Daily Inspiration Quote by Andrea Dworkin

Dworkin isn’t politely asking for a seat at the table; she’s pointing out who built the table, who wrote the menu, and who gets to decide what counts as food. The line lands with the force of a structural accusation: “parameters” aren’t neutral boundaries, they’re the hidden rules of what’s sayable, thinkable, fundable, publishable. By starting with “Men have defined,” she frames patriarchy less as a set of bad attitudes than as an operating system. You can argue inside it, but you’re still running its code.

The real sting is her claim that even radical feminist arguments end up “with or against” premises “implicit in the male system.” That’s not fatalism; it’s a warning about argumentative gravity. When the dominant group sets the starting assumptions, dissent risks becoming reactive: you spend your energy refuting categories you didn’t choose, using terms that already smuggle in their conclusions. It’s why debates over “objectivity,” “family values,” or “free speech” can feel rigged before they start.

Her final clause sharpens into a theory of power as language: authority is the ability “to name.” Naming doesn’t just describe reality; it manufactures credibility. If men control institutions that certify truth - law, media, academia, medicine - their definitions read as common sense rather than interest. Written from a second-wave feminist moment that wrestled with pornography, violence, and the politics of representation, the quote is Dworkin’s signature move: turning “culture” into a crime scene, then circling the chalk outline around words themselves.