Best 3209 quotes in «feminism quotes» category

How could women ever have had genius when all possibility of accomplishing a work of genius - or just a work - was refused them?

How dare a person tell a woman, how to dress, how to talk, how to behave! Any being who does that, is no human.

How dare the society calls itself civilized, while hailing women first as sexual objects, then as everything else! How dare a man foster the primitive courage to hit on every woman he encounters, as if she has been waiting her whole life to be hit on – as if to be hit on, is the purpose of her existence! Rise, my brothers, and see women as persons, and not as objects of sexual gratification. And if you are single, and truly would like to be with a woman you like, then be a gentleman and ask her out with respect, instead of treating her as an object to possess.

How could van Gogh have been born woman? A woman would not have been sent on mission to Boringe, she would not have felt men's misery as her own crime, she would not have sought redemption; so she would never have painted van Gogh's sunflowers. And this without taking into account that the painter's kind of life - the solitude in Arles, going to cafés, whorehouses, everything that feed into van Gogh's art by feeding his sensibility - would have been prohibited to her. A woman could never have become Kafka: in her doubts and anxieties, she would never have recognised the anguish of Man driven from paradise.

How difficult it is for today's woman to cast aside this capacity, internalized in the course of centuries, of millenniums, with which she tried to assimilate herself to the man whom fate seemed to have singled out to be her lord and master. How difficult she will find it to convince herself that woman must reckon self-renunciation as a sin, even a renunciation for the sake of the beloved and for the sake of the power of love.

How do I negotiate my way across life with a system that I find so violent yet it seems so normal to many others?

How did I become who I am? I have a heart easily hurt. I believed that cruelty was most often caused by ignorance. I thought that if everybody knew, everything would be different. I was a silly child who believed in the revolution. [...] I can`t be bought or intimidated because I`m already cut down in the middle. I walk with women whispering in my ears. Every time I cry there`s a name attached to each tear. [...] I long to touch my sisters; I wish I could take away the pain.

How do we create a kind of feminism that is so big, inclusive and generous that there is enough room for everyone in it? Including brothers who used to act like jerks and uncles who called it your 'little career' and women who for some reason seem to hate other women? How do we create a healing kind of feminism that is built upon our shared humanity, and not our differences? One that helps us find our common ground ... How do w create a feminism that is somehow still capable of compassion even in the face of ignorance and hatred?

However benevolent men may be in their intentions, they cannot know what women want and what suits the necessities of women's lives as well as women know these things themselves.

How far we claim to have come - accepting all men as created equal. Gender being the requisite qualifier, as women are not reviewed in the same fashion - their fashion hopefully better suited to the bedroom than the boardroom. And, you know, homosexuals not really being 'men,' cannot be judged equivalent to their stiffer-wristed brethren. On religion, well, some Christians are willing to make room for a Jew or two in their inner circles. But Mecca-facing prayer must be met with flaming crosses. Close your eyes to the details, the big picture can still be viewed through rose-colored glass. But go any distance beyond the rhetoric, truth becomes a shadowed lens.

How dull would it be to consume my meat with only one variety of sauce? My body and spirit would whither, being fed on such limited fare. To sample the delights of a great many women is considered right and healthy for a man, yet the opposite is held true for those of our sex. Where we display undue interest in sexual matters, even within marriage, we are thought immoral. For myself, I can only conceive of such limitation with horror: a torture for which I have no taste.” Mademoiselle Noire - The Gentlemen's Club

How is it possible to live? Life is so hard?’ ‘You must be harder than life, Firdaus. Life is very hard. The only people who really live are those who are harder than life itself.’ ‘But you are not hard, Sharifa, so how do you manage to live?’ ‘I am hard, terribly hard, Firdaus.’ ‘No, you are gentle and soft.’ ‘My skin is soft, but my heart is cruel, and my bite deadly.’ ‘Like snake?’ ‘Yes, exactly like a snake. Life is a snake. They are the same, Firdaus. If the snake realises you are not a snake, it will bite you. And if life knows you have no sting, it will devour you.

(...) How many ladies have there been, and still are, who deserve place among the learned; and who are more capable of teaching the sciences than those who now fill most of the university chairs? The age we live in has produced as many, as any heretofore (...) And as our sex, when it applies to learning, may be said at least to keep pace with the Men, so are they more to be esteem'd for their learning than the latter: Since they are under a necessity of surmounting the softness they were educated in (...) to which cruel custom seem'd to condemn them; to overcome the external impediments in their way to study; and to conquer the disadvantageous notions, which the vulgar of both sexes entertain of learning in Women. (...) it is self-evident, that many of our sex have far outstript the Men. Why then are we not as fit to learn and teach the sciences, at least to our own sex, as they fancy themselves to be?

How pleased I was to see I strick the Beast to the heart.

How the little courtesies of life on the surface of society, deemed so important from man towards woman, fade into utter insignificance in view of the deeper tragedies in which she must play her part alone, where no human aid is possible.

How was she not the quintessential woman in our culture, compulsively pleasing others in order to achieve some degree of perfection and power that's forever just around the corner, out of reach? It was easier for her to disappear, to free herself finally from that body, to find a perfection in dying.

Hoy en día los varones adolescentes ven tanto porno en internet que se traumatizan cuando ven una vagina normal con todo lo que suele traer de serie.

Humankind is made up of two sexes, women and men. Is it possible for humankind to grow by the improvement of only one part while the other part is ignored? Is it possible that if half of a mass is tied to earth with chains that the other half can soar into skies?

Humans assign gender to God, so the first question to ask ourselves is who decided God was male? The second question is why?

I added, that whoever the woman was that had an estate, and would give it up to be the slave of a great man, that woman was a fool, and must be fit for nothing but a beggar; that it was my opinion a woman was as fit to govern and enjoy her own estate without a man as a man was without a woman; and that, if she had a mind to gratify herself as to sexes, she might entertain a man as a man does a mistress; that while she was thus single she was her own, and if she gave away that power she merited to be as miserable as it was possible that any creature could be.

I actually think women are generally very discreet about the whole thing (e.g. Gracie, who obviously bleeds rainbows). If guys bled out of their penises for a week of every month, you can bet we’d hear more about it.

All of us, whether vivisector or vegan, have been subject to mechanisms undercutting sympathy for animals. How long and to what extent we submit to these mechanisms is not a matter of rationality: to cut off our feelings and support animal exploitation is rational, given societal expectations and sanctions; but to assert our feelings and oppose animal exploitation is also rational, given the pain involved in losing our natural bonds with animals. So our task is not to pass judgment on others' rationality, but to speak honestly of the loneliness and isolation of anthropocentric society, and of the damage done to every person expected to hurt animals.

I aim at being useful, and sincerity will render me unaffected; for, wishing rather to persuade by the force of my arguments, than dazzle by the elegance of my language, I shall not waste my time in rounding periods, nor in fabricating the turgid bombast of artificial feelings, which, coming from the head, never reach the heart.—I shall be employed about things, not words!

I ain’t scared to lend a hand I ain’t scared to clench it either

I also noticed that humor was even more of a survival tactic here than in most women's groups. As one asked: What did Columbus call primitive? Answer: Equal women.

I always feel so sorry for women who don't like to walk; they miss so much - so many rare little glimpses of life; and we women learn so little of life on the whole.

I am a feminist because I dislike everything that feminism implies. I desire an end to the whole business, the demands for equality, the suggestion of sex warfare, the very name feminist. I want to be about the work in which my real interests like, the writing of novels and so forth. But while inequality exists, while injustice is done and opportunity denied to the great majority of women, I shall have to be a feminist. And I shan't be happy till I get . . . a society in which there is no distinction of persons either male or female, but a supreme regard for the importance of the human being. And when that dream is a reality, I will say farewell to feminism, as to any disbanded but victorious army, with honour for its heroes, gratitude for its sacrifice, and profound relief that the hour for its necessity has passed.

I am afraid, my dear niece, that a ‘mere woman’ is something you most certainly are not.

I am afflicted with the power of thought, which is a heavy curse. The less a person thinks and inquires regarding the why and the wherefore and the justice of things, when dragging along through life, the happier it is for him, and doubly, trebly so, for her.

I am a human being; I am a woman; I am a black woman; I am an African. Once I was free; then I was captured and became a slave; but inside me, I have never been a slave; even today, inside me, here, and here, I am still a free woman.

I am angry. We should all be angry. Anger has a long history of bringing about positive change. But I am also hopeful, because I believe deeply in the ability of human beings to remake themselves for the better." "We say to girls 'You can have ambition, but not too much. You should aim to be successful but not too successful, otherwise you will threaten the man. If you are the breadwinner in your relationship with a man, pretend you are not, especially in public, otherwise you will emasculate him.'" "Because I am female, I am expected to aspire to marriage. I am expected to make my life's choices always keeping in mind that marriage is the most important. Marriage can be a good thing, a source of joy, love and mutual support. But why do we teach girls to aspire to marriage, yet we don't teach boys to do the same?" "We are all social beings. We internalize ideas from our socialization.

I am all things, I am not your words. I am defined by me.

I am a woman with thoughts and questions and shit to say. I say if I'm beautiful. I say if I'm strong. You will not determine my story — I will.

I am a warrior in the time of women warriors; the longing for justice is the sword I carry.

I am a woman and a warrior. If you think I can't be both, you've been lied to.

I am a woman with thoughts and questions and shit to say. I say if I'm beautiful. I say if I'm strong. You will not determine my story — I will. I will speak and share and fuck and love, and I will never apologize to the frightened millions who resent that they never had it in them to do it. I stand here and I am amazing, for you. Not because of you. I am not who I sleep with. I am not my weight. I am not my mother. I am myself. (2014 Gloria Awards and Gala)

I am a woman with wings,' I once wrote and will revise these words again. 'I am a woman with wings dancing with other women with wings.' In a voiced community, we all flourish.

I am fascinated that no one I have read seems to have noticed that the literature on Picasso continually turns grown-up women into girls.

I am glad my case is not serious! But these nervous troubles are dreadfully depressing. John does not know how much I really suffer. He knows there is no reason to suffer, and that satisfies him.

I am just as human as the man.

I am everything what u see and I can be anything what I want to be.

I am not a feminist, because, in my opinion, this is a political ideology. I am a humanist, and I care about the problems of all mankind, and I wonder how these problems can be solved by scientific methods. In this case, I am a positivist, that is, I think that functional dynamics in a social system can be supported by a rational design, taken in a certain space-time continuum, but not by abstract metaphysical concepts, such as freedom, equality, and so on. If we consider humanism as a whole system, then feminism will be its subsystem. If the whole system - all of humanity is in prosperity, then all its subsystems will be a satisfactory condition for this. If our attention is concentrated solely on a specific subsystem, then we can now relatively regenerate it due to the degeneration of the entire system in the long term.

I am not arguing that everything is political, which would, by making politics ubiquitous, render it a meaningless category. I am also not claiming that anything is either inherently political or apolitical. I am interested here, rather, in how the ways in which politics is defined enable certain phenomena and disallow others.

I am no feminist. Even though the term "feminism" is founded upon the basic principle of gender equality, it possesses its own fundamental gender bias, which makes it inclined towards the wellbeing of women, over the wellbeing of the whole society. And if history has shown anything, it is that such fundamental biases in time corrupt even the most glorious ideas and give birth to prejudice, bigotry and differentiation.

I am not a bird or a symbol. I am a woman burning.

I am not a Damsel In Distress who needs a Prince Charming. I am more of Rani Laxmi Bai who rides a Sturdy Horse.

I am not a lady I live in an elevator in a big department store America. “Your floor, lady?” “I don't have a floor, I live in the elevator.” “You can't just live in an elevator.” They all say that except for the man from Time magazine who acted very cool. We stop and let people into dresses, better dresses, beauty, and on the top floor, home furnishings and then the credit office, suddenly stark and no nonsense this is it. At each floor I look out at the ladies quietly becoming ladies and I say “huh” reflectively. My hair is long and wild full of little twigs and cockleburrs. I visit the floors only for water. I make my own food from the berries and frightened rabbits— I pray forgive me brother as I eat— that grow wild in the elevator. Once every three months, solstice and equinox, a cop comes and clubs me a little. The man from Time says I articulate my generation something wobble squeegy squiggle pop pop Yesterday pausing at childrens I saw another lady take off all her clothes and go to live in #7. We are waiting to fill all thirteen.

I am not here for the men of this world--not as a scapegoat or a baby-maker, and certainly not solely for their sexual satisfaction. My purpose is far greater than shallow bullshit.

I am political in spite of myself. I don't want to do the things I know I have to do, don't want to expose myself to disapproval, to retribution, don't want to go to meetings and demonstrations, distribute leaflets, don't want to ask people for signatures, for money. I don't do these things as naturally as I breathe, the way I imagine real political people do, real communists, real socialists and feminists, real radicals, real troublemakers, real champions of the people. I do them because I know I've got to, because I am convinced it's the only way to make changes, to stop abuses. I do them almost as a last resort. I do them because I've been putting off doing them, avoiding them for months, because finally the necessity has gripped me and overcome my reluctance, my desire for the warmth of my room, for my books, for my people, for the reassurance of my homely habits.

i am the girl with the arsonist heart