Best 3209 quotes in «feminism quotes» category

Amma and Malati called her a beggar, a whore, and it was clear from the disbelief on her face that she had never been spoken to in such manner. [....] On that day I became convinced that it is the words of women that deeply wound other women.

A modo de ejemplo, Katz explica la deriva de una frase como «John agredió a Mary», que se convierte en «Mary ha sido agredida por John» y luego en «Mary ha sido agredida» para acabar en «Mary es una mujer maltratada». John ha desaparecido por completo del relato. Katz sostiene que, a partir de ese momento, «nos centramos exclusivamente en Mary –¿por qué vivía con John, por qué no lo abandonó, etcétera, etcétera?–, cuando a nadie se le escapa que la gran pregunta es POR QUÉ pegó JOHN a Mary». Eso no significa, claro está, que debamos olvidarnos de las víctimas, pero si no nos centramos en comprender por qué hay tantos hombres que pegan, violan y matan a las mujeres, nunca llegaremos a desentrañar las causas de la violencia machista.

Among the beliefs I held about the world was that being beautiful should not matter to a woman, because it was one of those things that would go away--your beauty would go away, and there wouldn't be anything you could do to bring it back.

Amnesty International Survey found that 25 percent of people believe a woman is to blame for being raped if she dresses "provocatively.

A movement that recognizes our biological similarity but denies the diversity of our priorities cannot be a women's health movement, it can only be some women's health movement.

Anal sex was my least favorite bedroom activity. Even through half a bottle of lube, the whole charade felt like pooping backwards. It was a negotiation token- something I begrudgingly did in exchange for backrubs and switching the television from football to Sex in the City. Anal sex was something I tolerated in order to be a cool girlfriend, because it was and still is common knowledge that that men love shoving their dicks in buttholes. Male buttholes, however, had their own rules and regulations. Everyone knew that men who allowed rectal access were gay. I didn’t question it. I didn’t analyze it. I only knew to treat the male asshole as if it had a grenade buried inside of it that could ignite a deadly explosion of anger, trauma, and sexual confusion.

And, and to all the little girls who are watching this, never doubt that you are valuable and powerful and deserving of every chance and opportunity in the world to pursue and achieve your own dreams.

Ancient peoples who lived close to the earth and in harmony with nature recognized the powerful energy that emanated from the moon and governed life on earth. The ever-changing phases of light and darkness created a balance in nature, and people lived in accordance with the moon's cycles and seasons. They observed the correlation between lunar cycles and the monthly menstrual cycles of women, and therefore gave the moon a female identity.

And her work! Oh, the thought of being deprived of that! With only his love in return, his love and his amiable domestic tyranny!

And here, of course, we come to the one occupation of a female protagonist in literature, the one thing she can do, and by God she does it and does it and does it, over and over and over again. She is the protagonist of a Love Story.

And if you looking for a surefire way to turn a comfortable party into a very alcohol-fueled romp through gender politics, bring up feminism.

And I breathe large at home. I drop my cloak, Unclasp my girdle, loose the band that ties My hair...now could I but unloose my soul! We are sepulchred alive in this close world, And want more room.

And I knew that in spite of all the roses and kisses and restaurant dinners a man showered on a woman before he married her, what he secretly wanted was for her to flatten out underneath his feet like Mrs. Willard's kitchen mat.

And I reminded myself that a woman should be able to dress as she liked without a man hurting her...

...and in Wellington women in the bakery trade were able "to perform certain skilled operations for which they are particularly suited, at rate equivalent to two thirds the journeyman's rate".

And I tried to remember any case in the course of my reading where two women are represented as friends. (...) almost without exception they are shown in their relation to men. (...) [women in fiction were] not only seen by the other sex, but seen only in relation to the other sex. And how small a part of a woman's life is that

And I wonder if this is the magic taking over. Is this how it starts—the slip of the tongue? A loss of respect? Is this how I become a monster the men whisper of? I turn and run up the stairs before I do something I regret.

And its with my head between my knees that I've loved all the men in my life, that's how I love my psychoanalyst, who doesn't see my body fidgeting on the couch when I'm queasy from repeating my mother who worms and my father who comes, when I want to sit up and show him that I'm not just a voice and that a single thrust of my claws can say as much as ten years of chattering about what's hidden behind the words. that the marks they leave are no better than the rage of a child crying for its mother's breast, and besides, who knows whether he's sleeping with his head between his hands and dreaming of me naked in a bathroom, who knows whether he's not masturbating silently to add a bit of life to my narratives, it's something I'll never know, something I don't have the right to hear, and if I did know what would happen, what would occur if I surprised him with his hand wedged down his pants and took his cock in my mouth, how much time to live would there be left for us if I moved my mouth from bottom to top and right to left, how much time before he came, before the end of the world and lightning striking, well, I don't know that, either, and maybe it would be better if it did happen, after all, maybe I'm dying from nothing happening between us and the fact that we'll have to replay the scene of my parents in the bathroom, finally put actions where there were only my tears, maybe it would be better to face each other and talk about love, confront each other in bathwater and stroke what falls under our hands, it would be better if we could be client and whore for the space of a moment, for the length of a session be the one who pays and the woman who gives herself, the roles would have to change within the time it takes for him to close his books and become a man in my arms, but it will never happen, one last time, it can't happen since those things never occur when you're me, when you're calling out life from death's side

And it was then, watching him eat before me, that I realised there was inconsistency in him. He said there was no difference between Chosen and Quelled; he said men were not more sacred than women, nor women less than men; he said we were side by side, matched in every way; he said all these things — but his life spoke differently. He still ate before me, first, as my lord. And in that simple act, he undid all his words.

And it was only then that I realized what I had let myself in for, and only then I realized how bloody thick I had been not to have predicted it. It would seem that the combination of elements--woman, desert, camels, aloneness--hit some soft sport in this era's passionless, heartless, aching psyche. It fired the imaginations of people who seem themselves as alienated, powerless, unable to do anything about a world gone mad. And wouldn't it be my luck to pick just this combination. The reaction was totally unexpected and it was very, very weird. I was now public property. I was now a kind of symbol. I was now an object of ridicule for small-minded sexists, and I was a crazy, irresponsible adventurer (though not as crazy as I would have been had I failed). But worse than all that, I was now a mythical being who had done something courageous and outside the possibilities that ordinary people could hope for. And that was the antithesis of what I wanted to share. That anyone could do anything. If I could bumble my way across a desert, then anyone could do anything. And that was true especially for women, who have used cowardice for so long to protect themselves that it has become a habit.

And now we who are writing women and strange monsters Still search our hearts to find the difficult answers, Still hope that we may learn to lay our hands More gently and more subtly on the burning sands.

And, most important, if you like shaving your entire region, and somebody tells you that it's wrong because it makes you look like a baby, that person is a lunatic. You are an adult woman who happens to have no pubic hair. You are not a Lolita. You are an adult woman.

And perhaps some other later girl, leafing through her father's library, would come across a footnote in an academic journal and read the name 'Faith Sunderly.' Faith? she would think. That is a female name. A woman did this. If that is so...then so can I. And the little fire of hope, self-belief and determination would pass to another heart.

And sometimes drunk women aren't raped; they just make stupid choices--and to say we deserve special treatment when we're drunk because we're women, to say we need to be looked after, I find offensive.

And still you'll hesitate to tell him, won't you? Why? Because you're a woman? Is your destiny such a small thing then? To keep your legs open and your mouth shut?

And so, what of it all? What of me and my passions and personas, my great loves and failures of love, my writing, my politics? What of the clanging opinions, the endless queries as to the whys and wherefores of how I chose to conduct myself? In the end, there is but one answer to every question, whether it is spit at me or made as gentlest inquiry: I was I.

And that's acceptable to you?" Faith took a second. "I always weigh it," she said. "Like with Ecuador. I'm ashamed of what happened. But those young women are free and presumably out of danger. I have to weigh that too, don't I? That's what it's about, this life. The weighing.

And that's the point! Not even girls want to be girls so long as our feminine archetype lacks force strength power. Not wanting to be girls, they don't want to be tender, submissive, peace-loving as good women are. Women's strong qualities have become despised because of their week ones.

And the mainstreaming of the sex industry reflects that inequality. It is still women who are dieting or undergoing surgery on their bodies; still women stripping in the clubs while the men chant and cheer; still women, not men, who believe that their ability to reach for fame and success will be defined by how closely they conform to one narrow image of sexuality. If this is the new sexual liberation, it looks too uncannily like the old sexism to convince many of us that this is the freedom we have sought.

And that's the point; not even girls want to be girls so long as our feminine archetype lacks force, strength and power. Not wanting to be girls, they don't want to be tender, submissive, peace-loving as good women are. Women's strong qualities have become despised because of their week ones.

And the moon said to me - my darling daughter, you do not have to be whole in order to shine.

And that makes us (black women) feel like we have spokespeople, because everybody we encounter feels they have a piece of you and can tell you how to live your life

And there are so much easier ways to destroy a woman. You don't have to rape her or kill her; you don't even have to beat her. You can just marry her. You don't even have to do that. You can just let her work in your office for thirty-five dollars a week.

And then we do a much greater disservice to girls, because we raise them to cater to the fragile egos of males.

And those women were sneaky. They understood that including fantastical elements in their tales- golden eggs, signing harps, talking frogs- worked to mask a deeper purpose....it made the stories look on the surface like 'a mere bubble of nonsense' within which it was possible to 'utter harsh truths, to say what you dare' about the state of women's lives. Because they were just stories, right? Harmless little fantasies?

And, they tell us, we at home Live free from danger, they go out to battle: fools! I’d rather stand three times in the front line than bear One child.

And you should realize, love, that even the simple act of a bath is potentially world-altering. But then, you never see the beast until he is upon you.

And yet, because I am without a doubt mortal, I have the troubling desire to do good, to please, to communicate my warmth, to still be very beautiful sometimes to inspire a taste for beauty. I know that these times are not fertile in grace...I am afraid tomorrow the grace of woman...may be recognized as a public utility & be socialized to the point of becoming a banal article, a bazaar object like in '93 & that one will find types of tender or amusing women with millions of copies like the creations of the big...fashion stores where it is always the same thing. I want to affirm the superiority of the god over that of the organizer of concerts for the poor.

And the question is always "When are you going to have kids?" Rather than "Do you want to have kids?

And though every feminist in history would throw her hands up in disgust, my next thought was, who would save me now?

And yet, despite this portrait of a self assured woman, Cindy seemed to have a near obsession with being where everyone was and doing what everyone was doing.

And you telling me not all guys are like that doesn’t really help me feel better. Because some guys are like that. A lot of them, actually.

Anger is always reserved for someone else. And yet, I've been in a room who escaped a war, who lost her father in ethnic cleansing, whose mother burned her hair, whose cousin raped her. 'What right do I have to be angry, when I am alive?' she said. Anger is the privilege of the truly broken, and yet, I've never met a woman who was broken enough that she allowed herself to be angry. An angry woman must answer for herself. The reasons for her anger must be picked over, examined, and debated.

Angry women care. Angry women speak and yell and sob their truths.

An intelligent woman’s gratitude is a thing very much worth having…

An older man who seems to be the leader of the Jesus Tshirt group says that the Bible forbids abortion in its commandment “Thou shall not kill.” But being in the Bible Belt, people really know their Bible, and an older woman cites Exodus 21:22–23, a passage that says a man who causes a pregnant woman to miscarry must pay a fine but is not charged with murder, not unless the woman herself dies. Thus the Bible is making clear, that a dependent life is not the same as an independent life.

A notable politician once said that it takes a village to raise a child. She forgot that it takes a family to raise a village. And the destruction of the family, largely due to policies and movements that she supports, has razed the village to the ground.

Another important way in which the erotic connection functions is the open and fearless underlining of my capacity for joy, in the way my body stretches to music and opens into response, harkening to its deepest rhythms so every level upon which I sense also opens to the erotically satisfying experience whether it is dancing, building a bookcase, writing a poem, or examining an idea. That self-connection shared is a measure of the joy which I know myself to be capable of feeling, a reminder of my capacity for feeling. And that deep and irreplaceable knowledge of my capacity for joy comes to demand from all of my life that it be lived within the knowledge that such satisfaction is possible, and does not have to be called marriage, nor god, nor an afterlife. This is one reason why the erotic is so feared, and so often relegated to the bedroom alone, when it is recognized at all. For once we begin to feel deeply all the aspects of our lives, we begin to demand from ourselves and from our life-pursuits that they feel in accordance with that joy which we know ourselves to be capable of. Our erotic knowledge empowers us, becomes a lens through which we scrutinize all aspects of our existence, forcing us to evaluate those aspects honestly in terms of their relative meaning within our lives. And this is a grave responsibility, projected from within each of us, not to settle for the convenient, the shoddy, the conventionally expected, nor the merely safe.

Another example was relentlessly expressed during Hillary Clinton’s campaign for the presidency, and especially since her defeat: the assertion that she was the victim of misogynistic comments and that she lost because she was a woman. None of it is true. But it keeps feminists thinking of women as victims — and people who think of themselves as victims are rendered weak....Modern feminists are afraid of life. They are afraid of differences of opinion, and especially afraid of men.....Feminists are outraged and unduly stressed by much of life itself.

Any feminist who has ever taken the high road will tell you the high road gets backed up and sometimes we need to take a detour straight through the belly of uncensored rage.