Andrea Dworkin, American Feminist Critic Quotes
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. Instead of "I am afraid," we say, "I don't want to," or "I don't know how," or "I can't.
Eroticism is simply high-class pornography; better produced, better conceived, better executed, better packaged, designed for a better class of consumer.
Feminist art is not some tiny creek running off the great river of real art. It is not some crack in an otherwise flawless stone. It is, quite spectacularly I think, art which is not based on the subjugation of one half of the species. It is art which will take the great human themes -- love, death, heroism, suffering, history itself -- and render them fully human. It may also, though perhaps our imaginations are so mutilated now that we are incapable even of the ambition, introduce a new theme, one as great and as rich as those others -- should we call it "joy"?
A man can be a hero if he is a scientist, or a soldier, or a drug addict, or a disc jockey, or a crummy mediocre politician. A man can be a hero because he suffers and despairs; or because he thinks logically and analytically; or because he is sensitive; or because he is cruel. Wealth establishes a man as a hero, and so does poverty. Virtually any circumstance in a man's life will make him a hero to some group of people and has a mythic rendering in the culture -- in literature, art, theater, or the daily newspapers.
Seduction is often difficult to distinguish from rape. In seduction, the rapist often bothers to buy a bottle of wine.
Sexism is the foundation on which all tyranny is built. Every social form of hierarchy and abuse is modeled on maleoverfemale domination.
For a mother the project of raising a boy is the most fulfilling project she can hope for. She can watch him, as a child, play the games she was not allowed to play; she can invest in him her ideas, aspirations, ambitions, and values- or whatever she has left of them; she can watch her son, who came from her flesh and whose life was sustained by her work and devotion, embody her in the world. So while the project of raising a boy is fraught with ambivalence and leads inevitably to bitterness, it is the only project that allows a woman to be--to be through her son, to live through her son.
A man can be a hero if he is a scientist, or a soldier, or a drug addict, or a disc jockey, or a crummy mediocre politician. A man can be a hero because he suffers and despairs; or because he thinks logically and analytically; or because he is "sensitive"; or because he is cruel. Wealth establishes a man as a hero, and so does poverty. Virtually any circumstance in a man's life will make him a hero to some group of people and has a mythic rendering in the culture--in literature, art, theater, or the daily newspapers.
Women's fashion" is a euphemism for fashion created by men for women.
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. Instead of ''I am afraid,'' we say, ''I don't want to,'' or ''I don't know how,'' or ''I can't.