Andrea Dworkin Quotes

If a test of civilization be sought, none can be so sure as the condition of the half of society over which the other half has power—from the exercises of the right of the strongest.

Misogyny should be understood as the ‘law enforcement’ branch of a patriarchal order, which has the overall function of policing and enforcing its governing ideology. Sexism wears a lab coat, misogyny goes on witch hunts.... Sexism is bookish; misogyny is combative. Sexism has a theory; misogyny wields a cudgel.

Among the progress of the human mind that is most important for human happiness, we must count the entire destruction of the prejudices that have established inequality between the sexes, fatal even to the sex it favors….This inequality has no other source but the abuse of power, and men have tried in vain to excuse it by sophisms.

The personal is political for so many.

My feminism is humanism, with the weakest being those who I represent, and that includes many beings and life forms, including some men.

The personal is political, but only to a point.

For blacks in our society, victimization may be a true issue. But it isn't a true issue for women. Neither men nor women are victimized. The true issue, that I try to point out, is that both sexes suffer restricted roles.

I believe and support the feminist movement, but I am not generally interested in considering women's rights in relation to equality with men, or in a competition with men, but rather within their own rights and feminine space.

When we talk about feminism - equality without apology for all - we can't be talking about for all white women or all highly educated women but all women, regardless of color, class, creed, sexual orientation or identity.

When you say 'revolution' when you have only men outside, you know that something is going wrong. I'm not like a hardcore feminist, but I think that one of the things that makes the society advanced is equality between men and women. If half of the society is oppressed by the other half, it's not fine.

Women have a predestination to suffering.

If I look at history, it seems that most wars and most cruel things have been done by men and not by women.

Each one of our ideas should benefit the people with less power than us.

Man is the organizer of life, woman is his organ for carrying out plans.

Not regarded as the equals of men.

If “all men are born free,” how is it that all women are born slaves?

To me feminism is not simply a struggle to end male chauvinism or a movement to ensure that women will have equal rights with men; it is a commitment to eradicating the ideology of domination that permeates Western culture on various levels-sex, race, and class, to name a few-and a commitment to reorganizing U.S. society so that the self-development of people can take precedence over imperialism, economic expansion, and material desires.

When women are the advisers, the lords of creation don't take the advice till they have persuaded themselves that it is just what they intended to do. Then they act upon it, and, if it succeeds, they give the weaker vessel half the credit of it. If it fails, they generously give her the whole.

I always feel like I'm warring with my womanhood and wanting the world to be better, and with my blackness - which is the opposite of whiteness.

I was ahead of the gender curve, but I wasn't ahead of the intersectionality curve, and I get it now. It's important to me.

I don't doubt that straight white men have identity issues and identity complexes and struggle with defining themselves.

For there is no sex. There is but sex that is oppressed and sex that oppresses. It is oppression that creates sex and not the contrary.

The stereotypes of feminists as ugly, or man-haters, or hairy, or whatever it is - that's really strategic. That's a really smart way to keep young women away from feminism, is to kind of put out this idea that all feminists hate men, or all feminists are ugly; and that they really come from a place of fear.

Men feel that cruelty to the poor is a kind of cruelty to animals. They never feel that it is an injustice to equals; nay it is treachery to comrades.

Nobody really believes in equality anyway.