Quotes About Women

Edgar Allan Poe once called the death of a beautiful woman "the most poetical topic in the world" and I've often found myself wondering how many woman writers who have killed themselves or let themselves be otherwise obliterated were trying, somehow, to fulfill this most popular of narratives. We're most valuable when we're smiling, dead, posing, our words hanging on the page with no real body behind them. I'm

Yet despite all these things we know to be true- despite the preponderance of evidence showing the mental and emotional distress people demonstrate in violent and harassing environments- we still have no name for what happens to women living in a culture that hates them.

Beautiful' is bullshit, a standard created to make women into good consumers, too busy wallowing in self-loathing to notice that we're second-class citizens.

Women politicians have definitely been known to fuck over other women. Democratic Louisiana

All women live in objectification the way fish live in water. —Catharine A. MacKinnon WHEN

There's a reason why the assumed goal for women in virginity-movement screeds is marriage and motherhood only: The movement only believes that's the only thing women are meant for.

A high school teacher once told me that identity is half what we tell ourselves and half what we tell other people about ourselves. But the missing piece he didn't mention—the piece that holds so much weight, especially in the minds of young women and girls—is the stories that other people tell us about ourselves.

I've thought often about why - why?! - anyone, especially other women, would try to disrupt feminist work that combats violence. What in the world could be the point of that? The only reason I've come up with, and I think it makes sense, is fear of becoming that "impure" woman.

I spoke on a panel once with a famous new age author/guru in leather pants and she said that the problem with women is that we don't "speak from our power," but from a place of victimization. As if the traumas forced upon us could be shaken off with a steady voice- as if we had actual power to speak from.

Trusting women means also trusting them to find their way. This isn't to say, of course, that I think women's sexual choices are intrinsically 'empowered' or 'feminist.' I just believe that in a world that values women so little, and so specifically for their sexuality, we should be giving them the benefit of the doubt. Because in this kind of hostile culture, trusting women is a radical act.

Antifeminists are the only ones who benefit from their version of working on women's behalf; in reality, they put other women at risk and fail to solce any larger problems.

Edgar Allan Poe once called the death of a beautiful woman "the most poetical topic in the world" and I have often found myself wondering how many women writers who have killed themselves or let themselves be otherwise obliterated were trying, somehow, to fulfil this most popular of narratives. We're most valuable when we're smiling, dead, posing, our words hanging on the page with no real body behind them.

If being premenstrual is "innocence," does that make those of us with periods guilty? And this really gets to the heart of the matter: These concerns aren't about lost innocence; they're about girlhood. The virginity movement doesn't want women to be adults.

As Robert Jensen wrote in 'Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity,' 'Pornography as a mirror shows us how men see women. Not all men, of course--but the ways in which many men who accept the conventional conception of masculinity see women. It's an unsettling look in that mirror.

Let's face it--the beauty queens and young girls touting virginity pledges are simply purity porn stars. Whether it's actual porn or mythologized purity, the end goal is to be desirable to men, and what women may actually want for themselves, sexually or otherwise, is lost.

The thing is, naked women aren't the problem--a woman believing her only value is sexual is what's dangerous. It's not only women's sexuality that we have to watch out for, it's the way men construct it.

But the myth of sexual purity still reigns supreme, and it grossly affects the way American society thinks about violence toward women. So long as women are supposed to be "pure," and so long as our morality is defined by our sexuality, sexualized violence against us will continue to be both accepted and expected.

To be alone—the eternal refrain of life. It wasn't better or worse than anything else. One talked too much about it. One was always and never alone. A violin, suddenly—somewhere out of a twilight—in a garden on the hills around Budapest. The heavy scent of chestnuts. The wind. And dreams crouched on one's shoulders like young owls, their eyes becoming lighter in the dusk. A night that never became night. The hour when all women were beautiful.

The heroes of ancient Greece wept more often than our silly, sentimental modern women. They knew it did no good to hold it back. Our ideal is the impassive courage of a statue. Unnecessary. Be sad and then you'll soon be over it.

The solicitor for whom he used to work in Cologne has written to tell him that women are now doing the work excellently and more cheaply, whereas Jupp, during his time in the army, will have grown out of office requirements, no doubt. He deeply regrets it, so he says; the times are hard. Best wishes for the future.

Derane, zapamti jednom: nikad, nikad, nikad ?ovek ne postaje smešan pred ženom ako radi nje ?ini nešto. ?ak i pri naglupljoj lakrdiji. Radi šta ho?eš; govori gluposti, hvališi se kao paun, pevaj pod njenim prozorom, samo ne ?ini jedno: ne budi poslovan, ne budi trezven! - Šta ti veliš na to, Oto? Kester se smejao. - Bi?e da je ta?no.

Boswell and Thompson write, "Every night the rooms on the two upper floors of the Castle were filled to overflowing. Holmes reluctantly accommodated a few men as paying guests, but catered primarily to women—preferably young and pretty ones of apparent means, whose homes were distant from Chicago and who had no one close to them who might make inquiry if they did not soon return. Many never went home. Many, indeed, never emerged from the castle, having once entered it

she suppressed a revolt led by the board's executive secretary that had caused open warfare between factions of elegantly coiffed and dressed women.

The only effective defense lay in offense, he said, "which means that you have to kill more women and children more quickly than the enemy if you want to save yourselves.