Best 3209 quotes in «feminism quotes» category

Lucy could see that love unconfined, love outside convention, might well make a woman an unfit mother; you were one kind of woman or another: you were good or you were bad, as the world saw it, and no stations in between. They allowed you to choose; you could be the maternal or the erotic, but not a bit of both. The latter made you forget the former. Men married the maternal and then longed for the erotic. Or they married the erotic by mistake, and set about making it into the maternal, and then were just as disappointed.

Luckily, I was not born a white man.* *This has never before been said in the history of humanity.

MacKinnon captures this is in her succinct lesson on the grammar of pornography and male dominance: 'Man fucks woman; subject verb object.

Ma'am is yet another horrible-sounding word in the lexicon of words that women are stuck with to describe various aspects of their body/life/mental state/hair. Vagina. Moist. Fallopian tubes. Yeast infection. Clitoris. Frizz. These are all terrible words, and yet they are our assigned descriptors. Who made up these words? Women certainly didn't. If, at the beginning of time, right after making vaginas, God had asked me, 'What would you like your most intimate and enjoyable part of yourself to be called?',' I most certainly wouldn't have said, 'Vagina.' No woman would, because vagina sounds like a First World War term that was invented to describe a trench that has been mostly blown apart but is still in use. Even off the very top of my head I feel like I could have come up with something better, like for instance the word papoose, which actually as I'm typing it feels like an incredibly brilliant word for vagina.

Madeleine Albright has said that there is 'a special place in hell for women who don't help each other.' What are the implications of this statement? Would it be an argument in favor of the candidacy of Mrs. Clinton? Would this mean that Elizabeth Edwards and Michelle Obama don't deserve the help of fellow females? If the Republicans nominated a woman would Ms. Albright instantly switch parties out of sheer sisterhood? Of course not. (And this wearisome tripe from someone who was once our secretary of state ...)

Maggie knew Betsy was a female crusader, but also knew that many times crusaders like her were only interested in their own personal equality.

Magistrate: May I die a thousand deaths ere I obey one who wears a veil! Lysistrata: If that's all that troubles you, here take my veil, wrap it round your head, and hold your tounge. Then take this basket; put on a girdle, card wool, munch beans. The War shall be women's business.

Magistrate: What do you propose to do then, pray? Lysistrata: You ask me that! Why, we propose to administer the treasury ourselves Magistrate: You do? Lysistrata: What is there in that a surprise to you? Do we not administer the budget of household expenses? Magistrate: But that is not the same thing. Lysistrata: How so – not the same thing? Magistrate: It is the treasury supplies the expenses of the War. Lysistrata: That's our first principle – no War!

MAGISTRATE Don't men grow old? LYSISTRATA Not like women. When a man comes home Though he's grey as grief he can always get a girl. There's no second spring for a woman. None. She can't recall it, nobody wants her, however She squanders her time on the promise of oracles, It's no use...

Mais de toute façon, engendrer, allaiter ne sont pas des activités, ce sont des fonctions naturelles; aucun projet n'y est engagé; c'est pourquoi la femme n'y trouve pas le motif d'une affirmation hautaine de son existence; elle subit passivement son destin biologique.

Make dressing a question of taste and attractiveness instead of a question of morality.

Make no mistake about it, a perfect storm is forming, and it's coming our way. Its sudden onset and fierce intensity will surprise even its most vocal proponents and cheerleaders. Many people who are now in the fetish lifestyle will vainly leap into the fray, foolishly thinking that this will be an orderly battle of opposing ideas that can be fought civilly and rationally. They will quickly learn that they are tragically wrong in this assumption, and many of them will pay a terrible price emotionally, socially, and financially as a result.

Making female noises, shrieking and squeaking and being shrill, all those things that annoy people with longer vocal cords. Another case where the length of organs seems to be so important to men.

Male urination is a form of commentary.

Making someone feel obligated, pressured or forced into doing something of a sexual nature that they don't want to is sexual coercion. This includes persistent attempts at sexual contact when the person has already refused you. Nobody owes you sex, ever; and no means no, always.

Maleness means war.

Males lack the seriousness of temperament required of persons with such great responsibilities.

Males were expected to be ready to fuck any hole they could slip their dicks into. Boys weren’t considered men unless they were influenced by their carnal instincts to spread their seed.

Making women into small business owners, factory workers, and heads of households, not participants & leaders of collective social movements or activists demanding more accountability of the World Trade Organization, the IMF or the World Bank, these institutions maintain control over the economic growth and development of these countries and provide access to cheap labor, mineral resources, and military bases for the global north while the women themselves remain at or below poverty level.

[M]aleness in America," as Margaret Mead wrote, "is not absolutely defined; it has to be kept and reearned every day, and one essential element in the definition is beating women in every game that both sexes play." Nothing seems to crush the masculine petals more than a bit of feminist rain - a few drops are perceived as a downpour. "Men view even small losses of deference, advantages or opportunities as large threats, " wrote William Goode, one of many sociologists to puzzle over the peculiarly hyperbolic male reaction to minuscule improvements to women's rights.

Male social conditioning encourages boys and men to aim to bed as many women as possible....so much so, that their self esteem and self worth become intertwined with the number of sexual partners they have; and when that number is low or even zero, so too is their self-confidence.

Mámá was fond of saying that nothing tastes as good as skinny feels—an aphorism I was pretty sure she'd cribbed from the thinspiration sites she subscribed to online—but I believed that anyone who said such things had never tasted chili-cheese fries with melted cheddar, fresh ground beef, and Tapatio sauce.

Male beauty is a sign of transcendence, that of woman has the passivity of immanence

Maleness and femaleness are not biological givens, but rather the results of a long historical process. In each historic epoch maleness and femaleness are differently defined. The definition depends on the principle mode of production in these epochs.

Male supremacy is fused into the language, so that every sentence both heralds and affirms it. Thought, experienced primarily as language, is permeated by the linguistic and perceptual values developed expressly to subordinate women. Men have defined the parameters of every subject. All feminist arguments, however radical in intent or consequence, are with or against assertions or premises implicit in the male system, which is made credible or authentic by the power of men to name. No transcendence of the male system is possible as long as men have the power of naming... As Prometheus stole fire from the gods, so feminists will have to steal the power of naming from men, hopefully to better effect.

Mama Ginger came calling, to set the alarm on my biological clock. Oh, and to remind me that there’s no point to me being a woman if I never have children.” “Well, if that’s true, I wasted a hell of a lot of money on panty hose and lipstick.” Jettie snorted.

Man is a creature who lives not upon bread alone, but principally by catchwords; and the little rift between the sexes is astonishingly widened by simply teaching one set of catchwords to the girls and another to the boys.

Man fucks woman; subject verb object.

Man is the master of Woman" - this statement may have been a glorious fact of primitive life in the wild, but it is nothing but an obnoxious stain on psyche of the thinking humanity.

Man" it was said, had two natures, a rational nature and an animal or bodily nature. These two natures, it was thought, were continually at war with each other. Whereas reason should have been able to rule the body, all too often, it seemed, the body asserted its own needs and desires. The practice of asceticism, in the East as well as the West, arose out of the attempt to control the unruly body through denial and sometimes punishment. While women also practiced asceticism, the literature of asceticism, written primarily by men, is filled with images equating the temptations of the body with women and the female body. Instead of accepting the changing body as part of the self, asceticism attempted to deny it. Great cruelty to the self and the body have al too often been the fruits of this view.

many efforts on bahalf of of animals will qualitatively improve humans' living conditions as well, which is likely to be the case

Many women, I think, resist feminism because it is an agony to be fully conscious of the brutal misogyny which permeates culture, society, and all personal relationships.

Many women experience a sense of pressure that men rarely do—the pressure to succeed at work and to keep things running smoothly at home, especially when children arrive on the scene.

Many social justice activists--many feminists--continue to work against one form of oppression while feeding the flames of another, without noticing that the blow torch behind the flames must be tuned off before we can have any hope of putting out the resultant fires.

Many young women now seem to believe that sexual confidence is the only confidence worth having, and that sexual confidence can only be gained if a young woman is ready to conform to the soft-porn image of a tanned, waxed young girl with large breasts ready to strip and pole-dance. Whether sexual confidence can be found in other ways, and whether other kinds of confidence are worth seeking, are themes that this hypersexual culture cannot address.

Many women do not join organized resis­tance against sexism precisely because sexism has not meant an absolute lack of choices. They may know they are discriminated against on the basis of sex, but they do not equate this with oppres­sion. Under capitalism, patriarchy is structured so that sexism restricts women's behavior in some realms even as freedom from limitations is allowed in other spheres. The absence of extreme re­strictions leads many women to ignore the areas in which they are exploited or discriminated against; it may even lead them to imagine that no women are oppressed.

Marriage cannot be a job as it has become.

Marriage is a core component of the patriarchal system. According to Gerda Lerner's research on ancient societies, a woman could achieve at least some status, and with that, better treatment and privileges, through preserving her only capital – her virginity – and eventually offering it to just one man.

Mary Woolley wasn't only a suffragist; she was also a feminist. "Feminism is not a prejudice," she said, "It is a principle.

...Mary, fresh with feminist appropriations, has the potential to undergird women’s reformations.

Marriage is supposed to be a union between two equals who love and support each other, not a master-slave relationship in which the man commands a docile woman.

Masses of the people think that feminism is always the only about women seeking to be equal to men. Their misunderstanding of feminist politics reflects the reality that most folks learn about feminism from patriarchal mass media.

Maybe if you had megaphones on your chest they'd listen to the words that came out of your lips

Maybe it frightened them, to admit that a woman could be master of her fate.

Maybe it was only goblin women who were restless and wanted to see the world. She didn't know.

Maybe I'm a bad feminist, but I am committed to the issues important to the feminist movement.

Maybe that was the root of my dislike for her: she had what I wanted, which earned her my jealousy, and since I was ashamed of myself for wanting it, my scorn, as well.

Maybe men who still have the cave-man expectations of women should be sent back into caves. A lot of women will readily volunteer to build such caves free of charge.

Maybe, long ago, we used to be good. Maybe all little girls are good in the beginning.

Me as a woman liking myself, is an act of social defiance!