Male dominance in society always means that out of public sight, in the private, ahistorical world of men with women, men are sexually dominating women.
Interpretation
The quote highlights how male dominance in society often leads to the subjugation of women in private settings.
Andrea Dworkin's quote underscores the relationship between societal structures of male dominance and the sexual domination of women in private spaces. It suggests that the power dynamics prevalent in public life are mirrored in intimate interactions between men and women, revealing deeper issues of gender inequality and control that persist away from the public eye.
In practice
This quote can be used in a discussion on gender roles at a women's rights conference.
Romantic love, in pornography as in life, is the mythic celebration of female negation. For a woman, love is defined as her willingness to submit to her own annihilation.... The proof of love is that she is willing to be destroyed by the one whom she loves, for his sake. For the woman, love is always self-sacrifice, the sacrifice of identity, will, and bodily integrity, in order to fulfill and redeem the masculinity of her lover.
I 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.
We are born into a world in which sexual possibilities are narrowly circumscribed. . . . We are programmed by the culture as surely as rats are programmed to make the arduous way through the scientist's maze, and that programming operates on every level of choice and action.
Institutionalised in sports, the military, acculturated sexuality, the history and mythology of heroism, violence is taught to boys until they becomes its advocates.
In her heart she is a mourner for those who have not survived. In her soul she is a warrior for those who are now as she was then. In her life she is both celebrant and proof of women's capacity and will to survive, to become, to act, to change self and society. And each year she is stronger and there are more of her.
Being stigmatied by sex is being marked by its meaning in a human life of loneliness and imperfection, where some pain is indelible.
As a kitten does what all other kittens do, so a child wants to do what other children do, with a wanting that is as powerful as it is mindless. Since we human beings have to learn what we do, we have to start out that way, but human mindfulness begins where that wish to be the same leaves off.
Yesterday my daughter said to me, 'My marriage is falling apart.' And now all she can do is watch it falling.
Men and women, they were beautiful and wild, all a little violent under their pleasant ways and only a little tamed.
I have always been very open and honest about this part of my life with my friends, my family, and my colleagues. In a perfect world, I don't think it's anyone else's business, but I do think there is value in standing up and being counted. Iβm not an activist, but I am a human being and I don't give that up by being a journalist.
My wife and I were worried, when we had our firstborn, about how he was going to think of himself in a mostly white neighborhood. Particularly Asian men, I feel, we suffer more than Asian women, because we're told we're not worth anything in general.
And that's the thing about people who mean everything they say. They think everyone else does too.
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