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Feminism Quotes

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Feminism Quotes

“Any nation that does not learn to place women on the same pedestal of respect and dignity as men, will never in a thousand years attain greatness.”

“For thousands of years, the dumb, uncivilized, stone-age society has reduced women to mere prizes to be won, objects to be shown off, and playthings to be abused and toyed with. Now is the time to stop this primitive madness.”

“What a hundred caring, courageous and conscientious women can achieve in ten years, would take a thousand men a hundred years.”

“Are we to deny our daughters the works of Oscar Wilde, Charles Dickens, John Steinbeck or Shakespeare?....Where is the equality in banning girls from enjoying wonderful works of literature?....What kind of society defines suitable reading material by sex? This is indefensible censorship encouraging ignorance and bias. [About Caitlin Moran's statement.]”

“If attempting to make the world a civilized one, makes you a bad woman in the eyes of the dumb patriarchal society, then, by all means, be it.”

“Arise my Sister! Awake my Sister! Start walking in the path of building your own identity!”

“Women are no sheep.”

“Dex's mother knew she should be afraid for her daughter. This, she'd been told, was the tragedy of being a girl. To live in fear–it was the fate of any parent, maybe, but the special provenance of a mother to a daughter, one woman raising another, knowing too well what could happen. This was what lurked inside the luckiest delivery rooms, the ones whose balloons screamed It's a girl!: pink cigars and flowered onesies and fear.”

“Making God a man is the consolation prize that our forefathers gave themselves for not being the ones who were each blessed with a vagina.”

“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.)”

“Be that kind of girl who smiles when you walk past other girls instead of casting a dirty look. Don't buy into the notion of female competition that society so heavily promotes.”

“Today men profess to respect her. Some men give up their chairs to her and pick up her handkerchiefs, others recognize her right to occupy any post at all- administrative, executive- any at all. That is what they profess, but their attitude towards her remains the same. She is a means of enjoyment. Her body is a means of giving pleasure. And she is aware of this. It is a form of slavery.”

“Her limber body swayed as though in time to an orchestra and in a way that showed she ate well, and ate all kinds of things no one could tell, like veal or fresh figs in the sunshine. She had the kind of face that made one cry. She drew salt water out like sheer chemistry. The chemical reaction was usually the same sentiment—the world saw the little shelf bone under her eyes, a sharp nose, precious jaw, two moons for cheekbones, and so was deeply confused and upset that there was no metal armor attached to her body to protect her. People had cried fearing all kinds of possibilities—that a piece of hail might cut across her cheek, a drunkard might break her nose, or a car from nowhere would crash into hers and shatter her skull entirely. But no case of that happened. She remained unblemished. Watchful cars slowed down for her as she walked, drunkards sobered at her eyes, and even hail made way for this little human.”

“When a culture oppresses women, and all do to one degree or another, it isn't convenient to acknowledge that there are women who like submission in bed or who have fantasies about rape. Masochistic fantasies damage the case for equality, and even when they are seen as the result of a "sick society," the peculiarity of our sexual actions or fantasies is not easily untangled or explained away. The ground from which they spring is simply too muddy. Acts can be controlled, but not desire. Sexual feeling pops up, in spite of our politics.”

“Women in the public eye didn’t get the luxury of showing emotions; it branded them as temperamental, difficult to work with. Some men claimed to like it when women were angry—when they got emotional, even—but what they really liked was emotional impotence: half-baked emotions, not fully-formed, that expended themselves before they became inconvenient, most frequently after sex.”

“Women's liberation is one thing, but the permeation of anti-male sentiment in post-modern popular culture - from our mocking sitcom plots to degrading commercial story lines - stands testament to the ignorance of society. Fair or not, as the lead gender that never requested such a role, the historical male reputation is quite balanced. For all of their perceived wrongs, over centuries they've moved entire civilizations forward, nurtured the human quest for discovery and industry, and led humankind from inconvenient darkness to convenient modernity. Navigating the chessboard that is human existence is quite a feat, yet one rarely acknowledged in modern academia or media. And yet for those monumental achievements, I love and admire the balanced creation that is man for all his strengths and weaknesses, his gifts and his curses. I would venture to say that most wise women do.”

“Practically every mental health care practitioner, from the most erudite psychoanalysts to untrained self-help gurus, tell us that it is infinitely more fulfilling and we are all saner if we tell the truth, yet most of us are not rushing to stand up and be counted among the truth tellers. Indeed, as someone committed to being honest in daily life I experience the constant drag of being seen as a 'freak,' for telling the truth, even when I speak truthfully about simple matters. If a friend gives me a gift and asks me to tell him or her whether I like it, I will respond honestly and judiciously; that is to say I will speak the truth in a positive, caring manner. Yet even in this situation, the person who asks for honesty will often express annoyance when given a truthful response.”

“In reaction against the age-old slogan, "woman is the weaker vessel," or the still more offensive, "woman is a divine creature," we have, I think, allowed ourselves to drift into asserting that "a woman is as good as a man," without always pausing to think what exactly we mean by that. What, I feel, we ought to mean is something so obvious that it is apt to escape attention altogether, viz: (...) that a woman is just as much an ordinary human being as a man, with the same individual preferences, and with just as much right to the tastes and preferences of an individual. What is repugnant to every human being is to be reckoned always as a member of a class and not as an individual person.”

“And so, what of it all? What of me and my passions and personas, my great loves and failures of love, my writing, my politics? What of the clanging opinions, the endless queries as to the whys and wherefores of how I chose to conduct myself? In the end, there is but one answer to every question, whether it is spit at me or made as gentlest inquiry: I was I.”

“We ask no sympathy from others in the anxiety and agony of a 
broken friendship or shattered love. When death sunders our nearest
 ties, alone we sit in the shadow of our affliction. Alike mid the greatest 
triumphs and darkest tragedies of life we walk alone. On the divine 
heights of human attainments, eulogized and worshiped as a hero or 
saint, we stand alone. In ignorance, poverty, and vice, as a pauper or
criminal, alone we starve or steal; alone we suffer the sneers and rebuffs
of our fellows; alone we are hunted and hounded through dark courts
and alleys, in by-ways and highways; alone we stand in the judgment
seat; alone in the prison cell we lament our crimes and misfortunes; alone we expiate them on the gallows. In hours like these we realize the
awful solitude of individual life, its pains, its penalties, its responsibilities; hours in which the youngest and most helpless are thrown on their own resources for guidance and consolation. Seeing then that life must ever be a march and a battle, that each soldier must be equipped for his own protection, it is the height of cruelty to rob the individual of a single natural right.”