Andrea Dworkin: Quotes about men

“Men characterize pornography as something mental because their minds, their thoughts, their dreams, their fantasies, are more real to them than women's bodies or lives; in fact, men have used their social power to characterize a $10-billion-a-year trade in women as fantasy.”

Andrea Dworkin

Pornography, Men Possessing Women (1979)

Women , Men , Dreams

“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.”

Andrea Dworkin

p 53.
Pornography, Men Possessing Women (1979)

Men , Money , Learning

“Q: People think you are very hostile to men.
A: I am.
Q: Doesn't that worry you?
A: From what you said, it worries them.”

Andrea Dworkin

Nervous Interview http://www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/dworkin/WarZoneChaptIIA.html (1979). Dworkin wrote both the questions and the answers

Men , Hostility , People , Thinking

“Any violation of a woman's body can become sex for men; this is the essential truth of pornography.”

Andrea Dworkin book Intercourse

Source: Intercourse (1987), Chapter 7
Context: But the hatred of women is a source of sexual pleasure for men in its own right. Intercourse appears to be the expression of that contempt in pure form, in the form of a sexed hierarchy; it requires no passion or heart because it is power without invention articulating the arrogance of those who do the fucking. Intercourse is the pure, sterile, formal expression of men's contempt for women; but that contempt can turn gothic and express itself in many sexual and sadistic practices that eschew intercourse per se. Any violation of a woman's body can become sex for men; this is the essential truth of pornography.

Men , Truth , Sex

“A commitment to sexual equality with men is a commitment to becoming the rich instead of the poor, the rapist instead of the raped, the murderer instead of the murdered.”

Andrea Dworkin

"I Want a Twenty-Four Hour Truce During Which There Is No Rape" http://www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/dworkin/WarZoneChaptIIIE.html (1983).
Context: I want to see this men's movement make a commitment to ending rape because that is the only meaningful commitment to equality. It is astonishing that in all our worlds of feminism and antisexism we never talk seriously about ending rape. Ending it. Stopping it. No more. No more rape. In the back of our minds, are we holding on to its inevitability as the last preserve of the biological? Do we think that it is always going to exist no matter what we do? All of our political actions are lies if we don't make a commitment to ending the practice of rape. This commitment has to be political. It has to be serious. It has to be systematic. It has to be public. It can't be self-indulgent.

Men

“All around us there are other women, seemingly not hurt, making small talk, acting normal, which means happy, not discontent, certainly not devastated. Girls are still being socialised not to identify with - feel empathy for - other females: she got hurt because she did x, y, z - I didn’t, so I didn’t get hurt; she’s at fault, I’m not; the punishment fits her crime; blame her, exonerate him. This continuing, culturally applauded socialisation of women not to empathize with other women is a malignant part of the culture of men, dead white ones or not. Women are perceived to be appalling failures when we are sad. Women are pathetic when we are angry. Women are ridiculous when we are militant. Women are unpleasant when we are bitter, no matter what the cause. Women are deranged when women want justice. Women are man-haters when women want accountability and respect from men. Women are trash when women let men do what men want Women are shrews or puritans when we do not.”

Andrea Dworkin

‘Suffering and Speech’ in Catherine A MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin (eds) In Harm’s Way: The Pornography Civil Rights Hearings.

Women , Men , Sadness , Justice

“Pornography reveals that male pleasure is inextricably tied to victimizing, hurting, exploiting; that sexual fun and sexual passion in the privacy of the male imagination are inseparable from the brutality of male history. The private world of sexual dominance that men demand as their right and their freedom is the mirror image of the public world of sadism and atrocity that men consistently and self-righteously deplore. It is in the male experience of pleasure that one finds the meaning of male history.”

Andrea Dworkin

p 69.
Pornography, Men Possessing Women (1979)

Men , Pleasure , World , Imagination

“Do women need sovereignty—not only over their own bodies as currently understood in the United States…; but control of a boundary further away from their bodies, a defended boundary? Do women need land and an army…; or a feminist government in exile…? Or is it simpler: the bed belongs to the woman; the house belongs to the woman; any land belongs to the woman; if a male intimate is violent he is removed from the place where she has the superior and inviolate claim, arrested, denied parole, and prosecuted….. Could women "set a high price on our blood"? Could women set any price on our blood? Could women manage self-defense if not retaliation? Would self-defense be enough? Could women execute men who raped or beat or tortured women?…. [¶]…. Could the acts of women in behalf of women … have a code of honor woman-to-woman that weakens the male-dominant demands of nationalism or race-pride or ethnic pride? Could women commit treason to the men of their own group: put women first, even the putative enemy women? Do women have enough militancy and self-respect to see themselves as the central makers of legal codes, ethics, honor codes, and culture?”

Andrea Dworkin book Scapegoat: The Jews, Israel, and Women's Liberation

Source: Scapegoat: The Jews, Israel, and Women's Liberation (2000), p. 246.

Women , Men , Housing

“Reforms are made, important ones' but the status of women relative to men does not change.”

Andrea Dworkin book Intercourse

Source: Intercourse (1987), Chapter 7
Context: Life can be better for women - economic and political conditions improved - and at the same time the status of women can remain resistant, in deed impervious, to change: so far in history this is precisely the paradigm for social change as it relates to the conditions of women. Reforms are made, important ones' but the status of women relative to men does not change. Women are still less significant, have less privacy, less integrity, less self-determination. This means that women have less freedom.

Women , Men , Change

“The fact that we are all trained to be mothers from infancy on means that we are all trained to devote our lives to men, whether they are our sons or not; that we are all trained to force other women to exemplify the lack of qualities which characterizes the cultural construct of femininity.”

Andrea Dworkin

Speech at Queens College, City University of New York (March 12, 1975). "The Sexual Politics of Fear and Courage", ch. 5, Our Blood (1976).

Women , Men , Training

“The public censure of women as if we are rabid because we speak without apology about the world in which we live is a trategy of threat that usually works. Men often react to women's words - speaking and writing - as if they were acts of violence' sometimes men react to women's words with violence. So we lower our voices. Women whisper. Women apologize. Women shut up. Women trivialize what we know. Women shrink. Women pull back. Most women have experienced enough dominance from men - control, violence, insult, contempt - that no threat seems empty.”

Andrea Dworkin book Intercourse

Introduction
Intercourse (1987)

Women , Men , World

“I have spent 20 years writing these books. Had I wanted to say men are beasts and scream, that takes 30 seconds.”

Andrea Dworkin

Modern Times Interview of Andrea Dworkin With Larry Josephson, on "Modern Times" (American Public Radio, 1992) (radio program) (transcript of tape (end of tape missing)) http://www.andreadworkin.com/audio/moderntimes.html, as accessed Sep. 5, 2010.

Men , Books

“"Andrea presented herself as a street fighter intellectual, a bohemian freedom fighter, and someone who wanted to get to the bottom of things. That quote about Malcolm X is apt. Malcolm pointed out “The problem is WHITE PEOPLE.” Dworkin said, “The problem is MEN.” And for all the holes that can be poked in that cloth, there is something about that grain that is absolutely true, when you are the short end of the bolt."”

Andrea Dworkin

" Andrea Dworkin Has Died http://susiebright.blogs.com/susie_brights_journal_/2005/04/andrea_dworkin_.html" by Susie Bright, Susie Bright's Journal (blog), April 11, 2005.
About

Men , People , Quotes , Problem

“Freedom is not an abstraction, nor is a little of it enough. A little more of it is not enough either. Having less, being less, impoverished in freedom and rights, women then inevitably have less self-respect: less self-respect than men have and less self-respect than any human being needs to live a brave and honest life. Intercourse as domination battens of that awful absence of self respect.”

Andrea Dworkin book Intercourse

Source: Intercourse (1987), Chapter 7

Life , Women , Men , Freedom

“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.”

Andrea Dworkin

p 167.
Pornography, Men Possessing Women (1979)

Women , Men

“Men must make women afraid and compliant, including through beatings; women must be housebound and servile. The men, then, can attend orgies or engage in any other sexual activity.”

Andrea Dworkin book Intercourse

Source: Intercourse (1987), Chapter One, "Repulsion"

Women , Men

“(On prostitution:) Incest is boot camp. Incest is where you send the girl to learn how to do it. So you don't, obviously, have to send her anywhere, she's already there and she's got nowhere else to go. She's trained. And the training is specific and it is important: not to have any real boundaries to her own body; to know that she's valued only for sex; to learn about men what the offender, the sex offender, is teaching her.”

Andrea Dworkin

"Prostitution and Male Supremacy" http://www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/dworkin/MichLawJourI.html (1993), Michigan Journal of Gender and Law 1(1):1–12. Reprinted in Life and Death (1997), p 139–51.
Often paraphrased as "Incest is boot camp for prostitution".

Men , Sex , Girl , Learning

“Women do not know how to be women exactly; men constantly fail to be men.”

Andrea Dworkin book Intercourse

Source: Intercourse (1987), Chapter 8, "Law"

Women , Men

“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.”

Andrea Dworkin

Right Wing Women, ch.2 (1978)

Women , Men , Idea , Universe

“Can women make use of men's vulnerability not to marry but instead to destroy male power?”

Andrea Dworkin book Scapegoat: The Jews, Israel, and Women's Liberation

Source: Scapegoat: The Jews, Israel, and Women's Liberation (2000), p. 248.

Women , Men