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Andrea Dworkin

Andrea Dworkin Quotes

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Famous Andrea Dworkin Quotes

“Writing is alchemy. Dross becomes gold. Experience is transformed. Pain is changed. Suffering may become song. The ordinary or horrible is pushed by the will of the writer into grace or redemption, a prophetic wail, a screed for justice, an elegy of sadness or sorrow. ... There is always a tension between experience and the thing that finally carries it forward, bears its weight, holds it in. Without that tension, one might as well write a shopping list.”

WritingWellsMayMightPainSufferingSongJusticeGraceSadnessChangedBearsSorrowOrdinaryGoldWeightListsHorribleRedemptionTensionCarrieShoppingTransformedAlchemyPropheticDrossElegy
Author:Andrea Dworkin
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“We think that we live in a heterosexual society because most men are fixated on women as sexual objects; but, in fact, we live ina homosexual society because all credible transactions of power, authority, and authenticity take place among men; all transactions based on equity and individuality take place among men. Men are real; therefore, all real relationship is between men; all real communication is between men; all real reciprocity is between men; all real mutuality is between men.”

ThinkingMenRealFactsObjectsCommunicationAuthorityIndividualityAuthenticityHomosexualityHomosexualEquityTransactionsReciprocityCredibleReal Relationship
Author:Andrea Dworkin
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“I love, cherish, and respect women in my mind, in my heart, and in my soul. This love of women is the soil in which my life is rooted. It is the soil of our common life together. My life grows out of this soil. In any other soil, I would die. In whatever ways I am strong, I am strong because of the power and passion of this nurturant love.”

WayMindHeartSoulTogetherLife IsDiesPassionStrongGrowsCommonMy HeartMy SoulSoilCherishRootedLife TogetherRespect WomenI Am StrongCommon Life
Author:Andrea Dworkin
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“So you go away from where you were afraid. Some stay; some go; it's a big difference, leaving the humiliations of childhood, the morbid fear. We didn't have much to say to each other, the ones that left and the ones that stayed. Children get shamed by fear but you can't tell the adults that; they don't care. They make children into dead things like they are. If there's something left alive in you, you run. You run from the poor little child on her knees; fear burned the skin off all right; she's still on her knees, dead and raw and tender.”

IfsChildrenLittlesStillsBigsCareRunningLeftDifferencesPoorAliveChildhoodAdultsSkinsLeavingDon't CareKneesGoing AwayBurnedHumiliationMorbid
Author:Andrea Dworkin
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“I don’t believe rape is inevitable or natural. If I did, I would have no reason to be here. If I did, my political practice would be different than it is. Have you ever wondered why we [women] are not just in armed combat against you? It’s not because there’s a shortage of kitchen knives in this country. It is because we believe in your humanity, against all the evidence.”

IfsBelieveDifferentCountryReasonWould BePoliticalHumanityNaturalPracticeEvidenceDon't BelieveInevitableKitchenNo ReasonCombatKnivesShortageKitchen Knives
Author:Andrea Dworkin
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“Being female in this world means having been robbed of the potential for human choice by men who love to hate us. One does does not make choices in freedom. Instead, one conforms in body type and behavior and values to become an object of male sexual desire, which requires an abandonment of a wide-ranging capacity for choice... Men too make choices. When will they choose not to despise us?”

MenWorldHumansMeanDoeBodyDesireValuesHateChoicesObjectsThis WorldTypeBehaviorCapacityFemaleMalesWideDespiseConformAbandonmentLove HateSexual DesireBody Types
Book:Intercourse
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“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.”

MenCulturePeacePracticeViolenceActivityStandardsPoliceSacredMalesRecognitionAdmirationSpheresHeroicProvenMasculinityOutlaw
Book:Pornography: men possessing women
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“Men love death. In everything they make, they hollow out a central place for death, let its rancid smell contaminate every dimension of whatever still survives. Men especially love murder. In art they celebrate it, and in life they commit it. They embrace murder as if life without it would be devoid of passion, meaning, and action, as if murder were solace, stilling their sobs as they mourn the emptiness and alienation of their lives.”

IfsMenArtStillsWould BeActionPassionMurderEmbraceFeministSmellCommitCelebrateDimensionsEmptinessAlienationHollowMournSolaceLove DeathRadical Feminist
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“Men are rapists, batterers, plunderers, killers; these same men are religious prophets, poets, heroes, figures of romance, adventure, accomplishment, figures ennobled by tragedy and defeat. Men have claimed the earth, called it 'Her'. Men ruin Her. Men have airplanes, guns, bombs, poisonous gases, weapons so perverse and deadly that they defy any authentically human imagination.”

MenHumansEarthRomanceImaginationReligiousFiguresAdventurePoetHeroWeaponsGunTragedyDefeatFeministRuinsAccomplishmentProphetBombsKillersAirplanePoisonousHuman ImaginationRadical Feminist
Book:Pornography: men possessing women
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“On the Left, on the Right, in the Middle; Authors, statesmen, thieves; so-called humanists and self-declared fascists; the adventurous and the contemplative, in every realm of male expression and action, violence is experienced and articulated as love and freedom.”

SelfActionLeftViolenceMiddleExpressionMalesFeministRealmsThievesAdventurousStatesmenFascistsContemplativeRadical FeministLove And Freedom
Book:Pornography: men possessing women
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“Romantic love, in pornography as in life, is the mythic celebration of female negation. For a woman, love is defined as her willingness to submit to her own annihilation.... 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.”

LoveSelfLife IsOrderLove IsSacrificeIdentityWillingLoversIntegrityFemaleSakeProofDestroyedDefinedWillingnessCelebrationSubmitRomantic LoveMasculinityPornographySelf SacrificeAnnihilationNegationProof Of Love
Author:Andrea Dworkin
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“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?”

ThinkingLoveShouldHumansMayArtRealRunningJoyArtistSufferingImaginationHalfRichAmbitionArt IsRiversStonesSpeciesFeministTinyThemeCracksIntroducingHeroismIncapableOne HalfFlawlessCreeksSubjugationLove DeathFeminist Art
Author:Andrea Dworkin
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