Quotes About Feminism

Coercing a woman out of a burka is as bad as coercing her into one. It's not about the burka. It's about the coercion.

For the Time Being they had no surname because Ammu was considering reverting to her maiden name, though she said that choosing between her husband's name and her fathers name didn't give a woman much of a choice.

choosing between her husband's name and her father's name didn't give a woman much of a choice.

A revolutionary woman can't have no reactionary man.

When Glenda Jackson reveals that she has never been in a relationship with a man in which he hasn't raised his fists to her, I don't know whether this tells us more about the contemporary male or about Glenda Jackson.

For within livin structures defined by profit, by linear power, by institutional dehumanization, our feelings were not meant to survive. Kept around as unavoidable adjuncts or pleasant pastimes, our feelings were expected to kneel to thought as women were expected to kneel to men. But women have survived. As poets.

What woman here is so enamored of her own oppression that she cannot see her heelprint upon another woman's face? What woman's terms of oppression have become precious and necessary to her as a ticket into the fold of the righteous, away from the cold winds of self-scrutiny?

The failure of academic feminists to recognize difference as a crucial strength is a failure to reach beyond the first patriarchal lesson. In our world, divide and conquer must become define and empower.

For the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. And this fact is only threatening to those women who still define the master's house as their only source of support.

No woman is responsible for altering the psyche of her oppressor, even when that psyche is embodied in another woman.

rape is not aggressive sexuality, it is sexualized aggression.

Only within a patriarchal structure is maternity the only social power open to women.

What woman here is so enamoured of her own oppression that she cannot see her heelprint upon another woman's face?

But as Adrienne Rich pointed out in a recent talk, white feminists have educated themselves about such an enormous amount over the past ten years, how come you haven't also educated yourselves about Black women and the differences between us – white and Black – when it is key to our survival as a movement?

In the plane coming to Tashkent, I sat with the three other African women and we exchanged chitchat for 5 1/2 hours about out respective children, about our ex-old men, all very, very heterocetera.

As women, we must root out internalized patterns of oppression within ourselves if we are to move beyond the most superficial aspects of social change.

dealing with the role of difference within the lives of american women: difference of race, sexuality, class, and age. The absence of these considerations weakens any feminist discussion of the personal and the political. It is a particular academic arrogance to assume any discussion of feminist theory without examining our many differences, and without a significant input from poor women, Black and Third World women, and lesbians.

For the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. And this fact is only threatening to those women who still define the master's house as their only source of support.

The image of the Angolan woman with a baby on one arm and a gun in the other is neither romantic nor fanciful

When patriarchy dismisses us, it encourages our murderers.

As Kalamu ya Salaam, a Black male writer points out, "As long as male domination exists, rape will exist. Only women revolting and men made conscious of their responsibility to fight sexism can collectively stop rape.

Prosthesis offers the empty comfort of "Nobody will know the difference." But it is that very difference which I wish to affirm, because I have lived it, and survived it, and wish to share that strength with other women.

Is it any coincidence that the plastic surgeons most interested in pushing breast reconstruction and most involved in the superficial aspects of women's breasts speak the language of sexist pigs?

Enforced sterilization and unavailable abortions are tools of oppression against Black women, as is rape.