Best 1095 quotes in «feminist quotes» category

No one is going to tell you what a feminist is or isn’t.

Nothing has topped the way men shake her hand and look her in the eye, what it’s like to call a man chickenshit to his face and get away with it, to mean it, to feel free and dominant and in control of your life.

Now let's make Virginia Heffernan a man. Can you imagine the same kind of spittle-flecked rage directed at a busy working father who admits to feeding his kids Annie's Organic Mac & Cheese?

No wonder then that men who cared, who were open to change, often just gave up, falling back on the patriarchal masculinity they found so problematic. The individual men who did take on the mantle of a feminist notion of male liberation did so only to find that few women respected this shift. Once the 'new man' that is the man changed by feminism was represented as a wimp, as overcooked broccoli dominated by powerful females who were secretly longing for his macho counterpart, masses of men lost interest.

Number 23 had plenty of redeeming qualities that made falling for him a justifiable accident. But our connection had nothing to do with our similarities, our differences, our aesthetic attractions, or our emotional and physical needs. When we spoke, he was truly with me. Our egos, our personas, expected social cues, the facades that everyone builds around them that are supposed to sculpt the way the world sees us, were stripped with Number 23 and I. He was immediately my best friend, familiar and safe - an epiphany that I had been spending my life alone in crowded rooms. Our souls were naked. We initially curled into the warmth of that connection. But once we knew how real it was, we felt exposed, vulnerable, and raw. While his defense was his fearful recoil, mine was dictation.

Of course, there have been unruly women for as long as there have been boundaries of what constitutes ‘feminine’ behavior: women who, in some way, step outside the boundaries of good womanhood, who end up being labeled too fat, too loud, too slutty, too whatever characteristic women are supposed to keep under control.

…often women aren’t allowed to be characters in history, they have to be stereotypes. Cleopatra was a poet and a philosopher, she was incredibly good at maths; she wasn’t that much of a looker. But when we think of her, we think: big breasted seductress bathing in milk. Often, even when women have made their mark and they are remembered by history, we are offered a fantasy version of their lives.

Often we can get caught in our own struggles, our own small stories, that we forget our place in the larger story arc – the way that our actions, our choices, our achievements can and will blaze trails for that who come after us, so that they do not have to spend their time and energy re-fighting the same battles. For sure we walk a spiral path, but for generations of women the spirals were so tightly packed that it seemed they were going round in circles – let us blaze trails so that the path we walk takes in wider and wider sweeps of human experience. Trail blazing is what we do when we find ourselves in the wilderness, with no path to guide us but our own intuitive understanding of nature and our destination. At times we must walk through the night, guided only by the stars. We know when to sit and rest, to shelter from storms, when to gather water, and what on the trail will sustain us and what will do us harm. We are courageous and cautious in equal measure, but we are driven forward, not only by our own desire to reach our destination, but also by the desire to leave a viable way for others who follow. Trail blazing is an art-form. It is how we find paths through what before was wilderness. We push aside braches, or cut them back, we tramp down nettles and long grasses, ford rivers and streams, through the inner and outer landscapes.

Oh, why did he slap her when she’s a widow, and that annoyed her even more. She said she should not have been slapped because she is a full human being, not because she doesn’t have a husband to speak for her.

O my Courageous Sister! You have to become the beacon of hope for all women around you and then for the whole society.

... one could find plenty of intelligent women in the world if one were willing to look.

One needn't identify as a feminist to participate in the redemptive movement of God for women in the world, The gospel is more than enough. Of course it is! But as long as I know how important maternal health is to Haiti's future, and as long as I know that women are being abused and raped, as long as I know girls are being denied life itself through selective abortion, abandonment, and abuse, as long as brave little girls in Afghanistan are attacked with acid for the crime of going to school, and until being a Christian is synonymous with doing something about these things, you can also call me a feminist.

Our Arab mothers and sisters are suffering from injustices like domestic violence, sexual harassment, child marriages and honour killings, some are still fighting for their right to drive or travel without male custody therefore our powerful Arab media was not only expected to broadcast this particular one of a kind Women’s march it should have held panels to dissect the issues being brought forth in order for the Arab world to better understand that gender equality is not an idea that one believes in, it is a planned movement that requires an enormous effort on the part of both men and women to reach.

One of many beautiful young girls in traditional hijab came up to me to have her photo signed. Her green eyes glistened as she looked at me directly and asked, “Can you put ‘Women can be heroes, too’?” I met everyday heroines on this trip–ladies with a glow and a sparkle, a determination and a strength in the face of adversity. We did have tremendous fun in the making of Agent Carter, but the positive effect–particularly on young women–is what I hold closest to my heart. I met a girl named Nada at the convention. She said, “Most people think my name means ‘Nothing,’ but in fact it means ‘dewdrop’ and ‘honesty’ in my culture.” Whatever happens in the future for Peggy, and the show, Season One and its small impact on young girls are a drop of positivity in our world. Peggy is an honest girl following her own moral compass in the face of adversity. She makes us strive to be better than we want to be. Thank you, Marvel, for letting me step into her high heels, apply her lipstick, and fight the good fight. For all you little Peggys out there, you are not alone. Go forth and kick ass.

One of my biggest weaknesses, one that has always shamed me, is that I have always been lonely. I've struggled to make friends because I can be socially awkward, because I'm weird, because I live in my head.

Or perhaps it's "activist," but on environmental and economic problems, without understanding that pressuring women to have too many children is the biggest cause of environmental distress, and economic courses should start with reproduction, not just production.

Powerful women don’t need another pair of yoga pants, we need a mic.

Our world is full of men and women who do not like powerful women.

Patriarchy is women structuring lifelong decisions around men they haven't met.

People didn't call blacks names anymore, at least not to their faces. Italians weren't wops or dagos, and there were no more kikes, Japs, chinks, or spics in polite conversation. Everybody had a group to protest and stick up for them. But women were still being called names by men. Why? Where was our group? It's not fair.

Post-script: When my tutor got a famous scholarship and went to Oxford, he broke my heart, of course. I sobbed in cafés and hotel bars, bored my friends half to death, and thought myself tragically bereft. I cannot in all honesty claim to have been liberated from anything in particular by my relationship with this man. I hated his subject and was bad at it, failed it twice and did not care. He made me laugh, that's the main thing I remember. I often felt he was privately laughing at me, from the eminence of his twenty-four years. This made me watchful and defensive....it had never occurred to me to call what happened between me and my tutor 'sexual harassment' or 'abuse of power'.

O woman, father says natural is beautiful so why do you redden your cheeks and blacken your eyes? Why do you remove the hair on your legs and draw them into your brows? Why do you hold your breath lest your stomach show and hold your fart lest they know that you’re a human? O woman, father says natural is beautiful so why do you straighten your hair to curl it next and pretend to orgasm so they think you enjoyed the sex? Why do you dumb yourself down and push your breasts up? Why do you smile when you’re told to and love when you don’t want to? When? When will you stop, woman? Father says natural is beautiful but that is doubtful for what does father know he’s only a fellow.

Pardon me; I must seem to you so stupid! Why is the property of the woman who commits Murder, and the property of the woman who commits Matrimony, dealt with alike by your law?

Pregnancy and childbirth are not only physical and medical experiences, after all. They are also social experiences that, in modern America, just as when abortion was criminalized in the 1870s, serve to restrict women's ability to participate in society on equal footing with men.

Prostitution is a crime committed by the economy against the woman and by Mother Nature against the man.

Putting aside your blatant patriarchal biases in assuming the necessary presence of a male familial figurehead, yes, I had a nice brunch, thanks.

Putting our minds to something has never been the problem. The problem has been: Who decides whose mind is worthy?

Remember, for a society to truly progress we don't need woman or man, we need a fully-fledged human - nothing short of that would do.

Reading is an act of radical empathy: turning the page instead of turning away.

Richard seemed to like our morning conversations about Brecht and Althusser and Andre Gorz, but later on he turned the group against me for being too cerebral and acting like a boy. And weren't all these passionate interests and convictions just evasions of a greater truth, my cunt? I was an innocent, a de-gendered freak, 'cause unlike Liza Martin, who was such a babe she refused to take her platforms off for Kundalini Yoga, I hadn't learned the trick of throwing sex into the mix.

Rest in your God-breathed worth. Stop holding your breath, hiding your gifts, ducking your head, dulling your roar, distracting your soul, stilling your hands, quieting your voice, and satiating your hunger with the lesser things of this world.

Rescuing girls from brothels is the easy part, however. The challenge is keeping them from returning. The stigma that girls feel in their communities after being freed, coupled with drug dependencies or threats from pimps, often lead to return to the re-light district.

Rose McGowan, one of Weinstein's earliest and most vociferous accusers, recalled being asked "in a soft NPR voice, 'What if what you're saying makes men uncomfortable?' Good. I've been uncomfortable my whole life. Welcome to our world of discomfort.

Ruth was a novelist, and novelists, Oliver asserted, should have cats and books.

Say to yourself, I am perfect, the way I am. Say to yourself, I am beautiful the way I am. Say to yourself, those who do not accept me the way I am, do not deserve me in their life.

Sapagkat ang babae ay hindi isinilang para sa musika at selebrasyon ng sariling buhay; ang babae ay isinilang para maging musika ng kanyang asawa't mga anak" (p. 90 - Sixty in the City)

Saya menyadari bahwa seorang karyawati lebih takut kehilangan pekerjaannya daripada seorang pelacur akan kehilangan nyawanya. Seorang karyawati takut kehilangan pekerjaan dan menjadi seorang pelacur karena dia tidak mengerti bahwa kehidupan pelacur menurut kenyataannya lebih baik dari kehidupan mereka. Dan karena itulah dia membayar harga dari ketakutan yang dibuat-buat itu dengan jiwanya, kesehatannya, dengan badan, dan dengan pikirannya. Dia membayar harga tertinggi bagi benda-benda yang paling bernilai rendah. Saya tahu bahwa kita semua adalah pelacur yang menjual diri dengan macam-macam harga, dan bahwa seorang pelacur yang mahal jauh lebih baik dari seorang pelacur yang murahan.

Ser feminista no significa renunciar a lo que te gusta hacer: pintarte el cabello, cocinar, arreglar tu casa, ser atenta, darle tiempo a los seres que amas, ser cariñosas, sentirte atractiva. Lo que no te esclavice, domine y obligue y que te dé placer, debes hacerlo.

Seasoned digital daters are like lions who have had their prey killed, butchered, and served to them on a tray in their artificial habitat for so long that they’ve forgotten how to hunt.

Sexism occurs when we assume that some people are less valid or natural than others because of their sex, gender, or sexuality; it occurs when we project our own expectations and assumptions about sex, gender, and sexuality onto other people, and police their behaviors accordingly; it occurs when we reduce another person to their sex, gender, or sexuality rather than seeing them as a whole, legitimate person. That is sexism. And a person is a legitimate feminist when they have made a commitment to challenging sexist double standards wherever and whenever they arise. An individual's personal style, mannerisms, identity, consensual sexual partners, and live choices simply shouldn't factor into it.

She’d tell her daughters someday: ‘If you don’t feel safe enough to yell back, you’re not safe enough. My babies, that is not love.

She'd crossed into a place where truth, even if it was brutal, was all she had to offer.

she allowed herself to dwell on the cause of this strange, apprehensive exultation that she sensed flickering at the edge of her mind: it was the rarest thing of all - a man whom she knew at once, and without any qualification, to be her equal.

She felt a soft brush of lips against her forehead, heard the other woman murmur, "Sleep now, chére." Chére, Hannah though. Cherished. It was a good thing to be. She wrapped the word around her and carried it down with her into sleep.

she'd played mother and wives. Women in narratives were always defined by their relations.

She is a woman who deserves some respect. She's the one who'll bear the belligerent burden of birthing your kids. She's a woman, not an ass, or a breast or something else that could be sexually caressed. Appreciate the woman that she is because she and your mother are one in the same. She will be a wife someday; should't she get treated like more of a gain?

She is that maze, the one you would love to chase. She is the faith, quite missing nowadays. And her heart is a rave, with hopeless barricades. She is the one, whose tears flow, just as lavishly, as her laughter roars!

...so individuals have their flesh cut and pulled, surgery companies proclaim it as an empowering choice, and the stifling cultural ideals about women's appearance are left unscathed

She stood by the bed and stroked her father's hand, knowing how desperately afraid he must feel at this moment. He'd always prided himself on being the kind of man who could be counted on, a man to whom others looked for advice and support. Dependence would wither his spirit, and the thought of that, of her father being diminished or broken, was almost as unbearable as the thought of losing him.

She tried to ignore that, this close to the man, he had the overpowering chemical scent of a manly shower gel. That sort that normally came in a black bottle and was called something like SHOCK or EXCITE or BLUNT TRAUMA.