Andrea Dworkin
Andrea Dworkin
Andrea Rita Dworkinwas an American radical feminist and writer best known for her criticism of pornography, which she argued was linked to rape and other forms of violence against women. Although a radical, she said there was a need for liberals, but was widely criticized by liberal feminists. At the same time, she maintained a dialogue with political conservatives and wrote a topically-related book, Right-Wing Women. After suffering abuse from her first husband, she was introduced to radical feminist literature...
ProfessionActivist
Date of Birth26 September 1946
CityCamden, NJ
While gossip among women is universally ridiculed as low and trivial, gossip among men, especially if it is about women, is called theory, or idea, or fact.
Feminism requires precisely what patriarchy destroys in women: unimpeachable bravery in confronting male power
...In every realm of male expression and action, violence is experienced and articulated as love and freedom.
Men are rewarded for learning the practice of violence in virtually any sphere of activity by money, admiration, recognition, respect, and the genuflection of others honoring their sacred and proven masculinity. In male culture, police are heroic and so are outlaws; males who enforce standards are heroic and so are those who violate them.
Childbearing is glorified in part because women die from it.
Sexism is the foundation on which all tyranny is built. Every social form of hierarchy and abuse is modeled on male-over-female domination.
Heterosexual intercourse is the pure, formalized expression of contempt for women's bodies.
Touch is the meaning of being human.
By the time we are women, fear is as familiar to us as air; it is our element. We live in it, we inhale it, we exhale it, and most of the time we do not even notice it.
It is a tragedy beyond the power of language to convey when what has been imposed on women by force becomes a standard of freedom for women: and all the women say it is so.
The common erotic project of destroying women makes it possible for men to unite into a brotherhood; this project is the only firm and trustworthy groundwork for cooperation among males and all male bonding is based on it.
Women, for centuries not having access to pornography and now unable to bear looking at the muck on the supermarket shelves, are astonished. Women do not believe that men believe what pornography says about women. But they do. From the worst to the best of them, they do.
No woman needs intercourse; few women escape it.
Only when manhood is dead - and it will perish when ravaged femininity no longer sustains it - only then will we know what it is to be free.