Quotes About Feminism

The white fathers told us, I think therefore I am; and the black mothers in each of us-the poet whispers in our dreams, I feel therefore I can be free. … For within 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, feelings were meant to kneel to thought as we were meant to kneel to men. But women have survived. As poets.

To imply, however, that all women suffer the same oppression simply because we are women is to lose sight of the many varied tools of patriarchy.

If white American feminist theory need not deal with the differences between us, and the resulting difference in our oppressions, then how do you deal with the fact that the women who clean your houses and tend your children while you attend conferences on feminist theory are, for the most part, poor women and women of Color?

If you see us among scores of women, will you look upon us? We shall look upon you, Liberty 5-3000, if we see you among all the women of the earth.

Cleopatra stood at one of the most dangerous intersections in history: that of women and power. Clever women, Euripides had warned hundreds of years earlier, were dangerous.

As feminist scholar Carol Christ points out, "Symbol systems cannot simply be rejected, they must be replaced. Where there is no replacement, the mind will revert to familiar structures at times of crisis, bafflement, or defeat.

War teaches us to need an enemy to conquer and overcome and to see those who are different as lesser, dangerous, inhuman [Feminist Earth-based Spirituality and Ecofeminism, Healing the Wounds: The Promise of Ecofeminism ].

But the Newsweek claim was wrong even back in 1986. And by 2002 Hewlett's "nowadays" was already three decades out-of-date. More women than ever before are marrying for the first time at age thirty, forty, fifty, and even sixty.

Even today, Young says, marriage is "the cornerstone of patriarchal power." Christine Delphy and Diana Leonard argue that marriage is one of the primary ways that "men benefit from, and exploit, the work of women."23

So, a word to all you Femin-Idi-Amins: Stop "liberating" moms by trying to make them join the workforce. They're already doing the job that God put them here to do: Everything.

It makes no difference if you're rich or poor Or if you're smart or dumb. A woman's place in this old world Is under some man's thumb, And if you're born a woman You're born to be hurt. You're born to be stepped on, Lied to, Cheated on, And treated like dirt. —Sandy Posey, "Born a Woman" Lyrics by Martha Sharp

Lailah Gifty Akita

Astonishingly, not all girls get dressed just to please men.

They might sound revolting to you, but astonishingly, Will Traynor, not all girls get dressed just to please men.

Women, the clerk announced, would be allowed to leave several minutes before the men at lunchtime and at the end of the day in order to prepare meals, a fact which caused Beth to roll her eyes.

Objectivity is just male subjectivity.

This predilection of bright women to twist themselves into bizarre submissive postures from which only humor can release them is something die-hard feminists will never address. But Iris and I were in agreement: there is nothing that warms a smart girl's heart like the smile on the face of a sadist.

Young women are getting a distorted message that their right to match men drink for drink is a feminist issue. The real feminist message should be that when you lose the ability to be responsible for yourself, you drastically increase the chances that you will attract the kinds of people who, shall we say, don't have your best interest at heart. That's not blaming the victim; that's trying to prevent more victims.

To the moralist prostitution does not consist so much in the fact that the woman sells her body, but rather that she sells it out of wedlock.

I'm a feminist, but I think that romance has been taken away a bit for my generation. I think what people connect with in novels is this idea of an overpowering, encompassing love - and it being more important and special than anything and everything else.

She firmly believes feminism to be anti-woman because it pressures women to become more like men. Everyone

The greatest feminists have also been the greatest lovers. I'm thinking not only of Mary Wollstonecraft and her daughter Mary Shelley, but of Anais Nin, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and of course Sappho. You cannot divide creative juices from human juices. And as long as juicy women are equated with bad women, we will err on the side of being bad.

Women are not the richer sex. Women are not equal in society.

There is simply no dignified way for a woman to live alone. Oh, she can get along financially perhaps (though not nearly as well as a man), but emotionally she is never left in peace. Her friends, her family, her fellow workers never let her forget that her husbandlessness, her childlessness -- her selfishness, in short -- is a reproach to the American way of life.