“With a disgust common to all feminists who have tried to be participants in the so-called humanism of men, only to discover through bitter experience that the culture of males does not allow honest female participation, Virginia Woolf wrote: “I detest the masculine point of view, I am bored by his heroism, virtue and honour. I think best that these men can do is not to talk about themselves anymore”. Men have claimed the human point of view, they author it, they own it. Men are humanists, humans, humanism. Men are rapists, batterers, plunderers, killers, these same men are religious prophets, poets, heroes, figures of romance, adventure, accomplishment, figures ennobled by tragedy and defeat. Men have claimed the earth, called it Her. Men ruin Her. Men have airplanes, guns, bombs, poisonous gases, weapons so perverse and deadly that they defy any authentically human imagination. Men battle each other and Her; women battle to be let in to the category “human” in imagination and reality. Men battle to keep the category “human” narrow, circumscribed by their own values and activities; women battle to change the meaning that men have given the word, to transform its meaning by suffusing it with female experience.”
— Andrea Dworkin, Pornography, Men Possessing Women




5 comments
August 28, 2013 at 8:13 am
john zande
Powerful, and powerfully true.
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August 28, 2013 at 2:16 pm
bleatmop
Wat???? It’s wrong to be a humanist now?
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August 28, 2013 at 5:39 pm
The Arbourist
@Bleatmop
Of course not Bleat, as you have a fine record of treating women as human beings, so the title works a-okay. :)
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August 28, 2013 at 10:03 pm
bleatmop
I really don’t get the point of this quote then.
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August 31, 2013 at 1:56 pm
The Arbourist
@Bleatmop
One of the sayings often flung at feminists is the idea that if you were *really* interested in equality you should be a humanist and *not* a feminist.
The trope erases the historical record, power imbalance and the patriarchal superstructure that exists in society today.
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