Quotes by British Authors - Page 534

Personally, I feel the time has come for women to introduce their own Zero Tolerance policy on the Broken Window issues in our lives - I want a Zero Tolerance policy on "All the Patriarchal Bullshit.
Caitlin Moran
It’s amazing to me that it’s still considered a notable, commendable trait –‘Oh, she’s a well-known feminist’ –in a woman, or a girl, or a man, or a boy. That that is the unusual thing. Really, it should be the reverse. Rather than what seems like a minority having to spend time, energy, brain and heart explaining why they’re ‘into’ equality, the majority should be explaining why they’re not. You put the time into explaining why –in a world where every concept of justice, wisdom, progress and rightness is a human invention –we still prefer the human concept of ‘some people being inferior to others’ over ‘this is a vast, inky, cold, empty universe, and in it, we are the only humans that exist, all sharing a tiny milky green/ blue world, and faced with a multitude of problems, and an infinite capacity for joy, and should therefore try and stick together and accord each other some respect’.
Caitlin Moran
Her voice was erudite, interesting; the voice of someone who straddled two cultures with a surety and style that I wished my boyfriend could find. She was smart, funny, and, above all, completely capable of controlling her life and what happened to it.
Ruth Ahmed
We're supposed to speak from the heart in what we wear. We have to find capsule wardrobes.
Caitlin Moran
Women wear heels because they think they make their legs look thinner.
Caitlin Moran
Not one had ever passed judgement on my cheap handbag to my face. But then, this is a reserved country.
Caitlin Moran
The actual handbag is neither here nor there-- it's what you keep in it that's the most important thing.
Caitlin Moran
Between 60 and 80 percent of strippers come from a background of sexual abuse.
Caitlin Moran
Within living memory of this country, men could rape their wives: women were not seen as a separate sexual entity, with the right of refusal.
Caitlin Moran
Amnesty International Survey found that 25 percent of people believe a woman is to blame for being raped if she dresses "provocatively.
Caitlin Moran
For a woman, every outfit is a hopeful spell, cast to influence the outcome of the day. An act of trying to predict your fate, like looking at your horoscope.
Caitlin Moran
Life is really the only place you can learn the most important lessons about how to get dressed and to be happy.
Caitlin Moran
Women are always being asked when they're going to have children. It's a question they're asking even more often.
Caitlin Moran
These hormones do not make me feel feminine: every night, I lie in bed feeling wrenched, and the bulge of my sanitary napkin in my kickers looks like a cock.
Caitlin Moran
But when women are asked when they're going to have children, there is, in actually, another darker, more pertinent question lying underneath it.
Caitlin Moran
Men and women alike have convinced themselves of a dragging belief: that somehow women are incomplete without having children.
Caitlin Moran
If you take a moment to consider the state of the world, the thing you notice is that there are plenty of babies being born; the planet doesn't really need all of us to produce more babies.
Caitlin Moran
First world babies are eating this planet like termites.
Caitlin Moran
In the 21st century, it can't be about who we might make, and what they might do, anymore. It has to be about who we are and what we're going to do.
Caitlin Moran
Abortions are never seen as a positive thing, as any other operation to remedy a potentially life-ruining condition would.
Caitlin Moran
The idea that I might not-- in an earlier era, or a different country-- have a choice in the matter seems both emotionally and physically barbaric.
Caitlin Moran
Feminism is a movement for change, not a changing of the guard.
Finn Mackay
But why does it matter what we call it, as long as there is concerted action to respond to and prevent such crimes? It matters because if we really want to fix something that is broken, if we want to heal these fractures in our society, then we need to understand their causes. If we do not, then we will forever continue to place giant sticking plasters over the wounds left by this violence, trying to bandage over losses that can never be replaced. As long as this violence continues, it is obviously the case that we do have to address the symptoms, but my argument is that we must also address the causes if we want a long-term reduction or even, perhaps, the eventual eradication of male violence against women.
Finn Mackay
Did my mother hum to me when I was little? Did she touch me, hold me, fill me with her noise and her thoughts? This loneliness I feel is of the womb, born by women. I was sixteen when they all died and I thought I understood this loss, but it comes to me that I didn't know what women gave to the world. It wasn't about their lips, their eyes or the gentle quality of their voices. It was about the way that all men are a part of them. And now we are part of nothing.
Aliya Whiteley
David Cameron is a C-3P0 made of ham.
Caitlin Moran
When a woman walks into a room, her outfit is the first thing she says, before she even opens her mouth. Women are judged on what they wear in a way men would find incomprehensible.
Caitlin Moran
The reason they don't ask me when they're having kids, of course, is because men can, pretty much, carry on a normal life once they've had a baby.
Caitlin Moran
Strip clubs let everyone down. Men and women approach their very worst here.
Caitlin Moran
There's no self-expression or joy in these joints-- no springboard to self-discovery, or adventure, like any decent night out involving men, women, alcohol, and taking your clothes off. Why do many people have a gut reaction to strip clubs? Because inside them, no one is having fun.
Caitlin Moran
In that instance, my body had decided that this baby was not to be and had ended it. This time, it is my mind that has decided that this baby was not to be. I don't believe one's decision is more valid than the other. They both know me. They are both equally capable of deciding what is right.
Caitlin Moran
Forget the myths you have heard about radical feminism, for only some of them are true. Instead, prepare to think about why so many lies are told about this particular brand of feminism, how it acts as a scapegoat for all that is most threatening about our social movement and how any revolutionary movement for change could really ever be anything but threatening. These are the women you were warned about; you can be too.
Finn Mackay
...this pattern of casual intrusion whereby women could be leered at, touched, harassed, and abused without a second though, was sexism: implicit, explicit, commonplace, and deep-rooted, pretty much everywhere you'd care to look.
Laura Bates
Not being bothered to exercise your right to vote is a privilege that many women still don't have. Dismissing politicians as all the same is a luxury. Our votes may not seem very important to us, but our lives without them would be immeasurably worse. For we needed universal suffrage to be firmly and unarguably in place before we could demand equal rights. And while it may be tempting for people to mutter that feminism is old-fashioned, boring and a fight already won, we have have to look at the statistics to see that what is true for women is a very long way short of being true for us all.
Natalie Haynes
Look, choosing to wait until marriage makes me feel empowered. But if the same choice cripples you, then it wasn't the right one.
Rachael Allen
I will stand up and speak in my own voice and no man will ever silence me again.
Philippa Gregory
Couldn't a woman be happy doing a great many things, just as a man could?
Zoë Marriott
She will be your living hell.
David Bowie
I dislike Tolkien, another Oxonian Old Norse obsessive, with his war games and made-up language in a world without women.
Sarah Moss
My spirit is willing to do what is right; and my flesh, I hope, is strong enough to accomplish the will of Heaven
Charlotte Brontë
Gracious Creator of the whole human race! hast thou created such a being as woman, who can trace thy wisdom in thy works, and feel that thou alone art by thy nature, exalted above her-for no better purpose? Can she believe that she was only made to submit to man her equal; a being, who, like her, was sent into the world to acquire virtue? Can she consent to be occupied merely to please him; merely to adorn the earth, when her soul is capable of rising to thee? And can she rest supinely dependent on man for reason, when she ought to mount with him the arduous steeps of knowledge?
Mary Wollstonecraft
The mainstream media perpetuates the notion that women should focus entirely on a static image of a perfect body as the end goal. There are no messages about the process, the active body, how it makes us feel in that moment.
Anna Kessel
The real problem here is a massive elephant in the room: our own culture. Our social values, our media - so influential on impressionable young girls - that have been allowed, for millenia, to send out this powerful, alienating message about girls and sport: that sport is unfeminine, that sport makes you sweaty and muscular, that sport is swearing and violence, that sport is ugliness in a world where women’s sole priority, value and focus should be beauty and becoming an object of desire.
Anna Kessel
In fact, in recent years I have become more and more didactic about pubic hair - to the point where I now believe that there are only four things a grown, modern woman should have: a pair of yellow shoes (they unexpectedly go with everything), a friend who will come and post bail at 4 a.m., a fail-safe pie recipe, and a proper muff. A big, hairy minge. A lovely furry moof that looks - when she sits, naked - as if she has a marmoset sitting in her lap. A tame marmoset, that she can send of to pickpocket things, should she so need it - like that trained monkey in Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Caitlin Moran
Every man with a vote was considered a foe to woman suffrage unless he was prepared to be actively a friend.
Emmeline Pankhurst
The thing they wanted they called the Vote, but that demand so hollow, so eyeless, had all the terrifying effect of a mask. Behind that mask was a formless invincible discontent with the lot of womanhood. It wanted, — it was not clear what it wanted, but whatever it wanted, all the domestic instincts of mankind were against admitting there was anything it could want.
H.G.Wells
Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts, as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, to absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags. It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex.
Charlotte Brontë
I’m not going to be like my mother. You’re maniacs. You’re mad.“Yes,” said Kate. “I know it. And so you won’t be. The best of luck to you. And what are you going to be instead?
Doris Lessing
Younger woman says, “I’m not going to be like my mother. You’re maniacs. You’re mad.”“Yes,” [older woman responds] “I know it. And so you won’t be. The best of luck to you. And what are you going to be instead?
Doris Lessing
Transgenderism depends for its very existence on the idea that there is an ‘essence’ of gender, a psychology and pattern of behaviour, which is suited to persons with particular bodies and identities.This is the opposite of the feminist view, which is that the idea of gender is the foundation of the political system of male domination. ‘Gender’, in traditional patriarchal thinking, ascribes skirts, high heels and a love of unpaid domestic labour to those with female biology, and comfortable clothing, enterprise and initiative to those with male biology. In the practice of transgenderism, traditional gender is seen to lose its sense of direction and end up in the minds and bodies of persons with inappropriate body parts that need to be corrected. But without ‘gender’, transgenderism could not exist. From a critical, feminist point of view, when transgender rights are inscribed into law and adopted by institutions, they instantiate ideas that are harmful to women’s equality and give authority to outdated notions of essential differences between the sexes. Transgenderism is indeed transgressive, but of women’s rights rather than an oppressive social system.
Sheila Jeffreys
I’m not going to be like my mother. You’re maniacs. You’re mad."“Yes,” said Kate. “I know it. And so you won’t be. The best of luck to you. And what are you going to be instead?
Doris Lessing
A slut isn’t a person, it’s in the eye of the beholder. Like beauty, or an annoying eyelash. We decide who a girl is based on something she’s done (or even just rumoured to have done) and then brand her with it as if it’s a permanent part of her identity. Guys, on the other hand, get to wear their relationships and ‘conquests’ like medals or badges of honour, which are much easier to take off, and hurt a lot less.
Laura Bates
Burning Woman is a powerful image. A role model. A metaphor. A warning. A source of power. She is Feminine power incarnate.
Lucy H. Pearce
Those in the System, would like us to share their belief that all the changes [we are witnessing] are not connected: they are simply anomalies, isolated symptoms to be treated or preferably ignored, before the all-powerful Western capitalist patriarchal model goes on to ever greater heights and grander ejaculations. Most are numb to it, caught in fear, denial or resistance.But we, Burning Woman, know this process intimately. Amongst Burning Women and Men, there is a fierce, quiet knowing that these are both the death pangs of the old, and the birthing pangs of the new.
Lucy H. Pearce
It was the 'Are the boys doing it?' basis on which I finally decided I was against women wearing burkas. Yes, the idea is that it protects your modesty, and ensures that people regard you as a human being, rather than just a sexual object (...) But who are you being protected from? Men. And who - so long as you play by the rules, and wear the correct clothes - is protecting you from the men? Men. And who is it that is regarding you as a sexual object, instead of another human being, in the first place? Men. Well. This all seems like quite a man-based problem, really. (...) I don't know why we're suddenly having to put things on our heads to make it better.
Caitlin Moran
Fighting for equality is often misunderstood as simply being offered the same terms as men on paper. In may ways we already have that. What we don’t have is emancipation: the opportunity to be free of social and external shackles that perpetuate inequality and women’s lower position.
Dawn Foster
Women, “the softer sex”, are expected to bare this emotional performance yet accept the fact it is undervalued, both classified as an intrinsic skill that accompanies living whilst female, and the belief that it cannot be taught formally, so is less valuable
Dawn Foster
Sexual objectification doesn't get oppressive until it is done consistently, and to a specific group of people, and with no regard whatsoever paid to their humanity. Then it ceases to become about desire and starts to be about control. Seeing another person as meat and fat and bone and nothing else gives you power over them, if only for an instant. Structural sexual objection of women draws that instant out into an entire matrix of hurt. It tells us that women are bodies first, idealised, subservient bodies, and men are not.
Laurie Penny
If we are to be women in power, then it must be power on very different terms. we have to find a new source of energy. New structures of power. Ones that don’t deplete us or our environment. We need to run our lives on sustainable energy.
Lucy H. Pearce
Breaking our silence is powerful. Whether it comes as a whisper or a squeak at first, allow that sense of spaciousness, of opening, allow yourself to trust the bottomlessness, and lean into the dark roar which will light up every cell.Though it may start softly, we build in confidence and skills, we realise we do not need to wait for permission before we open our mouths. We do not need to wait for others to make space for us, we can take it. We do not need to read from others’ scripts or style ourselves in weak comparison. We do not need to look to another’s authority because we have our own. Down in our cores. We have waited so long for permission to know that it was our time, our turn on stage. That time is now. Our voices are being heard into being. They are needed.
Lucy H. Pearce
Often we can get caught in our own struggles, our own small stories, that we forget our place in the larger story arc – the way that our actions, our choices, our achievements can and will blaze trails for that who come after us, so that they do not have to spend their time and energy re-fighting the same battles.For sure we walk a spiral path, but for generations of women the spirals were so tightly packed that it seemed they were going round in circles – let us blaze trails so that the path we walk takes in wider and wider sweeps of human experience.Trail blazing is what we do when we find ourselves in the wilderness, with no path to guide us but our own intuitive understanding of nature and our destination. At times we must walk through the night, guided only by the stars. We know when to sit and rest, to shelter from storms, when to gather water, and what on the trail will sustain us and what will do us harm. We are courageous and cautious in equal measure, but we are driven forward, not only by our own desire to reach our destination, but also by the desire to leave a viable way for others who follow. Trail blazing is an art-form. It is how we find paths through what before was wilderness. We push aside braches, or cut them back, we tramp down nettles and long grasses, ford rivers and streams, through the inner and outer landscapes.
Lucy H. Pearce