Quotes About Feminism

The rights that women had won through the long century and more of struggle were essentially rights of men. Women had had no option but to batter their way into the age-old fortress of male privilege, and storm the citadel where masculine supremacy still held out.

How could such a picture be in a national newspaper The model had ridiculous breasts the size of pumpkins and lips fat and wet and all that she was wearing was a spangled G-string.

All you men still have the Victorian hangover. I suppose you think woman's place is in the home, too?" "Not my home.

Independent radical women often live lonely lives if they expect equality.

I long to speak out the intense inspiration that comes to me from the lives of strong women.

Why should one expect that a woman great in intellect should not love greatly, too?

I am life, I am strength, I am woman.

On the strength of his literary output alone... any woman of sense would decline to tackle D.H. Lawrence at 1,000 pounds a night.

Woman was created for our ruin, and it is from her that all our miseries come.

There are people in Europe who, confounding together the different characteristics of the sexes, would make of man and woman beings not only equal but alike. They would give to both the same functions, impose on both the same duties, and grant to both the same rights; they would mix them in all things—their occupations, their pleasures, their business.

The feminist movement will forfeit none of its strength if it finally admits that mothers also abuse their children. Only the truth, even the most uncomfortable, endows a movement with the strength to change society, not the denial of the truth.

For later generations of women—post Sexual Revolution—enjoying sex was to become simply a duty, the perfect orgasm yet another thing to add to the list of required accomplishments; and when enjoyment becomes a duty, we're back in the land of "dreariness of spirit.

Ruth did not believe in makeup. She thought it demeaned women.

Women would be better off when they no longer needed men more than they needed their own independent identities...How long a time it took me after my divorce to understand that being alone is not the same as being lonely.

The world is changing. It is no longer a world just for boys and men

When I offered the word Womanism many years ago, it was to give us a tool to use, as feminist women of color, in times like these. These are the moments we can see clearly, and must honor devotedly, our singular path as women of color in the United States. We are not white women and this truth has been ground into us for centuries, often in brutal ways.

The world is changing, I said. It is no longer a world just for boys and men.

The Olinka do not believe girls should be educated. When I asked a mother why she thought this, she said: A girl is nothing to herself; only to her husband can she become something.

Womanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender.

But I am not the mother of anybody's children, I said, and I am something

If every man in this courtroom had had his penis removed, what then? Would they understand better that that condition is similar to that of all the women in this room? That, even as we sit here, the women are suffering from the unnatural constrictions of flesh their bodies have been whittled and refashioned into?

I remember feeling very angry at Betty Friedan. AB: What? Why? Well... she hated housework and wanted women to be independent, but then she's hire other women to do her housework.

I only go to a movie if it satisfies three basic requirements. One, it has to have at least two women in it; two, two women talking to each other, and three, talking about something besides a man

My transformation, thanks in part to Adrienne Rich, was easier than hers had been.