Daily Inspiration Quote by Andrea Dworkin

Dworkin’s line is a one-sentence demolition of the fantasy that markets are neutral. “Money speaks” is the old cliché: cash persuades, opens doors, smooths conflict. She accepts the premise only to knife it with the qualifier that matters: it speaks “with a male voice.” Not “for men,” not “to men,” but as masculinity - as a default authority that gets mistaken for objective reality.

The intent is accusatory and structural. Dworkin isn’t arguing that individual women can’t earn or wield money; she’s arguing that the social meaning of money - what gets funded, what gets rewarded, what counts as “serious” work - has been historically coded by male power. The subtext is that capitalism doesn’t just distribute resources; it distributes credibility. When money “talks,” it sets the terms of debate: which harms are legible, which desires are respectable, which bodies are purchasable without scandal.

Context sharpens the bite. Writing out of second-wave feminism’s collision with porn, prostitution, and workplace inequality, Dworkin saw “choice” language routinely laundering coercion. If your economic system treats women as a class with less bargaining power, then even “consent” can sound like a negotiation conducted under someone else’s microphone. The metaphor of voice matters because voice implies public space: who is heard, who is interrupted, who is forced to translate their experience into a dialect power recognizes.

It works because it’s compact enough to be mistaken for a slogan, then unsettling enough to behave like a diagnosis. The line doesn’t beg for agreement; it dares you to deny what you already know about who gets to sound authoritative when the stakes are cash.