Standards of beauty describe in precise terms the relationship that an individual will have to her own body. They prescribe her mobility, spontaneity, posture, gait, the uses to which she can use her body. They define precisely the dimension of her physical freedom and psychological development, intellectual possibility, and creative potential is an umbilical one.
Andrea DworkinMen are distinguished from women by their commitment to do violence rather than to be victimized by it.
Andrea DworkinThere is nothing as dangerous as an unembodied principle: no matter what blood flows, the principle comes first. The First Amendment absolutists operate precisely on unembodied principle.
Andrea DworkinI have been asked, politely and not so politely, why I am myself. This is an accounting any woman will be called on to give if she asserts her will.
Andrea DworkinSo you go away from where you were afraid. Some stay; some go; it's a big difference, leaving the humiliations of childhood, the morbid fear. We didn't have much to say to each other, the ones that left and the ones that stayed. Children get shamed by fear but you can't tell the adults that; they don't care. They make children into dead things like they are. If there's something left alive in you, you run. You run from the poor little child on her knees; fear burned the skin off all right; she's still on her knees, dead and raw and tender.
Andrea Dworkin