“Indeed the word masculine is only a bugbear: there is little reason to fear that women will acquire too much courage or fortitude; for their apparent inferiority with respect to bodily strength, must render them, in some degree, dependent on men in the various relations of life; but why should it be increased by prejudices that give a sex to virtue, and confound simple truths with sensual reveries?”
Source: A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
“Pick-up is just stand-up comedy with higher stakes — the audience is only one person, and she can leave whenever she wants.”
Source: How to Talk to Anyone
“Do you remember the kind of fear that you felt as a child, when you had the sense that anything was possible? Ghosts might be lingering in the shadows. A hand could reach out from underneath your bed and drag you down. Perhaps a vampire lurked in your attic, waiting for the moment when you were alone and defenseless to bare his fangs. As a grown woman, I had plenty to fear in the real world-a man walking too close behind me at
night, a man yelling hateful things in people’s faces on the subway, a man coming through my window or revealing his true colors or doing any number of things.”
Source: A Special Place for Women
“The stovetop was as hot as the sweltering summer day. Mom slowly stirred her bubbling stew made from the old family recipe Of generations past. With one cup each of abandonment, alcoholism, shame, and rage, she served me up a hefty, foul portion. I swallowed it all like mom told me to but was left with only hunger--for compassion, safety, nourishment, and love.”
Source: First, I Believe You: A True Story of Healing from Hidden Memories of Severe Childhood Trauma
“Tears had begun to pour down Nazareth’s face, and the women were delighted to see them; it was when a woman ought to weep but couldn’t that there was cause for alarm. But they hurt for her all the same.”
Source: Native Tongue
“I realized only later that they were my first loves, these earthbound, dusty women, my first audiences and inspiration. Back then, even amid political violence and deprivation, hopes dashed over and over again, in the market, everything seemed so simple, so near, beyond the tentacles of the mighty who would want to crush us: a women's world with other rules.”
Source: What Storm, What Thunder
“Miksi entinen pääministeri "heruttaa"? Onko se väärin? Onhan naisten vapautumiseen aina liittynyt sekä naisellisuuden että seksualisuuden korostaminen, sen ottaminen omiin käsiin. Madonna, Spice Girls, Britney Spears, Taylor Swift, Miley Cyrus, Erika Vikman. Yhä uudelleen joku tunnettu nainen riisuutuu alastonkuviin "rohkeana tekona". Jos ennen nainen oli halun kohde, nyt hän on halun lähde, bosslady, joka päättää itse.”
Source: Sanna Marin - Poikkeuksellinen pääministeri
“Behind every successful woman is herself and a whole bunch of females-only funds and organisations funded by men.”
“Every coin has two sides. Every mountain has a valley. For every strength there is a weakness. Every up has a down. For every in there is an out. For every height there is a depth. Life itself is a mosaic of light and dark. And every human is a study in opposites, a kaleidoscope of good and bad, positive and negative, hopes and losses, dreams and disappointments, successes and failures, courage and fear, confidence and insecurity, power and vulnerability. We do not live in a homogeneous world. We live in a world of brilliant contrasts, vivid diversity, striking polarity, and eloquent disparity...a stunning array of sometimes gorgeous, sometimes glaring, always fascinating differences.”
“Women are, in fact, so much degraded by mistaken notions of female excellence, that I do not mean to add a paradox when I assert, that this artificial weakness produces a propensity to tyrannize, and gives birth to cunning, the natural opponent of strength, which leads them to play off those contemptible infantile airs that undermine esteem even whilst they excite desire.”
Source: A Vindication of the Rights of Woman