Quotes About Feminism

How does the old cliché go? When every Arab girl stood in line waiting for God to hand out the desperate-to-get-married gene, I must have been somewhere else, probably lost in a book.

Don't quote the shastras to defend your way of honouring the female sex! That is not honour.

What I lived as feminism were in fact the male values my parents, among others, well-meaningly bequeathed me—the cross-dressing values of my father, and the anti-feminine values of my mother. So I am not a feminist. I am a self-hating transvestite.

In my film 'Queen', there was a funny moment with the bra. My director called and said they are blurring the bra. They said it is vulgar. Our director was furious about it. We are artistes... We see props as they are. A woman's bra is not a danger to the society.

Comedy in the past hasn't spoken to women because it wasn't written by women, and male writers don't make women three-dimensional characters. Too often, women just facilitate the man's comedy: they're not crazy; they're not funny. But women are as vulgar as they are elegant, as stinky as they are smelling of eau de parfum.

It's very important for feminism for us to tell our daughters that they should be strong. But to tell our sons that they can be vulnerable, to have these characters on screen that are not perfectly masculine cowboys that never fail, for our boys to change their psyche as well, that's equally important for feminism.

I think there's a contrast between being vulnerable and, you know, 'Girl Power!' I think it's important to have that balance because you don't have to be strong all the time.

How could you not love Norman Mailer? He was a total chauvinist, but also so vulnerable.

We should be able to carry on our careers and be women and mothers without fearing that if we show a vulnerable side, that will be attacked.

There may be many benefits to working outside the home for wages, but it's certainly not been done as an act of liberation. It's an act of economic necessity and has been since the beginning of time.

Empowering women in Pakistan would mean raising them equal to boys, providing them the same education, giving them the same job opportunities, equal wages and equal respect.

My feminist values are rooted in my socialist values. The number of women CEOs in Britain's biggest companies is irrelevant if they pay their women workers poverty wages or discriminate against black employees.

Most women say 'Please speak to me from the waist up: my brain, my eyes.'

I did things like Shampoo and Heaven Can Wait. I don't know what those films were about. The women I played in them were not very empowered.

I like strong, strong women who don't go down without a fight. I like iconic roles. They don't come around very often, so I have to wait for them. Obviously I'm not the typical blonde who stands by the side, while the man has all the fun.

To empower women, power must be given to them, presumably by an entity that already has it. And that entity is the patriarchy. This also implies that women must be on the receiving end, waiting - politely - to be empowered. Very Victorian-era courtship, isn't it?

The subjects that I am working are movies that say something. They are shouting or criticising something. I would hate to play a princess waiting for the prince to come and give her a kiss.

If we value what we've inherited for free - from other women - surely it's right morally and ethically for us to wake up and say, 'I'm a feminist. '

A woman can walk miles without making one single step forward. As a child born in a harem, I instinctively knew that to live is to open closed doors. To live is to look outside. To live is to step out. Life is trespassing.

I'm a feminist. The women in my books in recent years have been powerful characters and I love to see a woman with a cute bottom walking past.

Sexism definitely exists - you see that in all walks of life.

I once had a rose named after me and I was very flattered. But I was not pleased to read the description in the catalogue: no good in a bed, but fine up against a wall.

Women don't get the benefits of America the way men do.

I was brought up in a Bengali family. We were three girls and never made to feel any lesser than men.