I’ve read Hamlet, I know men suffer.

Andrea Dworkin

Tag: feminism

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I listened; I wrote; I learned. I do not know why so many women trusted me enough to speak to me, but underneath anything I write one can hear the percussive sound of their heartbeats. If one has to pick one kind of pedagogy over all others, I pick listening. It breaks down prejudices and stereotypes; it widens self-imposed limits; it takes one into another's life, her hard times and, if there is any, her joy too.

Andrea Dworkin

Tag: listening

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Inferiority is not banal or incidental even when it happens to women. It is not a petty affliction like bad skin or
circles under the eyes. It is not a superficial flaw in an otherwise
perfect picture. It is not a minor irritation, nor is it a trivial
inconvenience, an occasional aggravation, or a regrettable but
(frankly) harmless lapse in manners. It is not a “point of view”
that some people with soft skins find “ offensive. ” It is the deep
and destructive devaluing of a person in life, a shredding of dignity and self-respect, an imposed exile from human worth
and human recognition, the forced alienation of a person from
even the possibility of wholeness or internal integrity. Inferiority
puts rightful self-love beyond reach, a dream fragmented by
insult into a perpetually recurring nightmare; inferiority creates
a person broken and humiliated inside. The fragments—
scattered pieces and sharp slivers of someone who can never
be made whole—are then taken to be the standard of what is
normal in her kind: women are like that. The insult that hurt
her—inferiority as an assault, ongoing since birth—is seen as a
consequence, not a cause, of her so-called nature, an inferior nature. In English, a graceful language, she is even called a
piece. It is likely to be her personal experience that she is insufficiently
loved. Her subjectivity itself is second-class, her experiences
and perceptions inferior in the world as she is inferior
in the world. Her experience is recast into a psychologically
pejorative judgment: she is never loved enough because she is
needy, neurotic, the insufficiency of love she feels being in and
of itself evidence of a deep-seated and natural dependency. Her
personal experiences or perceptions are never credited as having
a hard core of reality to them. She is, however, never loved
enough. In truth; in point of fact; objectively: she is never loved
enough. As Konrad Lorenz wrote: “ I doubt if it is possible to
feel real affection for anybody who is in every respect one’s inferior.
” 1 There are so many dirty names for her that one rarely
learns them all, even in one’s native language.

Andrea Dworkin

Tag: women feminism inferiority

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