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Dale Spender

Dale Spender Biography

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“Undoubtedly our own meanings are partially hidden from us and it is difficult to have access to them. We may use the English language our whole lives without ever noticing the distortions and omissions; we may never become aware that there is no symbol for women's strength. But although it is not always easy to get outside this language trap, to get outside the limitations of one's own language, it is not impossible. There are clues, if one is prepared to look for them.”

FeminismLinguistic Relativity
Book:Man Made Language
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“In a society where men dominate, where women are just another one of all the planet's resources which are available to them, it is predictable that women should be required to hand over their intellectual valuables and that these should go to replenish and enrich the reputations of men. How else could male supremacy be maintained?”

FeminismPatriarchy
Book:The Writing or the Sex?, Or, Why You Don't Have to Read Women's Writing to Know It's No Good
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“So central, however, is reading to feminist reality that it is not unusual to find women acknowledging that a particular book "changed my life"; and so central is writing to feminist experience that it is not unusual to find a feminist defined as "a woman who writes".”

WritingFeminismBooks
Book:The Writing or the Sex?, Or, Why You Don't Have to Read Women's Writing to Know It's No Good
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“Feminism has fought no wars ... killed no opponents ... set up no concentration camps ... starved no enemies ... practiced no cruelty. Its battles have been for education, for the vote, for better working conditions, for safety in the streets ... for reforms in the law.”

Has BeensWarLawFightingWomenEducationEnemyFeminismStreetsConditionsBattleVoteSafetyKillingFeministCrueltyReformOpponentsVotingConcentrationCampsWomen EmpowermentNo WarConcentration CampPublic SafetyAccess To EducationWorking Conditions
Author:Dale Spender
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“Well into the 19th century there were pronouncements from just about every branch of science and medicine that reading, writing, and thinking were dangerous for women. Articles in the Lancet declared that women's brains would burst and their uteruses atrophy if they engaged in any form of rigorous thinking. The famous physician J.D. Kellogg insisted that novel reading was the greatest cause of uterine disease among young women and urged parents to protect their daughters from the dreaded consequences of print.”

IfsThinkingWritingWellsFormYoungReadingCausesParentBrainNovelCenturyDangerousProtectDiseaseDaughterConsequenceMedicineEngagedBranchesPrintSexismArticlesPhysiciansYoung Women19th CenturyAtrophyReading WritingUterusWriting And Thinking
Author:Dale Spender
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“men have their cake and get to eat it too, for while they decree themselves as representative of humanity, women who argue that men are not, are simply showing how little they know! And when men's standards are defined as human standards, then women who assert that women are different, demonstrate how 'inhuman' they are. It is a real 'Catch 22.”

KnowsMenHumansLittlesDifferentRealHumanityStandardsArguingDefinedSexismCakeRepresentativesWomens RightsDecreeInhuman
Author:Dale Spender
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“When I learnt, however, that in 1911 there had been twenty-one regular feminist periodicals in Britain, that there was a feminist book shop, a woman's press, and a woman's bank run by and for women, I could no longer accept that the reason I knew almost nothing about women of the past was because there were so few of them, and they had done so little.”

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Author:Dale Spender
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