Andrea Dworkin Quote

The object, the woman, goes out into the world formed as men have formed her to be used as men wish to use her. She is then a provocation. The object provokes its use. It provokes its usebecause of its form, determined by the one who is provoked. The carpenter makes a chair, sits on it, then blames the chair because heis not standing. When the object complains about the use to which she is put, she is told, simply and firmly, not to provoke.

Andrea Dworkin

The object, the woman, goes out into the world formed as men have formed her to be used as men wish to use her. She is then a provocation. The object provokes its use. It provokes its usebecause of its form, determined by the one who is provoked. The carpenter makes a chair, sits on it, then blames the chair because heis not standing. When the object complains about the use to which she is put, she is told, simply and firmly, not to provoke.

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About Andrea Dworkin

Andrea Rita Dworkin (September 26, 1946 – April 9, 2005) was an American radical feminist writer and activist best known for her analysis of pornography. Her feminist writings, beginning in 1974, span 30 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.
The central objective of Dworkin's work is analyzing Western society, culture, and politics through the prism of men's sexual violence against women in a patriarchal context. She wrote on a wide range of topics including the lives of Joan of Arc, Margaret Papandreou, and Nicole Brown Simpson; she analyzed the literature of Charlotte Brontë, Jean Rhys, Leo Tolstoy, Marquis de Sade, Kōbō Abe, Tennessee Williams, James Baldwin, and Isaac Bashevis Singer; she brought her own radical feminist perspective to her examination of subjects historically written or described from men's point of view, including fairy tales, homosexuality, lesbianism, virginity, antisemitism, the State of Israel, the Holocaust, biological superiority, and racism. She interrogated premises underlying concepts such as freedom of the press and civil liberties. She theorized the sexual politics of intelligence, fear, courage, and integrity. She described a male supremacist political ideology manifesting in and constituted by rape, battery, prostitution, and pornography.