Andrea Dworkin Quotes
As long as there is rape... there is not going to be any peace or justice or equality or freedom. You are not going to become what you want to become or who you want to become. You are not going to live in the world you want to live in.
Dworkin, Andrea. Letters from a War Zone: Writings 1976-1987. E.P. Dutton, 1989, p. 170.
Goodman is citing the 2003 poll conducted by the pro-choice Center for the Advancement of Women, who found that the majority of women believe abortion should be legal only in three cases -- rape, incest, or danger to the life of the mother.
This proverb which actually has the force of de facto law in much of the Arab world, while detested by many sophisticated Westerners and Americans in particular, was actually a custom in America for many years. Under the principle, a rapist is not a rapist if he marries the girl. A seducer is not a seducer. In the Bedouin culture there is no difference between the rapist and the seducer. The reason that the practice is so hateful is that it assumes that when a woman is raped or seduced the damage is to the woman’s male relatives—to their honor. Therefore, the “crime” can be remedied by marrying the girl and satisfying the male relative’s sense of honor. Then no harm has been done, except of course to the woman who often becomes the double victim, first of the rape or seduction and then of a forced marriage. In modern America the honor of the male relatives has no standing in law, yet even today some judges and prosecutors will go easy on a statutory rapist or worse if he marries the girl and the girls family goes along with the arrangement. The term “shotgun wedding” stems from a time when family members would force the alternative on seducers.
See {623723} & {623724} for the origin of the demonstrations. Women demonstrated for the right to be safe from sexual assault regardless of how particular men perceived they were dressing.
Andrea Rita Dworkin was an American radical feminist activist and writer. She is best known for her analysis of pornography, although her feminist writings, beginning in 1974, span 40 years. They are found in a dozen solo works: nine books of non-fiction, two novels, and a collection of short stories. Another three volumes were co-written or co-edited with US Constitutional law professor and feminist activist, Catharine A. MacKinnon.
