Best 3209 quotes in «feminism quotes» category

I still feel like teenage girls are not taken seriously by the culture at large, especially not their darker or more complicated feelings—of aggression, desire, ambition. To me, these feelings and drives are so fundamental to girlhood and to womanhood, and I love exploring them. And trying to give voice to them as best I can. I think women are always trying to figure out their own adolescence. We never stop.

I strike terror among men, I can't be bothered by what they think.

I suspect that the distinction between a maternal and a paternal instinct is scarcely worth making; the parental instinct, the wish to protect, to further, is not a sex-linked characteristic…

It became a kind of passion. Discovering the key, unlocking the vagina's mouth, unlocking this voice, this wild song.

It always pisses me off when I’m calling in to some Morning Zoo radio show to promote God-only-knows what—probably this book, so get ready, I’m comin’—when the DJ actually tries to convince me that there are as many female comics as male ones. Cue hypermasculine Morning Zoo Hacky McGee voice: “So Kath, I don’t know what you chicks are always complaining about.” To which I respond: “Really? Why don’t you call your local comedy club and ask for the Saturday night lineup? I guarantee you the male to female ratio is going to be about nine to one. You dick-wad.

it appears that there is no other difference between Men and Us than what their tyrany has created, it will then appear how unjust they are in excluding us from that power and dignity we have a right to share with them; how ungenerous in denying us the equality of esteem, which is our due; and how little reason they have to triumph in the base possession of an authority, which unnatural violence, and lawless usurpation, put into their Hands. Then let them justify, if they can, the little meannesses, not to mention the grosser barbarities, which they daily practise towards that part of the creation

It also seems honorable that another woman would value motherhood over all my priorities. But I do not believe that I am selfish and she is not. There are women who chose motherhood for selfish reasons. There are mothers who act selfishly even if they chose motherhood in a burst of altruistic love. Selfishness and generosity are not relegated to particular life choices and if generosity is a worthy life goal--and I believe it is--perhaps our task is to choose the path that for us creates its best opportunity.

It appears that ordinary men take wives because possession is not possible without marriage, and that ordinary women accept husbands because marriage is not possible without possession; with totally differing aims the method is the same on both sides. But the understood incentive on the woman's part was wanting here. Besides, Bathsheba's position as absolute mistress of a farm and house was a novel one, and the novelty had not yet begun to wear off.

It comes down to this. Some one must wash the dishes. Now, would you expect man, man made in the image of God, to roll up his sleeves and wash the dishes? Why, it would be blasphemy. I know that I am but a rib and so I wash the dishes.

It continues to baffle me that people's main concern about my activities around peace and grassroots activism in a full-on police state at first centred on my clothes - not my ideas, not my message, not my intentions; all those came second to what I was wearing and whether or not 'a girl' could walk that far.

It can be fun to feel exceptional--to be the loophole woman, to have a whole power thing, to be an honorary man. But if you are the exception that proves the rule, and the rule is that women are inferior, you haven't made any progress.

It did, in Scandinavia. When I first became prime minister 15 years ago, it was a cultural shock to many Norwegians. Today, four- year-olds ask their mommies: "but can a man be prime minister?" -Fourth World Conference on Women

It doesn't matter how rich or poor a person is, what gender or social class, or how much fame or education she possesses. Verbal, mental, and physical abuse can happen to anyone. It doesn't matter what a woman’s ethnicity is because the only distinguishing color of abuse is black-and-blue.

It doesn't matter what women wear. No matter what, someone's going to have a problem with it.

It doesn't really matter how you look in [family holiday] pictures, it just matters that you're there.

I tell my sisters: / cultivate loneliness / like you might care for / an orchid, turning it / gently towards the light, / serving it water like wine / aerated, purified, filtered.

... it had become agreed that Jane would be excused household duties. It sounds like a tiny thing – and indeed it was – but a tiny trickle of water gradually hollows out a stone. Jane’s ducking out of the housework in order to write would lead inexorably onwards, upwards, towards women working, to women winning power in a world of men. This is the significance of trying to reconstruct the detail of Jane Austen’s daily life.

It had been communicated to me through the odd, secret whispers of women that a female’s nose must never shine. In war, in famine, in fire, it had to be matte, and no one got a lipstick without the requisite face powder. … I was taunted by the problem: how could someone write something like the ‘Symposium’ and make sure her nose did not shine at the same time? It didn’t matter to me that I was reading a translation. I’d read Plato’s brilliant, dense prose and not be able to tear myself away. Even as a reader my nose shined. It was clearly either/or. You had to concentrate on either one or the other. In a New York minute, the oil from Saudi Arabia could infiltrate your house and end up on your nose. It didn’t hurt, it didn’t make noise, it didn’t incapacitate in any way except for the fact that no girl worth her salt took enough time away from vigilance to read a book let alone write one.

It [feminism] needs to recognise that disabled people aren’t inherently defective, but rather that non-disabled people have failed at creating a physical world that serves all.

It had never fully occurred to Jean Louise that she was a girl: her life had been one of reckless, pummeling activity; fighting, football, climbing, keeping up with Jem, and besting anyone her own age in any contest requiring physical prowess.

It has always been believed that the woman has a power of perception beyond what is literally seen and heard. Whether it is called sixth sense or woman's intuition, it is a highly developed, extra sensitive ability to see what is behind and forward in time. The culture of the Goddess appears to have developed this natural ability and made it into a source of power and prestige for thousands of years.

It had gone so far that mothers in certain regions where the slave scouts were most rife, such as Eliana, disfigured their daughters by shaving their heads, cutting or burning their faces, pulling out their teeth. Anything to try to keep them safe. Those born with a cleft lip or birthmarks were seen as blessed. They were safe

I think as feminists we have a way of looking at problems that other people appear not to understand. To name names, the right and the left appear not to understand what it is that feminists are trying to do. Feminists are trying to destroy a sex hierarchy, a race hierarchy, an economic hierarchy, in which women are hurt, are disempowered, and in which society celebrates cruelty over us and refuses us the integrity of our own bodies and the dignity of our own lives. ... So feminists look at the society we live in and try to understand how we are going to fight male power. And in order to try to figure out how we're going to fight it, we have to figure out how it's organized, how it works. How does it survive? How does it work itself out? How does it maintain itself as a system of power? ... So feminists come along, and we say: Well, we are going to understand how it is that these people do what they do. We are going to approach the problem politically. That means that we are going to try to isolate and describe systems of exploitation as they work on us, from our point of view as the people who are being hurt by them. It means that even though we're on the bottom and they're on the top, we are examining them for points of vulnerability. And as we find those points of vulnerability—and you might locate them anatomically, as well as any other way—we are going to move whatever muscles we have, from whatever positions we are in, and we are going to get that bastard in his collective manifestation off of us. And that means we are politically organizing a resistance to male supremacy.

I think every woman in our culture is a feminist. They may refuse to articulate it, but if you were to take any woman back forty years and say, 'Is this a world you want to live in?' they would say, 'No.

I think being a woman is like being Irish... Everyone says you're important and nice, but you take second place all the time.

I think it's bad when a boy looks at a fork and thinks that the way he sees the girl is better than the girl actually is.

I think its good to just say what you're thinking out loud. Some guy comes up to you on the street and starts asking a bunch of personal questions, you can say 'Whoa, this is weird behavior, I don't know you. You seem like a predator.' If he gets mad and calls you a "bitch", it doesn't mean you're a bitch, it just means you were right." -Karen Kilgariff

I think it evidently appears, that there is no science, office, or dignity, which Women have not an equal right to share in with the Men: Since there can be no superiority, but that of brutal strength, shewn in the latter, to entitle them to engross all power and prerogative to themselves: nor any incapacity proved in the former, to disqualify them of their right, but what is owing to the unjust oppression of the Men, and might be easily removed.

I think it will be better if we can live our life as if Christ is going to return today and plan our live as if it is hundred years off. Keep living, serving and most of all be prepared.

I think now that this is the great division between people. There are people who find life hard and those who find it easy. There are those who have a natural, in-built, expectation of happiness, and there are those who feel that happiness is not to be expected: that it is not, in fact, one of the rights of man. Nor, God knows, one of the rights of women.

I think that's when I understood that you only ruined my life because my life needed ruining. Because the life you rejected demanded that I spend all my time telling my daughter to be less and my son to be more.

I think," said my neighbour, her chin very high in the air (and still spiffed, I am glad to say) "that women who've never married and never had children have missed out on the central experiences of life. They are emotionally crippled." Now what am I supposed to say to that? I ask you. That women who've never won the Nobel Peace Prize have also experienced a serious deprivation? It's like taking candy from a baby; the poor thing isn't allowed to get angry, only catty. I said, "That's rude, and silly," and helped her to mashed potatoes. ...."You can't catch a man." "That's why I'll never be abandoned," said I. Fortunately she did not hear me. Did I say taking candy from babies? Rather, eating babies, killing babies, abandoning babies. So sad, so easy.

I think the most important thing I do in my professional life today is delivering public, impermeable "no"s and sticking to them. I say no to people who prioritize being cool over being good. I say no to misogynists who want to weaponize my body against me. I say no to men who feel entitled to my attention and reverence, who treat everything the light touches as a resource for them to burn. I say no to religious zealots who insist that I am less important than an embryo. I say no to my own instinct to stay quiet.

I think there’s a ton of fear in the perception of romance in part because there’s something very realistic in great romance — namely, that women have the right to demand relationships that are based on equality and honesty and trust and, yes, a great sex life.

I think when it comes to females in the media you’ll see something that kind of upsets me which is that females are pinned up against each other more so than men. You know, for example like you never see online “vote for who has the better butt - this actor or this actor.” It’s always like this female singer and this female singer. And you get to vote. I mean, it’s daily I see these things and these polls like “let us know who’s sexier, who’s the hotter momma” and I just don’t see it like “who’s the hotter dad” you know? I think that one thing that I do believe as a feminist is that in order for us to have gender equality we have to stop making it a girl fight and we have to stop being so interested in seeing girls trying to tear each other down, it has to be more about cheering each other on as women. That’s just kind of how I feel about it.

I think the truth is that finding ourselves brings more excitement and well-being than anything romance has to offer, and somewhere we know that.

I think too often we forget that girls can like sport; we are not biologically programmed to detest it, we are - in the main - conditioned against it. But shouldn’t we try to change that?

I thought of the long-ago afternoon when we first met, a boy and a girl in a crowded plaza. Even then he was an ingrained macho, able to direct his destiny; in contrast, he believed that because I had been born a girl I was at a disadvantage, I should accept my limitations and entrust myself to others’ care. In his eyes, I would never be independent. Huberto had thought that way since he could think at all; it was not likely that the Revolution was going to change those attitudes. I realized that our problems were not related in any way to the fortunes of the guerillas; even if he achieved his dream, there would be no equality for me. For Naranjo, and others like him, “the people” seemed to be composed exclusively of men; we women should contribute to the struggle but were excluded from decision-making and power. His revolution would not change my fate in any fundamental way; under any circumstances, as long as I lived I would still have to make my own way. Perhaps it was at that moment I realized that mine is a war with no end in view; I might as well fight it cheerfully or I would spend my life waiting for some distant victory in order to be happy.

I thought: And I do what countless women before me have been forced to do. I spread my legs for the man who killed my husband and my brother.

It is absurd that every day women have to contend with the possibility that they will be attached verbally or physically. When women leave their homes, they consider the possibility, however remote, of being mutilated, terrorized, or killed for not acceding to the demands of aggressive men. As women, we can lose our dignity and any sense of safety or feelings of rights to public space that we might have - all on someone else’s whim. This is how we come to accept the harsh fact of our violability. We bit our tongues, sometimes until they bleed.

It is agreed that 'girls take more bringing up' than boys: what that really means is that girls must be more relentlessly supervised and repressed if the desired result is to ensue.

It is amazing what a woman can do if only she ignores what men tell her she can't.

It is a powerful lie to equate thinness with self-worth. Clearly, this lie is damn convincing because the weight-loss industry thrives. Women continue to try to bend themselves to societal will. Women continue to hunger.

It is an extravagant gesture,' she said, turning to the torpedo, 'which is just the sort of gesture I like.

It is commonplace observation that women are forever trying to straighten their hair if it is curly and curl it if it is straight, bind their breasts if they are large and pad them if they are small, darken their hair if it is light and lighten it if it is dark. Not all these measures are dictated by the fantom of fashion. They all reflect dissatisfaction with the body as it is, and an insistent desire that it be otherwise, not natural but controlled, fabricated. Many of the devices adopted by women are not cosmetic or ornamental, but disguise of the actual, arising from fear and distaste.

It is difficult to process the sacred masculine when your closest example has been a man smacking you around, verbally degrading you, lording over you, or otherwise proving a poor demonstration of the use of strength.

It is boomer women who, in my opinion. Have really made the greatest and most lasting difference. They have changed everything but they didn’t grow up expecting to be revolutionary. They are accidental feminists.

It is difficult for men to measure the enormous extent of social discrimination that seems insignificant form the outside and whose moral and intellectual repercussions are so deep in woman that they appear to spring from an original nature. The man most sympathetic to women never knows her concrete situation fully.

It is doubtful that real personal change can occur without the conscious and painful process of self-criticism that is required to reject power and ego.

It is necessary to realize that the most sacrosanct article of sexual politics in the period, the Victorian doctrine of chivalrous protection and its familiar protestations of respect, rests upon the tacit assumption, a cleverly expeditious bit of humbug, that all women were "ladies"—namely members of that fraction of the upper classes and bourgeoisie which treated women to expressions of elaborate concern, while permitting them no legal or personal freedom. The psycho-political tacit here is a pretense that the indolence and luxury of the upper-class woman’s role in what Veblen called “vicarious consumption” was the happy lot of all women. The efficacy of this maneuver depends on dividing women by class and persuading the privileged that they live in an indulgence they scarcely deserve... To succeed, both the sexual revolution and the Woman's Movement which led it would have to unmask chivalry and expose its courtesies as subtle manipulation.