Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Andrea Dworkin

Quote by Andrea Dworkin

“Being naked takes on different values, according to the self-consciousness of the one who is naked; or according to the consciousness of the one who is looking at the nakedness. The men are tortured in their minds by the meaning of being naked, especially by the literal nakedness of women but also by their own nakedness: what it means to be seen and to be vulnerable. The nakedness of the women they look at, interpret, desire, associate with acts of violence they want to commit.”

Quote by Andrea Dworkin

Work

Intercourse

This book provides an in-depth exploration of the mechanics, cultural significance, and personal experiences associated with sexual intercourse. more

Author

Andrea Dworkin
Andrea Dworkin

Andrea Dworkin was an American writer and activist known for her work in feminist theory and activism. She focused on issues of pornography, violence against women, and the intersection of gender and politics. Her influential works include 'Intercourse' and 'Pornography: Men Possessing Women'. more

You May Also Like

“At some level, all love is combat, a wrestling with ghosts. We are only for something by being against something else. People who believe they are having pleasant, casual, uncomplex sexual encounters, whether with friend, spouse, or stranger are blocking from consciousness the tangle of psychodynamics at work, just as they block the hostile clashings of their dream life.”

“...punishment evokes sexual feelings in him; skin is logically connected in his mind with force, because sex is what he feels when he feels the urge to hurt her. [...] Force is suggested by the skin, because both to him mean real touch; [...] still conditioned by civilization to have abstract sexual impulses, he is drawn most by the silhouette, halfway between the fictive and the real.”

“In art, [Tolstoy] articulates with almost prophetic brilliance the elements that combine to make and keep women inferior, all of them originating, in his view, in sexual intercourse, because sexual intercourse requires objectification and therefore is exploitation. In life, he blamed and hated Sophie [his wife], feeling antagonism and repulsion, because he wanted to fuck her and did fuck her.”

“Sex, like everything else, is good or bad, helpful or unhelpful, pleasant or painful, fulfilling or demoralising based on the participants’ thoughts. Within the context of love, sex is a force for good. For many people, a loving sexual connection is the closest they ever get to a transcendent sense of benevolence, bliss, and that feeling of all is well—the closest they get to God. This is because loving sexual oneness is the shadow of true spiritual Oneness. As such, it carries with it some of the same elements, some of the same promise. The desire for physical unity represents the more profound desire for spiritual completeness. Within a spontaneous, playful, respectful, and unselfish context, sexual closeness is a channel for light, but it cannot fulfil our deepest yearnings.”