Quotes by Authors - Page 238

An avowed feminist activist and an outspoken bisexual, DiFranco has been candid about the necessity of women musicians identifying with the F-word. "Either you are a feminist or you are a sexist/misogynist," she once wrote. "There is no box marked 'other'".
Marisa Meltzer
At a small dinner with other business executives, the guest of honor spoke the entire time without taking a breath. This meant that the only way to ask a question or make an observation was to interrupt. Three or four men jumped in, and the guest politely answered their questions before resuming his lecture. At one point, I tried to add something to the conversation and he barked, "Let me finish! You people are not good at listening!" Eventually, a few more men interjected and he allowed it. Then the only other female executive at the dinner decided to speak up--and he did it again! He chastised her for interrupting. After the meal, one of the male CEOs pulled me aside to say that he had noticed that only the women had been silenced. He told me he empathized, because as a Hispanic, he has been treated like this many times.
Sheryl Sandberg
As a Christian, my highest calling is not motherhood; my highest calling is to follow Christ.
Rachel Held Evans
My father lost me to the Beast at cards
Angela Carter
A woman of battle cannot take the same risks as a woman of the fields or a woman of the town. One may not strap a baby basket to one’s back along with one’s swords and ride off to battle." -- Renda of Brannagh,
Jordan MacLean
For a woman to be taken as seriously as a man she must be three times as effective. Happily, this is not difficult.--Simone de Beauvoir
Gale Martin
This is why we all fight so hard. Not just for the vote, but for an equal opportunity in the world. A vote is a voice. I think you underestimate yourself, Queenie. This is your fight, same as it is mine.
Sharon Biggs Waller
A feminist is someone who believes in social, political, and economic equality of the sexes.
Sheryl Sandberg
The creature was weeping, and who could blame it, as hideous and abject and lonely as it was? But its tears, Hannah perceived suddenly, didn't just spring from wretchedness. They were also tears of relief, because it was alive, because it had survived another day. How could anything be grateful for such an existence? And yet, this creature was, and when it saw itself and knew that it wanted to live in spite of everything, it wept even harder, sobbing inconsolably until it was depleted.
Hillary Jordan
Ruth was a novelist, and novelists, Oliver asserted, should have cats and books.
Ruth Ozeki
One needn't identify as a feminist to participate in the redemptive movement of God for women in the world, The gospel is more than enough. Of course it is! But as long as I know how important maternal health is to Haiti's future, and as long as I know that women are being abused and raped, as long as I know girls are being denied life itself through selective abortion, abandonment, and abuse, as long as brave little girls in Afghanistan are attacked with acid for the crime of going to school, and until being a Christian is synonymous with doing something about these things, you can also call me a feminist.
Sarah Bessey
...so individuals have their flesh cut and pulled, surgery companies proclaim it as an empowering choice, and the stifling cultural ideals about women's appearance are left unscathed
Kat Banyard
Why does it have to come down to choosing just one man, when no one man can give me everything I want?
Rebecca Warner
When someone falls,” Mark said, “you don’t throw her back down in the dirt. You offer her a hand up. It’s the Christian thing to do.
Courtney Milan
All feminists are suffragists, but not all suffragists are feminists," as one feminist explained.
Jill Lepore
This was her body. She had learned to take pleasure in it, even if no man had ever done the same. It was curved and generous and womanly and strong, and it was formed to do more than decorate a drawing room, or transfer wealth from one gentleman to another.She was made to tempt, labor, inspire, create, sustain.Despite the way Rafe held her bound in his grasp, a sense of power moved through her. For once, she could revel in her femininity and feel it as something other than a disadvantage to be overcome. A quality to be respected, worshiped. Even feared.
Tessa Dare
I adhere to the law of chastity because I don’t believe in pushing women. That’s what it means to be a man. I don’t hurt others simply to make myself feel superior. Gossip can ruin a woman as surely as unchaste behavior. True men don’t indulge in either. We don’t need to.
Courtney Milan
At some point, while you were roaming the globe, making treaties and dividing the spoils of war, I quietly declared my own independence. I am the sovereign nation of Clio now. And there will be no terms of surrender.
Tessa Dare
We are strong and proud and beautiful and there are not enough stars in the night sky to measure our worth. I will honor my mother and take care of my family.Yes, I think. I am just a woman.
Kristen Simmons
While men had the right to obey their biological urges, women had to suppress theirs until the perfect moment. From television, movies, books, magazines, my peers, and even some of my relatives, I was taught that if a woman allowed a man to penetrate her too soon, she was too easy of a conquest for him. He would move on to pursue greater challenges after he was finished using her body to relieve his sexual urges. If the woman waited too long to let the man enter her body, she was a prude and the man would eventually give up on her. Women needed to time this process perfectly so that she could “keep” a man in her life at all times.It was the man’s goal to catch the woman and the woman’s goal to keep the man.
Maggie Georgiana Young
The gentlemanly Number 23 would have never made such a crude statement to a lady. But I was not a lady. Sure, I was intelligent and strong, but I dared to be wide open. I was Maggie Young, chaser of boys, writer of scandal, dropper of f-bombs, tits on a stick.
Maggie Georgiana Young
Being a full-time feminist means that every day I make a choice to make equality a part of my life, mind, and behavior. I set out purposefully to support women, to create a dialogue with men, and to interject when I see ignorance and misunderstanding. For me this has meant that in my work I often choose to share my financial gains with women (although I do also employ men regularly, to film my music videos or produce my songs with my band Girlboy), and when I see a woman working, or reaching for her ambitions, I like to show my support. In my romantic relationships with men, this has meant when there is misunderstanding, I take the time to think about why that could be, and to discuss whatever problems we face. Thinking about the influence of the gender concept on our behavior and decisions is now ingrained in my subconscious.
Abigail Tarttelin
I have a suspicion - and hear me out, 'cause this is a rough one - I have a suspicion that the definition of "crazy" in show business is a woman who keeps talking even after no one wants to fuck her anymore. The only person I can think of that has escaped the "crazy" moniker is Betty White, which, obviously, is because people still want to have sex with her.
Tina Fey
I think the HeforShe campaign is a fantastic initiative, and of course men and boys should be involved in seeking equality for women, because we are people, and you are people, and people should help out other people. I think more engagement too could be found from addressing the problems males face from gender inequality, because while the problems girls and women face from sexism are much more violent, I sometimes think the pressures on boys and men are more poisonous. If we think about it clearly, we see that the gender inequalities men face often lead to the gender inequalities women face. For instance, domestic abuse is often about a man’s assertion of power and control, but if he didn’t think he needed those things in the first place, would the abuse ever happen? Similarly, rape culture is often about male entitlement, but that sense of entitlement comes from what we as a society tell men about their gender, and what it means.
Abigail Tarttelin
He doesn't need to tend her, because she hunts her own prey. He doesn't need to shield her, because she kills her own enemies. He doesn't need to look for her, because she's always at his side.
Kate Quinn
When men start affording more rights to women, maybe we'll be nicer to the ones we don't like. But for now, I know that I myself am too busy trying to preserve my rights and faculties to take care of a man's fragile ego.
Leanna Renee Hieber
Does feminist mean large unpleasant person who'll shout at you or someone who believes women are human beings? To me it's the latter, so I sign up
Margaret Atwood
And yet the idea that women are human beings remains news, a message that requires constant, clear, and artful reinforcement in a world that continues to undermine the confidence and abilities of girls and women. On the day that the intelligence and talents of women are fully honored and employed, the human community and planet itself will benefit in ways we can only begin to imagine.
Anita Diamant
I rarely meet men in real life as extraordinary as ones on film, and rarely see women on film as extraordinary as ones I know in real life
Jen Richards
I used to try to be cool. I said things that I didn't believe about other people, and celebrities, and myself; I wrote mean jokes for cheap, "edgy" laughs; I neglected good friendships for shallow one; I insisted I wasn't a feminist; I nodded along with casual misogyny in hopes that shitty dudes would like me.
Lindy West
Oh, why did he slap her when she’s a widow, and that annoyed her even more. She said she should not have been slapped because she is a full human being, not because she doesn’t have a husband to speak for her.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
I thought all men were the enemy," he said as a tease. I narrowed my eyes. "Well who exactly do you think teaches little girls to see other little girls as the enemy, when in fact it's all just a lie to make sure we never consolidate our talents and rise to power?" I watched Lock's expression brighten and I changed the subject before he said something annoying, like how lovely I looked when I ranted about the patriarchy.
Heather Petty
She tried to ignore that, this close to the man, he had the overpowering chemical scent of a manly shower gel. That sort that normally came in a black bottle and was called something like SHOCK or EXCITE or BLUNT TRAUMA.
Maggie Stiefvater
There’s no need to apologise, Justine,' he said tautly. 'No need at all.''Good, because I didn’t mean to. It’s a habit with females, that’s all, saying sorry all the time when there’s absolutely no need. . .
Miranda Lee
…if divinity, which is the goddess, is intrinsic to her being, something she caries around with her all the time, something she is, then her status in general shifts. Then one would need to be vigilant, constantly maintaining an attitude of listening to her, as ordinary woman, which affords a shift in the normative discourse between the genders and that allows for a recognition of her as a subject, as a person to whom one should listen.
Loriliai Biernacki
I would suggest that especially in the differential of images that arise, in the inflections that we find within the representations of women we may also recover a subjectivity for women. For this reason also I am specifically interested in bringing to light other models for women’s roles, models that upset business as usual and offer a greater diversity of possibilities for the ways we can imagine women.
Loriliai Biernacki
So what is transgressive in the practice of this secret Tantra is the gesture not to elide the difference that women present. What does this mean? That women represent not merely objects, property, or the possibility of sexual gratification, but an opening point to the possibility of difference as the subjectivity of the other. . .Rather, a recognition of the difference women present offers the possibility of a choice not to objectify women. This recognition recodes gendered relations inscribing woman discursively in the place of the subject.
Loriliai Biernacki
Let us remind our poor men folk in deed and song:There are two types of men in this womanly world:Those who know they are weak.Those who think they are strong.
Philip Strax
Her remark laid bare not only the reality - not enough comic opportunities for women in Hollywood - but also the ideology that created and perpetuated that reality. It was right there in the sentence structure, easily parsed: 'All the scripts are for men and you play 'the girl'' suggests that the scripts were handed down by the clean, white hand of God. It banished 'the girl' to the sidelines to perform her girly insignificance on command. It was right there in the dismissive way her comment was received as clickbait all over the Internet. 'Borat's Babe Plans a Hollywood Sex Revolution,' one headline announced, not only missing the point but mocking and dismissing it. Women's experience in its entirety seemed contained in that remark, not to mention several of the stages of feminist grief: the shock of waking up to the fact that the world does not also belong to you; the shame at having been so naive as to have thought it did; the indignation, depression, and despair that follow this realization; and, finally, the marshaling of the handy coping mechanisms, compartmentalization, pragmatism, and diminished expectations.
Carina Chocano
Additionally, many widows took over family shops or businesses- and, not uncommonly, ran them better than their dead husbands. Y.pestis [black death germ] turns out to have been something of a feminist.
John Kelly
The Girl Scouts allow homosexuals and atheists to join their ranks, and they have become a pro-abortion feminist training corps. If the Girl Scouts of America can't get back to teaching real character, perhaps it will be time to look for our cookies elsewhere.
Hans Zeiger
A writer will write with or without a movement; but at the same time, for Chicano, lesbian, gay and feminist writers-anybody writing against the grain of Anglo misogynist culture-political movements are what have allowed our writing to surface from the secret places in our notebooks into the public sphere.
Cherríe L. Moraga
Horseman. I know you were born back when women were thought of as little more than brood mares and slaves, but it's the twenty-first century, and we can do anything a man does.
Larissa Ione
What can we learn from women like Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday that we may not be able to learn from Ida B. Wells, Anna Julia Cooper, and Mary Church Terrell? If we were beginning to appreciate the blasphemies of fictionalized blues women - especially their outrageous politics of sexuality - and the knowledge that might be gleaned from their lives about the possibilities of transforming gender relations within black communities, perhaps we also could benefit from a look at the artistic contributions of the original blues women.
Angela Y. Davis
Fundamentally, I started writing to save my life. Yes, my own life first. I see the same impulse in my students-the dark, the queer, the mixed-blood, the violated-turning to the written page with a relentless passion, a drive to avenge their own silence, invisibility, and erasure as living, innately expressive human beings.
Cherríe L. Moraga
This book is written in blood.Is it written entirely in blood?No, some of it is written in tears. Are the blood and tears all mine?Yes, they have been in the past, but the future is a different ma
Joanna Russ
...women, brave as stars at dawn
Edwidge Danticat
I sink down into my body as into a swamp, fenland, where only I know the footing….I’m a cloud, congealed around a central object, the shape of a pear, which is hard and more real than I am and glows red within its translucent wrapping. Inside it is a space, huge as the sky at night and dark and curved like that, though black-red rather than black.
Margaret Atwood
We must raise both the ceiling and the floor.
Sheryl Sandberg
Mama always said barefoot and pregnant was not my style. She knew.
Barbara Kingsolver
I have a brain and a uterus, and I use both.
Patricia Schroeder
Femininity is depicted as weakness, the sapping of strength, yet masculinity is so fragile that apparently even the slightest brush with the feminine destroys it.
Gwen Sharp
Hey, look at me! Look at me! Look at me! And...look at me. Will he think I'm sexy enough? Will he find me wholesome enough? Am I fuckable? Is he allergic to feathers?!
Emilie Autumn
I am confident, I am capable, and I will not wait to be rescued by a woodsman or a hunter.
Jackson Pearce
Maybe the princess could save herself.""That sounds like a pretty good story too.
Marissa Meyer
We are becoming the men we wanted to marry
Gloria Steinem
These times are unfriendly toward Worlds alternative to this one
Thomas Pynchon
One hundred eighty days, Aislinn. Seth's been gone for one hundred eighty days, and I've watched you try to pretend it doesn't hurt for every one of them. Can't I try to make you happy?
Melissa Marr
The truth is that we live in a world that diminishes possibilities.
Lionel Suggs
It could have been different," I say, almost under my breath. If I'd kissed Indie again after she kissed me. If I hadn't known Cassia before I met Indie."But it's not," Indie says, and she's right.
Ally Condie