ABSTRACT
Gender scripts are encoded in every facet of culture—from socialization within families to education, to religious practices, to the social institution of marriage, to laws, politics, publishing, sexual interactions, academic disciplines, popular culture, and fine art. In contrast to the commonplace notion that fairy tales are fantasies that open up imaginative possibilities for children, Andrea Dworkin argues that they function to channel behaviors in predictable ways. Dworkin implicitly ties together the different mother figures by illuminating the commonalities between them. In each case, she argues, the only good mother is the one who dies. Dworkin's critique of The Image by Jean de Berg explains the sexual victimization of women in terms of dominant and submissive gender roles. Male-female relations are structured by a master-slave dynamic in which the master is always a male role and the slave is always a female role.
