Best 3209 quotes in «feminism quotes» category

They say, "Why do you call God 'She'?" Eve says, "God is neither woman nor man but both these things. But now She has come to show us a new side to Her face, one we have ignored for too long." They say, "But what about Jesus?" Eve says, "Jesus is the son. But the son comes from the mother. Consider this: which is greater, God or the world?" They say, for they have learned this already from the nuns, "God is greater, because God created the world." Eve says, "So the one who creates is greater than the thing created?" They say, "It must be so." Then Eve says, "So which must be greater, the Mother or the Son?

They say they give their women more freedom, but there's still the impression that the freedom was theirs to 'give' in the first place.

They say women have no conscience about laws, don't they?" Mrs MacAvelly suggested. "Why should we?" answered her friend. "We don't make 'em– nor God– nor nature. Why on earth should we respect a set of silly rules made by some men one day and changed by some more the next?

They think the recipe for a 'home-maker' is- a woman who isn't smart enough, lacks skills and above all isn't ambitious enough! Well she is every bit as smart as the woman who puts on a suit to go to work in a man's world to prove- times have changed! She is every bit as intelligent!

They’ve been lying from the start. From the first time we read the words ‘once upon a time,’ we’re fed the idea that these girls—these gorgeous, demure, singing-with-the-wildlife girls—get a happy ending. And I get it. Poor thing had to do some chores around the house, fine. But the idea that she needs a magic old lady to come down and skim off the dirt so the prince will see her beauty? That’s ridiculous. Maybe she should have been working on her lockpicking skills instead of serenading squirrels. She could have busted out, hitched a ride to the castle, and impressed the prince with her safe-cracking prowess. Sorry, magic-fairy lady. She didn’t need your help.

They wanted their girls to be safe. To do what they had to do to conform, to defer, to survive, to grow up. They wanted their girls never to grow up. Never to stop burning. They wanted their girls to say fuck it, to see through the lies, to know their own strength. They wanted their girls to believe the things could be different this time, and they wanted it to be true. They wondered, sometimes, if they'd made a mistake. If it was dangerous, taming the wild, stealing away the words a girl might use to name her secret self. They wondered at the consequences of teaching a girl she was weak instead of warning her she was strong. They wondered, if knowing was power, what happened to power that refused to know itself; they wondered what happened that couldn't be satisfied, to pain that couldn't be felt, a rage that couldn't be spoken.

They were from different generations, culture, nations. But even these things did not divide them so much as their separate conceptions of what it meant to be a woman.

They wondered at the consequences of teaching a girl she was weak instead of warning her she was strong.

They would be shocked if they could see the other women in London: automechanics with grease in their hair, fisherwomen in from te coast with tatooed arms.

They would neither join a different denomination nor leave the church altogether. Irene Q. Brown's chapter is a study of the kind of woman who has absented herself from church attendance but contributes her service to church projects in a spirit of devotional activity. Denominational loyalty has often been achieved through a kind of ironic accommodation on the part of women, a conscious willingness to shut their eyes and ears to certain aspects of church life that men dominate, and to develop their own forms of institutional expression, confident, rightly or wrongly, that they represent the true church in fact if not instrumentally.

They were sorting, or classifying. It's easy-anyone dressed funny is the enemy, especially if they reject your supremacy or do not acknowledge school as entertainment. If the enemy tries to look like you and act like you, only in more affordable clothes, that person is still the enemy, only of a more contemptible, less terrifying variety-

They would neither join a different denomination nor leave the church altogether. Irene Q. Brown's chapter is a study of the kind of woman who has absented herself from church attendance but contributes her service to church projects in a spirit of devotional activity. Denominational loyalty has often been achieved through a kind of ironic accommodation on the part of women, a conscious willingness t

Thinking of others isn't a problem as long as you don't fall into the trap of giving and never asking for anything in return from the people you're networking with.

This [ban bossy] campaign is indicative of one of the main problems with feminism today -- the idea that women are victims in need of more and more special protection.

Thirty years on, femininity is still compulsory for women—and has become an option for men—while genuine femaleness remains grotesque to the point of obscenity. Meanwhile, the price of the small advances we have made towards sexual equality has been the denial of femaleness as any kind of a distinguishing character.

This book is about how anger works for men in ways that it does not for women, how men like both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders can wage yelling campaigns and be credited with understanding--and compellingly channeling--the rage felt by their supporters while their female opponents can be jeered and mocked as shrill for speaking too loudly of forcefully into a microphone.

This defines the task of feminism not only because male dominance is perhaps the most pervasive and tenacious system of power in history, but because it is metaphysically near perfect. Its point of view is the standard for point-of-viewlessness, its particularity the meaning of universality. Its force is exercised as consent, its authority as participation, its supremacy as the paradigm of order, its control as the definition of legitimacy. In the face of this, feminism claims the voice of women's silence, the sexuality of women's eroticized desexualization, the fullness of "lack", the centrality of women's marginality and exclusion, the public nature of privacy, the presence of women's absence. This approach is more complex than transgression, more transformative than transvaluation, deeper than mirror-imaged resistance, more affirmative than the negation of negativity. It is neither materialist nor idealist; it is feminist. Neither the transcendence of liberalism nor the determination of materialism works for women. Idealism is too unreal; women's inequality is enforced, so it cannot simply be thought out of existence, certainly not by women. Materialism is too real; women's inequality has never not existed, so women's equality never has. That is, the equality of women to men will not be scientifically provable until it is no longer necessary to do so... If feminism is revolutionary, this is why.

This equation of empowerment and liberation with sexual objectification is now seen everywhere, and is having a real effect on the ambitions of young women. [...] When we talked about empowerment in the past, it was not a young woman in a thong gyrating around a pole that would spring to mind, but the attempts by women to gain real political and economic equality.

This fear of maleness that they inspire estranges men from every female in their lives to greater or lesser degrees, and men feel the loss. Ultimately, one of the emotional costs of allegiance to patriarchy is to be seen as unworthy of trust.

This FEMINIST Goes Hard.

This is a battle that we will win. Because women are wittier, brighter, stronger and braver than a misogynistic and patriarchal world has given us credit for.

This idea that women will “change the culture” of any given industry is an easy lie to buy into. Even if women go in with good intentions, good intentions are nothing against the system. The system is older than you. It has absorbed more venom than you can ever hope to emit. You will not even slow it down. In order to gain entry, you will have to exhibit the characteristics of the patriarchs who built it. In order to advance, you will have to mimic their behavior, take on their values. Their values are power, the love of power, and the display of power. By then, you are part of their culture.

This inequality, this pattern of casual intrusion whereby women could be leered at, touched, harassed and abused without a second thought, was sexism: implicit, explicit, commonorgarden and deeprooted sexism, pretty much everywhere you'd care to look. And if sexism means treating people differently or discriminating against them purely because of their sex, then women were experiencing it on a near-daily basis.

This is a woman who didn’t want her viewpoints challenged, nor to see the views of the half of the world that comprises men. Her assumption is that all male authors are sexist and that their books distort the views of women....that’s bigoted and despicable: the form of feminism that sees men as the enemy from the outset, and seeks to reinforce that prejudice by reading only books that keep her in her safe space.....The future, in both life and books, is men and women together, with a mutual understanding that can come only from learning about each other’s thoughts. [About Caitlin Moran's sexist statement that girls shouldn't read any books written by men.]

This is central to the development of feminist abolitionist theories and practices: we have to learn how to think and act and struggle against that which is ideologically constituted as "normal".

This is not a men vs women issue. It’s about people vs prejudice.

This is not for your entertainment. This is for your evolution.

This is the picture of a woman cast in the role of a learner, a pupil, even a rabbinic student. Quite obviously this is a prohibited role for women in those days and in that culture. Yet Jesus affirms Mary in that role. Martha, however, rebukes her. Martha demands that Jesus order Mary to abandon the pupil role for the more acceptable domestic role of assisting with the dinner preparations. Jesus supports Mary and defends her consciousness-raising act by stating that she has elected a higher choice.

This is just another reason for these “women” (and I use the term loosely) to be gross and obscene and call it a “political statement.” It’s not helpful. If anything, it’s demeaning and insulting to women who think with more than our genitals and who are concerned with issues bigger than our ladyparts. But by all means, keep acting the fool. All you’re doing is exposing yourselves for what you really are. The rest of us want no part of your nonsense.

This is what consent culture means. It means expecting more — demanding more. It means treating one another as complex human beings with agency and desire, not just once, but continually. It means adjusting our ideas of dating and sexuality beyond the process of prying a grudging “yes” out of another human being. Ideally you want them to say it again, and again, and mean it every time. Not just because it’s hotter that way, although it absolutely is; consent doesn’t have to be sexy to be centrally important. But because when you get down to it, sexuality should not be about arguing over what you can get away with and still call consensual.

This is the underside of my world. Of course you don’t want me to be stupid, bless you! you only want to make sure you’re intelligent. You don’t want me to commit suicide; you only want me to be gratefully aware of my dependency. You don’t want me to despise myself; you only want the flattering deference to you that you consider a spontaneous tribute to your natural qualities. You don’t want me to lose my soul; you only want what everybody wants, things to go your way; you want a devoted helpmeet, a self-sacrificing mother, a hot chick, a darling daughter, women to look at, women to laugh at, women to come for comfort, women to wash your floors and buy your groceries and cook your food and keep your children out of your hair, to work when you need the money and stay home when you don’t, women to be enemies when you want a good fight, women who are sexy when you want a good lay, women who don’t complain, women who don’t nag or push, women who don’t hate you really, women who know their job and above all—women who lose. On top of it all, you sincerely require me to be happy; you are naively puzzled that I should be wretched and so full of venom in this the best of all possible worlds. Whatever can be the matter with me? But the mode is more than a little outworn. As my mother once said: the boys throw stones at the frogs in jest. But the frogs die in earnest.

This is Trenicia, the queen of the warrior women of the Isle of Akalla. Different places have different traditions and different customs. On the Isle of Akalla, the women rule, and the women do the fighting." "What do the men do?" the horseman Ekial asked curiously. "As little as they possibly can," the warrior woman said in a sardonic tone. "Over the years, they’ve foisted just about everything off on us. We have to grow the food, hunt the meat, and fight the wars. The men sit around getting fat and arguing with each other about something they call 'philosophy' - most of which is pure nonsense.

This is when the pill became widely known as The Pill, perhaps the only product in American history so powerful that it needed no name. Women went to their doctors and said they wanted it. They wanted The Pill. Some of them might still have been uncomfortable talking about birth control. Others might have been unsure of its brand name. But The Pill was The Pill because it was the only one that mattered, the one everyone was talking about, the one they needed.

THIS IS WHAT A MAN LOOKS LIKE. HE DOES NOT HAVE TO BE AESTHETICALLY PLEASING; HE DOES NOT HAVE TO BE MUSCULAR; HE DESERVES NOT TO BE PHOTOSHOPPED. HE IS HUMAN, AND HE HAS BLEMISHES. HERE HE STANDS, VISIBLE. HE SEES YOU ALL, COUNTLESS INVISIBLE OTHERS LIKE HIM. THIS BODY IS ACCEPTABLE — PUBESCENT, AWKWARD, MARRED. YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE INVISIBLE. WE ARE ALL GOOD ENOUGH. THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH OUR BODIES.

This is where we should start focusing this conversation: how men (as readers, critics, and editors) can start to bear the responsibility for becoming better, broader readers.

This is why we all fight so hard. Not just for the vote, but for an equal opportunity in the world.

This led me very promptly to the conviction that those “feminine charms” we are so fond of are not feminine at all, but mere reflected masculinity—developed to please us because they had to please us, and in no way essential to the real fulfillment of their great process.

This is why militarism is a feminist issue, why rape is an environmental issue, why environmental destruction is a peace issue.

This is why militarism is a feminist issue, why rape is an environmental issue, why environmental destruction is a peace issue. We will never dismantle misogyny as long as domination is eroticized. We will also never stop racism. Nor will we mount an effective resistance to fascism, which is the eroticization of domination and subordination–fascism is in essence a cult of masculinity. Those are all huge spin-outs from the same beginning. The result is torture, rape, genocide, and biocide.

...this pattern of casual intrusion whereby women could be leered at, touched, harassed, and abused without a second though, was sexism: implicit, explicit, commonplace, and deep-rooted, pretty much everywhere you'd care to look.

This sounded good — I like physical experiences that involve surrender. I didn’t know, however, very much about experiences that demand surrender — that run over you like a truck, with no safe word to stop it. I was ready to scream, but labor turned out to be the quietest experience of my life.

This particular strand of feminism is characterized by two tenets: 1. men are jerks, and 2. women should strive by all means to become like them.

This point is often missed by evangelical feminists. They conclude that a difference in function necessarily involves a difference in essence; i.e., if men are in authority over women, then women must be inferior. The relationship between Christ and the Father shows us that this reasoning is flawed. One can possess a different function and still be equal in essence and worth. Women are equal to men in essence and in being; there is no ontological distinction, and yet they have a different function or role in church and home. Such differences do not logically imply inequality or inferiority, just as Christ’s subjection to the Father does not imply His inferiority.

This revolution will be noted. It will be successful and above all, it will be in words.

This semester has born in me the flame of hope to one day become a leader in the modern feminist movement. I can and will be the force that blows new life into it, giving a face and name to associate with instead of those women now who’s names I don’t know because they weren’t listed on Wikipedia.

This tension-the idea that there is a right way to be a woman, a right way to be the most essential woman- is ongoing and pervasive.

This was another skill women were meant to learn: when a man's story had come to an end. Mostly, it wasn't a problem, as the end was thumpingly obvious; or else the narrator started snorting with laughter in advance, which was always a pretty good clue. Martha had long ago decided only to laugh at things she found funny. It seemed a normal sort of rule; but most men found it rebuking.

This, the “Vagina Effect”, is one of the saddest byproducts of pornography: to attract the attention of jaded males, female performers now feel they have to flash their vaginas – not too obviously, lest more orthodox fans be alienated, but 'accidentally' so as to sidestep disquieting accusations of vulgarity.

This was the price for the the strange life she had chosen, but she had gone into it with eyes open, and there was no profit in regret.

Those who are aware of history, of patriarchy and of the feminist movement, tend to understand how difficult it is—and how important—for people to rethink basic behaviors in order to bring about deep and lasting change. We must rethink how we speak, how we spend our time, and what we consume. This is as true for fighting sexism as it is for fighting speciesism—or any other form of domination, exploitation, and oppression. We must change our lives first, and most fundamentally. . . . [Feminists] can and must choose not to continue to exploit nonhuman animals while working to liberate girls and women