a kind of muscle for sorting out what crap people said about her. I learned to notice the way in which whatever they were saying revealed more about them than about Andrea. Anyone who engages with her work always reveals something of themselves.' For some, Stoltenberg is a controversial figure. He has said that Dworkin would have been a trans ally had she lived, while others – the feminist activist, Julie Bindel, who was a friend, is one – have accused him of misreading her work for his own ends in this regard. But we don't discuss this today. How can anyone really know? As Steinem said after her death, even in life, she was 'frequently misunderstood'; better to talk about the latest editions of her work, and whether they'll bring her new readers. Will they? This is his hope. 'Her history, her experiences, weren't uncommon; they were, and are, more common than people will admit. But the way she universalised them was uncommon. She looked at the world through the lens of her life without fear.' Woman Hating, Pornography and Right-Wing Women are published by Penguin (£10.99). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copies at Delivery charges may apply
Yahoo
29-01-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
NASA says asteroid sample contains building blocks of life
WASHINGTON (NEXSTAR) — NASA scientists released their findings on Wednesday after the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft crashed into the asteroid Bennu and brought samples back to Earth. Scientists said they didn't find evidence of life on Bennu, but they did find evidence of the building blocks of life. 'Finding the ingredients to life is always very interesting,' said Jason Dworkin, Senior Scientist at NASA. Dworkin co-authored a paper outlining the chemical compounds scientists found in the Bennu samples. They included 14 of the 20 amino acids life on Earth uses to make proteins and the compounds found in DNA and RNA. 'It's like the alphabet, that goes into words. But we didn't find the words themselves let alone paragraphs,' Dworkin said. 'We found individual letters and all the letters that are used in DNA and RNA.' Natural History Museum of London researcher Sara Russell also analyzed minerals found in the Bennu samples. They included salts that form when water evaporates. 'All of these ingredients would have impacted the early Earth in the form of Asteroids,' Russell said. Russell emphasized, those wouldn't have been found on meteorites on Earth. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
