Quotes About Feminism

In retrospect, the second cause for delay makes less feminist sense: the long popularity of assertiveness training. Though most women needed to be more assertive (or even more aggressive, though that word was considered too controversial), many assertiveness courses taught women how to play the existing game, not how to change the rules.

I was angry about the human talent that was lost just because it was born into a female body, and the mediocrity that was rewarded because it was born into a male one.

I was being measured against the expectation that any feminist had to be unattractive in a conventional sense—and then described in contrast to that stereotype. The subtext was: If you could get a man, why would you need equal pay?

It seems more hopeful to talk about what came before patriarchy--and could show us a way beyond it.

Childbirth is more admirable than conquest, more amazing than self-defense, and as courageous as either one. Yet one of the strongest, most thoughtful feminists I know still hides in one-piece bathing suits to conceal her two Cesarean scars. And one of the most hypocritical feminists I know (that is, one who loves feminism but dislikes women) had plastic surgery to remove the tiny scar that gave her face character.

Every woman knows there is a big difference between help that is designed to keep you dependent, and help that is designed to make you independent.

Whether by dowry murders in India, honor killings in Egypt, or domestic violence in the United States, records show that women are most likely to be beaten or killed at home and by men they know. Statistically speaking, home is an even more dangerous place for woman than the road. Perhaps the most revolutionary act for a woman will be a self willed journey-and to be welcomed when she comes home.

Marilyn supplied sex so that she would be allowed to work, but not so that she wouldn't have to work.

As feminism has changed academia by enlarging what is taught, academia has sometimes changed feminism. Scholarly language may be so theoretical that it obscures the source of feminism in women's lived experience.

Public opinion polls have long proved there is majority support for pretty much every issue that the women's movement has brought up, but those of us, women or men, who identify with feminism are still made to feel isolated, wrong, out of step.

Just because we all have wombs doesn't mean we have to be mothers, just like we all have vocal cords doesn't mean we're all opera singers.

One of the saddest things I hear as I travel is "I don't know enough to be a feminist." Or even "I'm not smart enough to be a feminist." It breaks my heart.

Not only had I never made any such complaints, but at political meetings, I had given my suggestions to whatever man was sitting next to me, knowing that if a man offered them, they would be taken more seriously. You white women, Mrs. Greene said kindly, as if reading my mind, if you don't stand up for yourselves, how can you stand up for anybody else?

the idea of equality was so contagious that the right wing would soon rate feminism as a danger right up there with secular humanism and godless Communism. The

Many of these students have experienced the double discrimination of sex and race—not only in the mainstream but also by race in the women's movement, and by sex in the black power movement.

Women are always saying, 'We can do anything that men can do.' But men should be saying, 'We can do anything that women can do.

The personal is political. When

Since Native students often prosper in cooperative rather than competitive classrooms—as do a lot of female students, regardless of where they come from—I've been asked to talk about the feminist movement and efforts to change classrooms into learning circles.

Gender is the remaining caste system that still cuts deep enough, and spreads wide enough, to be confused with the laws of nature.

I remember with gratitude the banner carried by some very old and bawdy women who led the parade while I was a student: hardly a man is now alive, who remembers the girls of '95.)

the design of many patriarchal religious buildings resembles the body of a woman. Think about it: there is an outer and inner entrance (labia majora, labia minora) with a vestibule between (an anatomical as well as architectural term) and a vaginal aisle up the center of the church to the altar (the womb) with two curved (ovarian) structures on either side. The altar or womb is where all-male priests confer everlasting life—and who can prove that they don't?

In Western mythology, she might be compared to Medusa, the serpent-haired Greek goddess whose name means Knowing Woman or Protectress. She once was all-powerful—until patriarchy came along in the form of a mythic young man who chopped off her head. He was told to do this by Athena, who sprang full-blown from the mind of her father, Zeus—a goddess thought up by patriarchy and therefore motherless. There is history in what is dismissed as prehistory In

We have become the men we wanted to marry.

I don't know enough to be a feminist." Or even "I'm not smart enough to be a feminist." It breaks my heart.