Andrea Dworkin Quotes

claims about what's 'natural' have long been used to reinforce traditional gender roles and values. ... Even the notion that women should have children at all is based on the idea that a woman's inherent and most important role is that of mother. Shockingly, men's 'innate' roles are a lot more fun than the ones bestowed on women.

And then also I think it's harder for women because comedy is so opposite of being ladylike.

Women are socialized to be nice, to be docile. I call it 'shrink to fit': Shrink yourself to fit what others expect of you.

Of the two lots, the woman's lot of perpetual motherhood, and the man's of perpetual babyhood, I prefer the man's.

The demand that women "return to femininity" is a demand that the cultural gears shift into reverse, that we back up to a fabled time when everyone was richer, younger, more powerful.

I think that women should be decorative.

The male society is letting the men think of the women as something pretty and soft and that kind of thing. So I just wanted to show what we were. Women are the ones who actually created the human race. I mean without us bringing up the new generation, there wouldn't be a human race.

[Women] ... is nothin' but little girls in long skirts, and their hair done up.

Woman is natural, that is to say, abominable.

[My mother] was the oldest of two sisters and two brothers, and she grew up with her brothers, who were about her age. She grew up, to the age of ten, like a wild colt, and then all of a sudden that was over. They had forced on her her 'woman's destiny' by saying, 'This isn't done, this isn't good, this isn't worthy of a lady.'

Girls have long been evaluated on the basis of appearance and caught in myriad double binds: achieve, but not too much, be polite,but be yourself, be feminine and adult; be aware of our cultural heritage, but don't comment on the sexism. . . . Girls are trained to be less than who they really are. They are trained to be what the culture wants of its young women, not what they themselves want to become.

Women are told from their infancy, and taught by the example of their mothers, that a little knowledge of human weakness, justly termed cunning, softness of temper, outward obedience and a scrupulous attention to a puerile kind of propriety, will obtain for them the protection of man.

The Olinka girls do not believe girls should be educated. When I asked a mother why she thought this, she said: A girl is nothing to herself; only to her husband can she become something. What can she become? I asked. Why, she said, the mother of his children. But I am not the mother of anybody's children, I said, and I am something.

Women, then, are only children of a larger growth

We still live in a world in which a significant fraction of people, including women, believe that a woman belongs and wants to belong exclusively in the home.

As her sons have seen her: the mother in patriarchy: controlling, erotic, castrating, heart-suffering, guilt-ridden, and guilt-provoking; a marble brow, a huge breast, an avid cave; between her legs snakes, swamp-grass, or teeth; on her lap a helpless infant or a martyred son. She exists for one purpose: to bear and nourish the son.

Girls are supposed to dance. That's why god gave them parts that jiggle.

Men are taught to apologize for their weaknesses, women for their strengths.

A woman should be good for everything at home, but abroad good for nothing.

A fine world in which man reproaches woman with fulfilling his heart's desire!

I think women in pop have been declawed and defanged, and they're just meant to look pretty and sing pretty.

And also I think particularly as a female, you're taught to be defensive your whole life. You're taught not to be aggressive.

I've been writing about misogyny for 20 years and trying to understand what femininity means for my entire career.

Masculine and feminine roles are not biologically fixed but socially constructed.

No lady is ever a gentleman.