“There are no abstract women, whose lives are shaped only or primarily by their gender; in the real world, women have a place in the class, socio-economic, racial and ethnic structures within capitalist social formations.”
Source: Marx, Women, and Capitalist Social Reproduction: Marxist Feminist Essays
“We all rail against class-distinctions, but very few people seriously want to abolish them. Here you come upon the important fact that every revolutionary opinion draws part of its strength from a secret conviction that nothing can be changed.”
Source: The Road to Wigan Pier
“In our country we use different words [than feminism] which mean the liberation or the emancipation of women. Of course I believe in the emancipation of women. It will change a lot of things in society for the better.
But, you know, the class patriarchal system under which we live oppresses men too and the discrimination from which women suffer is not good for the life of men. Don’t you think so?”
Source: Walking through Fire: The Later Years of Nawal El Saadawi, In Her Own Words
“Ils y doivent travailler devant la majestueuse égalité des lois, qui interdit au riche comme au pauvre de coucher sous les ponts, de mendier dans les rues, et de voler du pain.”
Source: Le Lys rouge suivi de Le Jardin d'Épicure
“There's no more education, no more culture - if culture depends on a commonly understood history - and perhaps no more middle class in the United States. There's War.”
Source: My Mother: Demonology
“I Dwelt alone
In a world of moan,
And my soul was a stagnant tide,
Till the fair and gentle Eulalie became my blushing bride-
Till the yellow-haired young Eulalie became my smiling bride
Ah, less-less bright
The stars of night
Than the eyes of the radiant girl!
And never a flake
That the vapor can make
With the moon-tints of purple and pearl,
Can vie with the modest Eulalie's most unregarded curl-
Can vie compare with the bright-eyed Eulalie's most humble and careless curl
Now Doubt-now Pain
Come never again,
For her soul gives me sigh for sigh,
And all day long
Shine, bright and strong,
Astarte within the sky,
While ever to her dear Eulalie upturns her matron eye-
While ever to her young Eulalie upturns her violet eye.”
“The more titles you carry with you, the more masks you find yourself hiding behind.”
Source: Delphine and the Silver Needle
“Suits, ties, and demure dresses didn't protect our ancestors from violence before or during the civil rights movement, and they won't protect residents of the inner city now, no matter how often people try to blame victims of racism for how they are dressed.”
Source: Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot
“Fish?
The little fish eats the tiny fish,
The big fish eats the little fish--
So only the biggest fish get fat.
Do you know any folks like that?”
Source: Where the Sidewalk Ends
“To learn how people describe their understanding of their lives is very
illuminating, for ‘ideas are the conscious expression – real or illusory – of (our) actual relations and activities’, because ‘social existence determines consciousness’ [Marx]. Given that our existence is shaped by the capitalist mode of production, experience, to be fully understood in its broader social and political implications, has to be situated in the context of the capitalist forces and relations that produce it. Experience in itself, however, is suspect because, dialectically, it is a unity of opposites; it is unique, personal, insightful and revealing, and, at the same time, thoroughly social, partial, mystifying, itself the product of historical forces about which individuals may know little or nothing about. Given the emancipatory goals of the RGC [race-gender-class] perspective, it is through the analytical tools of Marxist theory that it can move forward, beyond the impasse revealed by the constant reiteration of variations on the ‘interlocking’ metaphor.”
Source: Marx, Women, and Capitalist Social Reproduction: Marxist Feminist Essays