# Quote — Andrea Dworkin, Intercourse

> Freedom is not an abstraction, nor is a little of it enough. A little more of it is not enough either. Having less, being less, impoverished in freedom and rights, women then inevitably have less self-respect: less self-respect than men have and less self-respect than any human being needs to live a brave and honest life. Intercourse as domination battens of that awful absence of self respect.

- Author: [Andrea Dworkin](https://www.leafyquotes.com/andrea-dworkin.md)
- Book: [Intercourse](https://www.leafyquotes.com/andrea-dworkin/intercourse.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Andrea_Dworkin#Intercourse_(1987)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/andrea-dworkin/intercourse/freedom-is-not

## More from this book

> In Amerika, there is the nearly—or so it appears—that sex (fucking) is good and that liking it is right: morally right; a sign of human health; nearly a standard for citizenship. Even those who believe in original sin and have a theology of hellfire and damnation express the Amerikan creed, an optimism that glows in the dark: sex is good, healthy, wholesome, pleasant fun; we like it, we enjoy it, we want it, we are cheerful abut it; it is as simple as we are, the citizens of this strange country with no memory and no mind.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/andrea-dworkin/intercourse/in-amerika-there.md)

> Life can be better for women—economic and political conditions improved—and at the same time the status of women can remain resistant, in deed impervious, to change: so far in history this is precisely the paradigm for social change as it relates to the conditions of women. Reforms are made, important ones' but the status of women relative to men does not change. Women are still less significant, have less privacy, less integrity, less self-determination. This means that women have less freedom.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/andrea-dworkin/intercourse/life-can-be-better.md)

> Can intercourse exist without the woman herself turning herself into a thing, which she must do because men cannot fuck equals and men must fuck: because one price of dominance is that one impotent in the face of equality?

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/andrea-dworkin/intercourse/can-intercourse-exist.md)