Feminism Quotes - Page 3

To me, 'sexual freedom' means freedom from having to have sex.

I am a strong and powerful woman.I am proud to be a woman and I celebrate the qualities that I have as a woman.I am not defined by other people’s opinion of who I should be or what I should do as a woman. I determine that, not anyone else.I am not passed up for a position, title, or promotion because I am a woman.I fully deserve all the good things that comes my way.Irrespective of what anyone might think, being a woman places no boundaries or limits on my abilities.I can do anything I set my mind to.I celebrate my womanhood and I am beautiful both inside and out.

Idowu Koyenikan

The vagina is obliterated from the imagery of femininity in the same way that the signs of independence and vigor in the rest of her body are suppressed.

Never has it been inappropriate for a girl to wear a red dress.

Caroline George

To be a woman is to be a fighter! A woman has to be strong and has to fight every moment of her life - against a society that believes in patriarchy, chauvinism and male privilege!

What a loss it would be if feminism killed chivalry.

To misbehave us to denounce the social norms that limit individuals based on who they are. That to make history is to upset patriarchy, a system that is intent on controlling and marginalising others.

How do I negotiate my way across life with a system that I find so violent yet it seems so normal to many others?

In nude protests, the very same body that is objectified and subjected to endless scrutiny and policing is used to reclaim power.

The assumption that women in hijab are less enlightened or empowered than those rocking daisy dukes is arrogant at best. Feminism should fight for all women to have he right to live as they choose, not for all women to live the same exact lives like we're all in some sort of Sims game.

...the Men Who Knew came out of the woodwork.

The bourgeois sees in his wife a mere instrument of production.

Karl Marx

On top of dealing with the emotional trauma associated with conscious and unconscious recalling, you must deal with the possibility of no one believing you or making you doubt your experiences. When women speak out about their abusers, they have to deal with the police and society not believing them

Society is obsessed with women's bodies and I take my body back by doing whatever it is that I want to do with my body

Yes, we love the good men in our lives and sometimes, oftentimes, the bad ones too- but that we're not in full revolution against the lot of them is pretty amazing when you consider this truth: men get to rape and kill women and still come home to a dinner cooked by one.

Jessica Valenti

Womanism is feminism's vulgate. It asserts that women are the oppressed or the victims and never the collaborators in the 'bad' things that men do. It entails a double standard around sexuality where women's sexual self-expression is seen as necessary and even desirable, but men's is seen as dangerous or even disgusting. Womanism is by no means confined to a tiny, politically motivated bunch of man-hating feminists, but is a regular feature of mainstream culture.

Rosalind Coward

It's actually such a tragedy that I live in a world that is inspired by me putting my body or mental state on the line

It always pisses me off when I’m calling in to some Morning Zoo radio show to promote God-only-knows what—probably this book, so get ready, I’m comin’—when the DJ actually tries to convince me that there are as many female comics as male ones. Cue hypermasculine Morning Zoo Hacky McGee voice: “So Kath, I don’t know what you chicks are always complaining about.” To which I respond: “Really? Why don’t you call your local comedy club and ask for the Saturday night lineup? I guarantee you the male to female ratio is going to be about nine to one. You dick-wad.

If you are causing trouble, look for allies, always.

Justine Larbalestier

This was the price for the the strange life she had chosen, but she had gone into it with eyes open, and there was no profit in regret.

Donna Woolfolk Cross

With boys there was a fundamental assumption that they had a right to be there—not always, but more often than not. With girls, Why her? came up so quickly.

Here's a tip. If you touch a girl, even as joke, and she pushes you off, leave... her... alone. Don't touch her. Anywhere! Just stop. Your touch does nothing but sicken her.

Jay Asher

So tell me gentleman, tell me the time and place where it was easy to be a woman.

Andrew Sean Greer

Whatever my powers--feminine or the contrary--God had given them, and I felt resolute to be ashamed of no faculty of his bestowal.

Charlotte Brontë

Of all creatures that can feel and think,we women are the worst treated things alive

Euripides

I am done looking for love where it doesn’t exist. I am done coughing up dust in attempts to drink from dry wells.

Maggie Georgiana Young

A slut is someone, usually a woman, who’s stepped outside of the very narrow lane that good girls are supposed to stay within. Sluts are loud. We’re messy. We don’t behave. In fact, the original definition of “slut” meant “untidy woman.” But since we live in a world that relies on women to be tidy in all ways, to be quiet and obedient and agreeable and available (but never aggressive), those of us who color outside of the lines get called sluts. And that word is meant to keep us in line.

Jaclyn Friedman

What was justice, after all, but a particular outcome?

Suzanne Rindell

Love was always and only about good feeling. In early adolescence when we were whipped and told that these punishments were 'for our own good' or 'I'm doing this because I love you,' my siblings and I were confused. Why was harsh punishment a gesture of love? As children do, we pretended to accept this grown-up logic; but we knew in our hearts it was not right. We knew it was a lie. Just like the lie the grown-ups told when they explained after the harsh punishment, 'This hurts me more than it hurts you.' There is nothing that creates more confusion about love in the minds and hearts of children than unkind and/or cruel punishment meted out by the grown-ups they have been taught should love and respect. Such children learn early on to question the meaning of love, to yearn for love even as they doubt it exists.

We need feminism because degrading phrases like "walk of shame" are commonplace in our social vocabulary, yet these are only applied to women; whereas men in the same situation are praised by their peers and seen as nothing more than " a guy who got lucky", by the rest of society.

Miya Yamanouchi

THIS IS WHAT A MAN LOOKS LIKE. HE DOES NOT HAVE TO BE AESTHETICALLY PLEASING; HE DOES NOT HAVE TO BE MUSCULAR; HE DESERVES NOT TO BE PHOTOSHOPPED. HE IS HUMAN, AND HE HAS BLEMISHES. HERE HE STANDS, VISIBLE. HE SEES YOU ALL, COUNTLESS INVISIBLE OTHERS LIKE HIM. THIS BODY IS ACCEPTABLE — PUBESCENT, AWKWARD, MARRED. YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE INVISIBLE. WE ARE ALL GOOD ENOUGH. THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH OUR BODIES.

Agnostic Zetetic

And that's the point; not even girls want to be girls so long as our feminine archetype lacks force, strength and power. Not wanting to be girls, they don't want to be tender, submissive, peace-loving as good women are. Women's strong qualities have become despised because of their week ones.

Feminist movement is pro-family.

My mother had been in the Soviet whirlpool for eleven years by this point. Enough time, I imagine, to unlearn the bourgeois habits of her native Brooklyn, to accustom herself to the farting and shouting of her neighbours, to doing her washing by hand in the collective tub, to keeping her dry food locked up in her wardrobe

Shrouded as he was for a decade in an apparent cloak of anonymity and obscurity, Osama bin Laden was by no means an invisible man. He was ubiquitous and palpable, both in a physical and a cyber-spectral form, to the extent that his death took on something of the feel of an exorcism. It is satisfying to know that, before the end came, he had begun at least to guess at the magnitude of his 9/11 mistake. It is essential to remember that his most fanatical and militant deputy, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, did not just leave his corpse in Iraq but was isolated and repudiated even by the minority Sunnis on whose presumed behalf he spilled so much blood and wrought such hectic destruction. It is even more gratifying that bin Laden himself was exposed as an excrescence on the putrid body of a bankrupt and brutish state machine, and that he found himself quite unable to make any coherent comment on the tide—one hopes that it is a tide, rather than a mere wave—of demand for an accountable and secular form of civil society. There could not have been a finer affirmation of the force of life, so warmly and authentically counterposed to the hysterical celebration of death, and of that death-in-life that is experienced in the stultifications of theocracy, where womanhood and music and literature are stifled and young men mutated into robotic slaughterers.

Christopher Hitchens

What makes you think I ever got married? Married women work themselves to death, all their money goes to husbands who gamble it away. Why would I ever do that to myself?

Kim van Alkemade

She was still not at ease with the idea that she was now important enough to have people as accessories. Nor was she comfortable with the idea of these people as gatekeepers with access to the details of their personal lives. Whenever she felt herself shrinking under the indifferent glare of the staff that surrounded her, as she did in this instance, she straightened her back and lifted her chin in the way that Chiedza, her trusted advisor-friend, had instructed her to do.

Panashe Chigumadzi

Anyone could see that this woman is living a nightmare. Except that she goes through her daily life wide awake, knowing that she could make a mistake at any moment.

We should try to leave the world a better place than when we entered it. As individuals, we can make a difference, whether it is to probe the secrets of Nature, to clean up the environment and work for peace and social justice, or to nurture the inquisitive, vibrant spirit of the young by being a mentor and a guide.

Until quite recently women's histories were largely overlooked but in the wake of feminism there has been increasing interest in retrieving them.

We often fear that the Revolution needed is too big for what we can give.Too much change is required inside, outside.And we are too small.But all that is required is that you step into the truth of your life. And speak it, write it, paint it, dance it.That you shine your light on your truth, for the world to see.And as hundreds, then thousands, then millions do this – each sparking the courage of yet more – Suddenly we have a world alight with truth.

I’ve heard so many people, particularly people of faith, say they could look past his wrongdoings. When they’re pressed further, the reply is always some variation of “He doesn’t mean what he says,” “It’s just to get a rise out of people,” or “It’s all for show.” When you turn a blind eye and a deaf ear and say nothing, you are in fact saying everything. You are telling others you approve of immorality and injustice. You are telling them you support the marginalization and vilification of those who are different from you. You are telling them that fear reigns supreme and that you will tolerate nefarious behavior. As President John F. Kennedy said in a speech: “The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crises, maintain their neutrality.”- Amy Erickson

Female competition is when you are with a guy you like and you look around, see a girl who is prettier than you standing nearby, and think to yourself: "I wish she wasn't here." -This is what happens when you attach your identity and sense of worth to the amount of male attention you receive.

Miya Yamanouchi

Sexual satisfaction eases the stranglehold of materialism, since status symbols no longer look sexual, but irrelevant. Product lust weakens where emotional and sexual lust intensifies. The price we pay for artificially buoying up this market is our heart's desire. The beauty myth keeps a gap of fantasy between men and women. That gap is made with mirrors; no law of nature supports it. It keeps us spending vast sums of money and looking distractedly around us, but its smoke and reflection interfere with our freedom to be sexually ourselves.

Modern cosmetic surgeons have a direct financial interest in a social role for women that requires them to feel ugly. They do not simply advertise for a share of a market that already exists: Their advertisements create new markets. It is a boom industry because it is influentially placed to create its own demand through the pairing of text with ads in women's magazines. The industry takes out ads and gets coverage; women get cut open. They pay their money and they takes their chances. As surgeons grow richer, they are able to command larger and brighter ad spaces.

The maturing of a woman who has continued to grow is a beautiful thing to behold.Or, if your ad revenue or your seven-figure salary or your privileged sexual status depend on it, it is an operable condition.

Young women today feel vulnerable to judgment; if a harsh sentence is passed (or even suspected or projected), it is not her reputation that suffers so much as the stability of her moral universe. They did not have long to explore the sexual revolution and make it their own. Before the old chains had grown cold, while young women were still rubbing the circulation back into their ankles and taking tentative steps forward, the beauty industries levied a heavy toll on further investigations, and beauty pornography offered them designer bondage.

Why should her lover, just because he is male, be in a position to judge her against other women? Why must she need to know her position and hate needing to, and hate knowing? Why should his reply have such exaggerated power? And it does. He does not know that what he says will affect the way she feels when they next make love. She is angry for a number of good reasons that may have nothing to do with this particular man's intentions. The exchange reminds her that, in spite of a whole fabric of carefully woven equalities, they are not equal in this way that is so crucial that its snagged thread unravels the rest.

The Victorian woman became her ovaries, as today's woman has become her "beauty.

Women who love themselves are threatening; but men who love real women, more so.

Female competition is when you are with a guy you like and you look around, see that you're the prettiest girl in the vicinity and feel a huge sense of relief that there's no one to take the attention away from you. (Female competition is a result of women feeling like their greatest sense of self worth , identity and influence comes from their sexual appeal to men. Many women don't even realise they are feeling this way and it's a subconscious thing, but they notice themselves getting jealous when they see other women who they think men would find sexually appealing.)

Miya Yamanouchi

Abort the thought, save the baby

Chinonye J. Chidolue

Where I grew up, women’s liberation was when you let a chick out of her cage for 15 minutes so she could stretch her legs.

I see stunning men walking on the street everyday. Some walk shirtless because it's hot and they feel more comfortable that way. Do I scream out at them, beep at them or whistle? No, I smile to myself in appreciation of them and drive on by. Why? Because I believe they have the right to go about their lives without me imposing my sexual desire upon them.

Miya Yamanouchi

Our planet is about ... billions of years old. So far, the earliest finds of modern human skeletons come from Africa, which date to nearly 200,000 years ago. We have made such an advanced technological progress, but here we are today, still condemning women based on their sexuality and celebrate it every year. This very 'social' movement is the enemy of women and humanity in general for it is feeding the labels, categorizations, divisions, and inequalities for somewhat 100 years now.Since its inception somewhere in the early 1900s, women were finally given(external) 'rights' allowing us to work and even vote. There used to be and quite outrageously still is a huge inequality in the functions/roles of men and women in homes, workplaces and in civil society. Women were then seen as inferior and still are today, mainly because economic achievement has become one of the most important foundation and determinant in the worthiness/value of an individual."Womens day" pretends to celebrate women but the opposite is true. Through its systematized, preplanned and preconstructed feminist surrogate, women have been slowly but steadily stripped off a secure, nurturing sacred and honoured image as wives, mothers, but above all as procreating human beings representing life and its backbone, are turned into cheap, brainless, sexual objects and hostages of the economy.And whenever the tyranny of materialism and capitalism ends, and we the people as a whole recognize the inherent, deep rootedness and nature of human beings, will the female sex be liberated from feminism.

Nadja Sam

(...) psychiatrists today recognize the contortionist's act that was required of women in an age when they were expected to stifle their own healthiest impulses. (...) "To be able to renounce your own achievements without feeling that you were sacrificing requires constant effort. To be lovely and unaggressive, a woman spends a lifetime keeping hostile or resentful impulses down. Even healthy self-assertion is often sacrificed since it may be mistaken by hostility. Therefore, [women] often repress their initiative, give up their aspirations, and unfortunately end up excessively dependent with a deep sense of insecurity and uncertainty about their abilities and their worth.

Colette Dowling

We are diamonds in the roughThrough the thrust and toil, we come out strongWe are the breath of the earth,Our wombs tell of humanity's birthWe are seeds splattered on putrid soilsStill we sprout, through every stormWe are not here to survive,We are here to live...Inward and outwardIn the incandescence of our existenceYes, our voices may sometimes be brokenBut our spirit remains indestructible. We are women, unapologetically!

Chinonye J. Chidolue

[In 16th century European society] Marriage was the triumphal arch through which women, almost without exception, had to pass in order to reach the public eye. And after marriage followed, in theory, the total self-abnegation of the woman.

Maybe that was the root of my dislike for her: she had what I wanted, which earned her my jealousy, and since I was ashamed of myself for wanting it, my scorn, as well.

The Vatican won't prosecute pedophile priests but I decide I'm not ready for motherhood and it's condemnation for me? These are the same people that won't support national condom distribution that PREVENTS teenage pregnancy.

Sonya Renee Taylor

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