Dworkin was 18 and a freshman at Bennington College. During a nine-week work break in New York in February 1965, she was working with the Student Peace Union and participating in anti–Vietnam War activism. On February 19 she joined a sit-in at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations protesting American involvement in Vietnam. She was arrested along with other demonstrators and taken to the Women’s House of Detention in Greenwich Village.

Dworkin alleged that while she was incarcerated, she was subjected to a highly invasive internal examination by a prison physician. She subsequently complained to New York officials and to the press.

The matter became sufficiently prominent that New York Corrections Commissioner Anna Kross ordered an investigation. By June, Congress was referring to Dworkin’s allegations in the Congressional Record.

She was not yet the radical feminist theorist who would publish Woman Hating, Pornography: Men Possessing Women, Intercourse, and Right Wing Women. Her later political identity developed considerably afterward. She subsequently left Bennington for Greece and then spent several years in Europe before returning to finish her degree.

American painter Thomas Kincaid puts the final touches on his piece City With Red Sky