andreadworkinq

[andreadworkinq]

[andreadworkinq]

For the woman, the proof of love is that she is willing to be destroyed by the one whom she loves, for his sake. For the woman, love is always self-sacrifice, the sacrifice of identity, will, and bodily integrity, in order to fulfill and redeem the masculinity of her lover.

Our Blood: Prophecies and Discourses on Sexual Politics, Andrea Dworkin

[andreadworkinq]

“When a woman violates a rule which spells out her proper behavior as a female, she is singled out by men, their agents, and their culture as a troublemaker. The rebel’s isolation is real in that she is avoided, or ignored, or chastised, or denounced.

Acceptance back into the community of men, which is the only viable and sanctioned community, is contingent on her renunciation and repudiation of her deviant behavior.”

Our Blood: Prophecies and Discourses on Sexual Politics, Andrea Dworkin

[andreadworkinq]

“The fact is that it is easier for a woman to raise a son than a daughter. First, she is rewarded for bearing a son—this is the pinnacle of possible accomplishment for her in her life, as viewed by male culture.

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.”

Our Blood: Prophecies and Discourses on Sexual Politics, Andrea Dworkin

[andreadworkinq]

To abort a fetus, in masculinist terms, is to commit an act of violence against the phallus itself. It is akin to chopping off a cock. Because a fetus is perceived of as having a phallic character, its so-called life is valued very highly, while the woman’s actual life is worthless and invisible since she can make no claim to phallic potentiality.

Our Blood: Prophecies and Discourses on Sexual Politics, Andrea Dworkin

[andreadworkinq]

Woman is not born: she is made. In the making, her humanity is destroyed. She becomes symbol of this, symbol of that: mother of the earth, slut of the universe; but she never becomes herself because it is forbidden for her to do so.

Andrea Dworkin

[andreadworkinq]

my professor called andrea dworkin “anti-fun” and i feel like that is an accurate depiction of where liberal feminism is at right now

[andreadworkinq]

We women are especially supposed to be afraid of the night. The night promises harm to women. For a woman to walk on the street at night is not only to risk abuse, but also—according to the values of male domination—to ask for it. The woman who transgresses the boundaries of night is an outlaw who breaks an elementary rule of civilized behavior: a decent woman does not go out—certainly not alone, certainly not only with other women—at night.

Letters From a War Zone, Andrea Dworkin

[andreadworkinq]

Pornography exists because men despise women, and men despise women in part because pornography exists.

Letters From a War Zone, Andrea Dworkin

[andreadworkinq]

“The most terrible thing about pornography is that it tells male truth.

The most insidious thing about pornography is that it tells male truth as if it were universal truth. Those depictions of women in chains being tortured are supposed to represent our deepest erotic aspirations. And some of us believe it, don't we?

The most important thing about pornography is that the values in it are the common values of men. This is the crucial fact that both the male Right and the male Left, in their differing but mutually reinforcing ways, want to keep hidden from women. The male Right wants to hide the pornography, and the male Left wants to hide its meaning. Both want access to pornography so that men can be encouraged and energized by it. The Right wants secret access; the Left wants public access.

But whether we see the pornography or not, the values expressed in it are the values expressed in the acts of rape and wife-beating, in the legal system, in religion, in art and in literature, in systematic economic discrimination against women, in the moribund academies, and by the good and wise and kind and enlightened in all of these fields and areas.

Pornography is not a genre of expression separate and different from the rest of life; it is a genre of expression fully in harmony with any culture in which it flourishes. This is so whether it is legal or illegal. And, in either case, pornography functions to perpetuate male supremacy and crimes of violence against women because it conditions, trains, educates, and inspires men to despise women, to use women, to hurt women. Pornography exists because men despise women, and men despise women in part because pornography exists.”

Letters From a War Zone, Andrea Dworkin

[andreadworkinq]

Some people say that pornography is only fantasy. What part of it is fantasy? Women are beaten and raped and forced and whipped and held captive. The violence depicted is true. The acts of violence depicted in pornography are real acts committed against real women and real female children. The fantasy is that women want to be abused.

Letters From a War Zone, Andrea Dworkin

[andreadworkinq]

“We have a double standard, which is to say, a man can show how much he cares by being violent – see, he’s jealous, he cares – a woman shows how much she cares by how much she’s willing to be hurt; by how much she will take; how much she will endure.”

— Andrea Dworkin (via feministsorgnow)

[andreadworkinq]

Depression is commonplace among women because women are often angry at the conditions of their lives, at what they must do because they are women, at the way they are treated because they are women; and depression truly is anger turned inward.

Right Wing Women, Andrea Dworkin

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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.

Right Wing Women, Andrea Dworkin

[andreadworkinq]

“She is given drugs because nothing is lost when she is drugged, except what is regarded as the too thick edge of her emotional life. She is given drugs because she is not much valued; she takes the drugs because she is not much valued; she stays on the drugs because she is not much valued; the doctors keep prescribing the drugs because she is not much valued; the effects of addiction or dependency on her are not much noted because she is not much valued. These are prescription drugs, regarded as appropriate medications for women.

Thirty-six million women can be tranquilized in a year and the nation does not notice it, does not miss their energy, creativity, wit, intellect, passion, commitment— so much are these women worth, so important is their contribution, so indelible is their individuality, so essential is their vigor.”

Right Wing Women, Andrea Dworkin

[andreadworkinq]

Right-wing women saw the cynicism of the Left in using abortion to make women sexually available, and they also saw the male Left abandon women who said no. They know that men do not have principles or political agendas not congruent with the sex they want.

Right Wing Women, Andrea Dworkin

[andreadworkinq]

Ah, Andrea Dworkin. We still live in hell.