Andrea Dworkin Quotes

Women are not so well united as to form an Insurrection. They are for the most part wise enough to love their Chains, and to discern how becomingly they fit.

I was traumatised in the medieval Afghan society at Sarana village by the local boys of Omar's Taliban who forced my in-laws to subjugate me for trying to be different. There can be Omars in other religions, too, who oppress women.

Western women have been controlled by ideals and stereotypes as much as by material constraints.

Forever behind a woman is the mediaeval English common law which places upon her the stigma of inferiority and bondage

Marriage has ever been a one-sided matter, resting most unequally upon the sexes. By it, man gains all- woman loses all; tyrant law and lust reign supreme with him- meek submission and ready obedience alone befit her.

Women's degradation is in man's idea of his sexual rights. Our religion, laws, customs, are all founded on the belief that woman was made for man.

… it is not sufficient to change laws, institutions and customs. It is essential that women acquire ‘a new skin’. This can occur only through a collective effort while women suffer and loathe the oppression of men; it does not follow that her ovaries condemn her to be on her knees for eternity.

If you have a slave around the house how can you expect to make a revolution outside it? The problem for women is that if we try to be free, then we naturally become lonely, because so many women are willing to become slaves, and men usually prefer that.

Women aren't more easily swayed by fascism than men, but I believe that their situation makes them in effect more slavish than men.

There is no slave, after all, like a wife...Poor women, poor slaves All married women, all children and girls who live in their father's house are slaves.

All history attests that man has subjected woman to his will, used her as a means to promote his selfish gratification, to minister to his sensual pleasures, to be instrumental in promoting his comfort; but never has he desired to elevate her to that rank she was created to fill. He has done all he could to debase and enslave her mind; and now he looks triumphantly on the ruin he has wrought, and say, the being he has thus deeply injured is his inferior.

Under patriarchy, no woman is safe to live her life, or to love, or to mother children. Under patriarchy, every woman is a victim, past, present, and future. Under patriarchy, every woman's daughter is a victim, past, present, and future. Under patriarchy, every woman's son is her potential betrayer and also the inevitable rapist or exploiter of another woman.

When a woman is exhorted to be compliant, cooperative, and quiet, to not make upset or go against the old guard, she is pressed into living a most unnatural life- a life that is self-blinding.. . without innovation. The world-wide issue for women is that under such conditions they are not only silenced, they are put to sleep. Their concerns, their viewpoints, their own truths are vaporized.

What evil is there in seeing a man possess a woman? Why, the beasts would be more free than we!

I am always revolted when Islamic leaders, from Afghanistan or elsewhere, deny the very existence of female oppression, avoid the issue by pointing to examples of what they view as Western mistreatment of women, or even worse, justify the oppression of women on the basis of notions derived from Sharia law.

Any woman who chooses to behave like a full human being should be warned that the armies of the status quo will treat her as something of a dirty joke. That's their natural and first weapon. She will need her sisterhood.

Let us recognize that we can no longer tolerate violent oppression of women in the name of religion and culture any more than we would tolerate violent oppression espoused by any other bully in the name of a twisted rationale.

The problem is with men. I know I shouldn't say this, but they've shrouded and hidden women to hide their incompetence.

I hate the victimization of women, always.

Nature says women are human beings, men have made religions to deny it. Nature says women are human beings, men cry out no!

Those religions that are oppressive to women are also against democracy, human rights, and freedom of expression.

And when a woman's will is as strong as the man's who wants to govern her, half her strength must be concealment.

In traditional societies, we have a long legacy of men controlling the body and mind of women. Such societies have valorised motherhood and fabricated concepts like chastity. Women have been the victims of these notions for thousands of years.

Women are oppressed in the east, in the west, in the south, in the north. Women are oppressed inside, outside home, a woman is oppressed in religion, she is oppressed outside religion.

The patriarchy is alive and well in Egypt and the wider Arab world.