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(...)LEWIS: There has been so much violence against women in particular because our society is so male-oriented, and male-dominated. You know male chauvinism was at its worst during the early days of the civil rights movement. But during the latter part of the movement, we started trying to practice what we were preaching. If you preached equality, you have to live by your creed. Without women, the early movement would have been like a bird without wings, really. And women didn't get a lot of credit.
But now you have more women in Congress who are standing up and saying discrimination is wrong. They are educating men and having an impact. Violence is vicious; it destroys the self worth of a person. You are right that the media and society have done things that are degrading women. Men have to be willing to stand up and say, this woman is my mother, my wife, my sister, my daughter, my aunt. She's another human being.

DWORKIN: But the situation of women seems to be almost the opposite of what you're saying. When you look at violence against women, you find that most of it is in the circle of those close relationships, in an environment that we call love.

LEWIS: Yes. I have seen it firsthand. When I was growing up, I had an uncle who was the meanest man. He was good to the community, the nicest human being you ever wanted to meet, but mean and vicious to his wife. He engaged in incredible physical violence. (...)

[ 10 April 2008: Message edited by: martin dufresne ]

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Men have to be willing to stand up and say, this woman is my mother, my wife, my sister, my daughter, my aunt. She's another human being.

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(...)DWORKIN: Yes. There's a level of desensitization, to pain, to other people's suffering, and the acceptance of dehumanization. When people are put in an inferior status in society they need to be dehumanized, otherwise people can't feel superior to them. I mean that's part of that process of hating people and making them subjugated. It seems that a sense of superiority and a feeling that the woman is an object is part of what men need to be with women sexually. So the fight for humanizing -women's assertions of humanity; in the society- is always taken as some kind of personal intimate sexual feuding with men. And the concept of equality between men and women -and that equality can be real and not just social policy, but also in personal and intimate relationships- doesn't even seem to register in the minds of most people. It's very frustrating.

You have a political movement that is so worried about making men more angry. Women are already being punished so much in their personal lives, or when they\walk down the street, or by the unofficial curfew of not being able to go out after dark. The thought of making men angrier is something that keeps women from asserting our rights. I used to think that women who have been raped should get little buttons saying, "I have done my national service. Leave me alone."(...)

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