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.
Andrea DworkinRead
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Society shapes our choices and actions regarding sexuality, much like how animals are conditioned in experiments.
Andrea Dworkin's quote highlights the significant influence of culture and societal norms on our sexual identities and choices. She compares this societal programming to a scientific experiment, suggesting that, like rats navigating a maze, individuals are guided and constrained by external cultural factors, which limit the scope of sexual possibilities available to them.
Themes
SexualityCultureSocietyChoiceProgramming
In practice
Example use cases
In a lecture on gender studies, this quote can illustrate how societal contexts shape individual experiences.
More from Andrea Dworkin
All quotes →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.
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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.
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Institutionalised in sports, the military, acculturated sexuality, the history and mythology of heroism, violence is taught to boys until they becomes its advocates.
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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.
Andrea DworkinRead
Being stigmatied by sex is being marked by its meaning in a human life of loneliness and imperfection, where some pain is indelible.
Andrea DworkinRead
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