Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Marilyn French

Quote by Marilyn French

“Men believe that women were nonvolitional beings, bound to their bodies and their instincts. But studies have shown that mothering is learned; is not instinctive. We learn to mother by being mothered, and creatures that are not mothered cannot do it. Taking care creates love, for a baby, a piece of land, an animal. Men devalue this work, attributing it to mere instinct, ignoring the many women who abandon children or raise them cruelly. Taking responsibility is not instinctual in human beings as it is in other mammals. It is a choice.”

Quote by Marilyn French

Book:From Eve to Dawn: A History of Women in the World, Vol. 1
Create image

Work

From Eve to Dawn: A History of Women in the World, Vol. 1

Browse quotes and source details for this work. more

Author

Marilyn French
Marilyn French

Marilyn French, born on November 21, 1929 and died on May 2, 2009, was a prominent American author known for her feminist perspective in her works. Her writings focused on the status of women in society, family, and sexuality, with notable works including 'The Feminine Mystique'. more

You May Also Like

“Every day on our television screens and in our nation's newspapers we are brought news of continued male violence at home and all around the world. When we hear that teenage boys are arming themselves and killing their parents, their peers, or strangers, a sense of alarm permeates our culture. Folks want to have answers. They want to know, Why is this happening? Why so much killing by boy children now, and in this historical moment? Yet no one talks about the role patriarchal notions of manhood play in teaching boys that it is their nature to kill, then teaching them that they can do nothing to change this nature -- nothing, that is, that will leave their masculinity intact.”

FeminismMasculinity
Author:Bell Hooks
Create image

“If men were content to love a peer instead of a slave — as indeed some men do who are without either arrogance or an inferiority complex — then women would be far less obsessed with their femininity; they would become more natural and simple and would easily rediscover themselves as women, which, after all, they are.”

Inspirational QuotesFeminismNon FictionFeminism QuotesSociology QuotesPhilosophical QuotesQuestioning Society
Book:Extracts From: The Second Sex
Create image

“Living in a rape culture means adjusting to being hyper-vigilant about male violence to the point where risk management becomes second nature. It means living with the continuum of male sexual violence on a daily basis, form creepy and threatening looks and comments in the street, home and workplace, to online rape threats, attempted assault and actual assault. It means inhabiting a paradoxical space where the rape and murder of women is prohibited but everywhere eroticised and the object of laughter.”

FeminismMisogynyWomen S RightsWomen S Liberation
Book:Misogyny Re-Loaded
Create image

“Many men, when asked a simple question about why male domination exists, reply that it is because men are stronger than women. This answer seems innocuously simple minded, but the explanatory statement that ‘men have power over women because they are physically stronger than women’ also means ‘men can rape and kill women if they want to’. There is no point replying that it is illegal to rape and kill women. The law does not come into it at all. It is as though the legal prohibitions against male sexual violence are little more that the sales pitch of a corporation eager to hide its criminal intent behind images of satisfied customers.”

FeminismMisogynyWomen S RightsWomen S Liberation
Book:Misogyny Re-Loaded
Create image

“Gender is to sexism as woman is to misogyny. Sexism and gender are male friendly neo liberal words. “Won’t somebody please think of the men?” because they are, apparently, equal to women in their oppression by sexism and gender. The male elite of the new world order are actually victims of heterosexual masculinity. It would make as much sense to replace ‘white supremacy’ with the concept of ‘racially based discrimination’, or ‘ruling class oppression’ with the concept of ‘economically based prejudice’. The tactic is about obscuring forms of violence which, despite the laboriously pompous deconstructions of identity politics, are still identity based.”

FeminismMisogynyWomen S RightsWomen S LiberationRadical Feminism
Book:Misogyny Re-Loaded
Create image