Quotes from Allan G. Johnson

People are tagged with other labels that point to the lowest-status group they belong to, as in "woman doctor" or "black writer," but never "white lawyer" or male senator". Any category that lowers our status relative to others' can be used to mark us; to be privileged is to go through life with the relative ease of being unmarked.

There is no such thing as doing nothing. There is no such thing as neutral or uninvolved. At every moment, social life involves all of us.

The public response to feminism has been ferociously defensive precisely because feminism touches such a deep nerve of truth and the denial that keeps us from it. If feminism were truly ridiculous, it would be ignored. But it isn't ridiculous, and so provokes a vigorous backlash.

As a system, patriarchy encourages men to accept male privilege and perpetuate women's oppression, if only through silence.

Male experience is what patriarchal culture uses to represent human experience, even when it is women who most often live it.

Women's potential to disrupt patriarchy and make men vulnerable is why it's so easy for women to make men feel foolish or emasculated through the mildest humor that focuses on maleness and hints at women's power to stop going along with the status quo.

subordinate groups are often pitted against one another in ways that draw attention away from the system of privilege that hurts them all.

If we are serious about change, we have to dig - preferably with plenty of company and with a full appreciation of the fact that although we did not start the fire, it belongs to us now.

The odds are loaded toward a path of least resistance in several ways. We often choose a path because it is the only one we see. When I get on an elevator, for example, I turn and face front along with everyone else. It rarely occurs to me to do it any other way, such as facing the rear. If I did, I'd soon feel how some paths bring on more social resistance than others.

A society is patriarchal to the degree that it promotes male privilege by being male dominated, male identified, and male centered. It is also organized around an obsession with control and involves as one of its key aspects the oppression of women.... If men occupy superior positions, it's a short leap to the idea that men must be superior...[and that] whatever men do will tend to be seen as having greater value.

The more powerful a woman is under patriarchy, the more 'unsexed' she becomes in the eyes of others as her female cultural identity recedes beneath the mantle of male-identified power and the masculine images associated with it. With men the effect is just the opposite: the more powerful they are, the more aware they are of their manhood. In other words, in a patriarchal culture, power looks sexy on men but not on women.

No woman (or man) becomes a corporate manager, gets tenure at a university, or is elected to public office by showing their capacity for cooperation, sharing, emotional sensitivity, and nurturing.