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Under patriarchy, every woman's son is her potential betrayer and also the inevitable rapist or exploiter of another woman.

Andrea Dworkin

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Andrea Dworkin
Age: 58 †
Born: 1946
Born: September 26
Died: 2005
Died: April 9
Essayist
Feminist
Journalist
Literary Critic
Novelist
Writer
Camden
New Jersey
Andrea Rita Dworkin
Woman
Betrayer
Another
Exploiter
Also
Rapist
Every
Patriarchy
Feminist
Inevitable
Potential
Son

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The argument between wives and whores is an old one each one thinking that whatever she is, at least she is not the other.
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We have a double standard, which is to say, a man can show how much he cares by being violent-see, he's jealous, he cares-a woman shows how much she cares by how much she's willing to be hurt by how much she will take how much she will endure how suicidal she's prepared to be.
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Only when manhood is dead - and it will perish when ravaged femininity no longer sustains it - only then will we know what it is to be free.
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A commitment to sexual equality with males is a commitment to becoming the rich instead of the poor, the rapist instead of the raped, the murderer instead of the murdered.
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The genius of any slave system is found in the dynamics which isolate slaves from each other, obscure the reality of a common condition, and make united rebellion against the oppressor inconceivable.
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The will to domination is a ravenous beast. There are never enough warm bodies to satiate its monstrous hunger. Once alive, this beast grows and grows, feeding on all the life around it, scouring the earth to find new sources of nourishment. This beast lives in each man who battens on female servitude.
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Does the sun ask itself, Am I good? Am I worthwhile? Is there enough of me? No, it burns and it shines. Does the sun ask itself, What does the moon think of me? How does Mars feel about me today? No it burns, it shines. Does the sun ask itself, Am I as big as other suns in other galaxies? No, it burns, it shines.
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Sexism is the foundation on which all tyranny is built. Every social form of hierarchy and abuse is modeled on male-over-female domination.
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And on that day, the day of truce, that day when not one woman is raped, we will begin the real practice of equality, because we can't begin it before that day. Before that day it means nothing, because it is nothing It is not real It is not true.
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Can women make use of men's vulnerability not to marry but instead to destroy male power?
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No phallic hero, no matter what he does to himself or to another to prove his courage, ever matches the solitary, existential courage of the woman who gives birth.
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The essence of oppression is that one is defined from the outside by those who define themselves as superior by criteria of their own choice.
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On the Left, on the Right, in the Middle Authors, statesmen, thieves so-called humanists and self-declared fascists the adventurous and the contemplative, in every realm of male expression and action, violence is experienced and articulated as love and freedom.
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Marriage as an institution developed from rape as a practice. Rape, originally defined as abduction, became marriage by capture. Marriage meant the taking was to extend in time, to be not only use of but possession of, or ownership.
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Women's fashion is a euphemism for fashion created by men for women.
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The traditional flowers of courtship are the traditional flowers of the grave, delivered to the victim before the kill. The cadaver is dressed up and made up and laid down and ritually violated and consecrated to an eternity of being used.
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Men know everything - all of them - all the time - no matter how stupid or inexperienced or arrogant or ignorant they are.
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We as women know that there are no disembodied processes that all history originates in human flesh that all oppression is inflicted by the body of one against the body of another that all social change is built on the bone and muscle, and out of the flesh and blood, of human creators.
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I love, cherish, and respect women in my mind, in my heart, and in my soul. This love of women is the soil in which my life is rooted. It is the soil of our common life together. My life grows out of this soil. In any other soil, I would die. In whatever ways I am strong, I am strong because of the power and passion of this nurturant love.
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Men are rewarded for learning the practice of violence in virtually any sphere of activity by money, admiration, recognition, respect, and the genuflection of others honoring their sacred and proven masculinity. In male culture, police are heroic and so are outlaws males who enforce standards are heroic and so are those who violate them.
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