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Patriarchy Quotes

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Patriarchy Quotes

“The patriarchy longs for the days 'when men were men' and women were oppressed, subservient - and they can see no wrong in it. It justifies its former power and lust to hold on to it - and if possible, to regain it by quoting fundamentalist and radical religion and tradition and calling it 'love'. Some love. How can oppression and power over another person's life ever be 'love'?”

“When they (the men, the scavengers) come for you, do not give yourself to them so easily. Wear your strength like armour, fight like a beast. Do not let them tell you that you belong to them. Be fearless. Be a lion. Be like lava. Rip them apart, and burn their bones. And when you are done, tell the world that you belong to no man. That you are a lady, a warrior, a tsunami, and you belong only to yourself.”

“White men grow on an open, level field. White women grow on far steeper and rougher terrain because the field wasn't made for them. Women of color grow not just on a hill, but on a cliffside over the ocean, battered by wind and waves. None of us chooses the landscape in which we're planted. If you find yourself on an ocean-battered cliff, your only choice is to grow there, or fall into the ocean. So if we transplant a survivor of the steep hill and cliff to the level field, natives of the field may look at that survivor and wonder why she has so much trouble trusting people, systems, and even her own bodily sensations. Why is this tree so bent and gnarled? It's because that is what it took to survive in the place where she grew. A tree that's fought wind and gravity and erosion to grow strong and green on a steep cliff is going to look strange and out of place when moved to the level playing field. The gnarled, wind-blown tree from an oceanside cliff might not conform with our ideas of what a tree should look like, but it works well in the context where it grew. And that tall straight tree wouldn't stand a chance if it was transplanted to the cliffside.”

“Often father and daughter look down on mother (woman) together. They exchange meaningful glances when she misses a point. They agree that she is not bright as they are, cannot reason as they do. This collusion does not save the daughter from the mother’s fate.”

“The same patriarchy that oppresses women oppresses nonhuman animals. Farmed animals and “housewives,” “lab” animals and prostitutes, dancing bears and girls in the sex trade—all have too long been exploited by the same patriarchal hierarchy wherein the comparatively weak are exploited for the benefit of the powerful. Those who are aware of history, of patriarchy and of the feminist movement, tend to understand how difficult it is—and how important—for people to rethink basic behaviors in order to bring about deep and lasting change. We must rethink how we speak, how we spend our time, and what we consume. This is as true for fighting sexism as it is for fighting speciesism—or any other form of domination, exploitation, and oppression. We must change our lives first, and most fundamentally. I hope that readers working to improve the lives of girls and women . . . will realize that they can and must choose not to continue to exploit nonhuman animals while working to liberate girls and women.”

“Women are no sheep. Women are no fragile showpiece to be placed above the fire-place. Women of the thinking society are the builders of nations. Women of the sentient society are the builders of the world.”

“The representation of women in the society, especially through mass media has been the most delusional act ever done on the grounds of human existence.”

“All the bloodsheds in human history have been caused by men, not women.”

“I am a scientist who studies the human mind, including the sexual differences in mental faculties, and I am telling you, ten female thinkers can teach humanity lessons equivalent to the teachings of a hundred male thinkers of history.”

“Given the same honor and dignity as men, women can build a much better and more harmonious world.”

“Women of the thinking society are the builders of nations. Women of the sentient society are the builders of the world. And given the same honor and dignity as men, women can build a much better and more harmonious world. Harmony and conflict-solving run in their veins. Whereas men have evolved into more authoritarian creatures.”

“I am no feminist. Even though the term "feminism" is founded upon the basic principle of gender equality, it possesses its own fundamental gender bias, which makes it inclined towards the wellbeing of women, over the wellbeing of the whole society. And if history has shown anything, it is that such fundamental biases in time corrupt even the most glorious ideas and give birth to prejudice, bigotry and differentiation.”

“Remember, for a society to truly progress we don't need woman or man, we need a fully-fledged human - nothing short of that would do.”

“Gender equality is not a belief, it is not an idea - it is a key element of the society that will define whether we the humans shall march ahead towards glory and advancement, or sink into the abyss of an existential doom.”

“Any book that spreads weakness in the heart of one gender, and authoritarianism in the other, must be burnt to ashes.”

“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.”

“Women are no sheep.”

“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.”

“In a patriarchal society, one of the most important functions of the institution of the family is to make feel like a somebody whenever he is in his own yard a man who is a nobody whenever he is in his employer’s yard.”

“We weren’t born distrusting and fearing ourselves. That was part of our taming. We were taught to believe that who we are in our natural state is bad and dangerous. They convinced us to be afraid of ourselves. So we do not honor our own bodies, curiosity, hunger, judgment, experience, or ambition. Instead, we lock away our true selves. Women who are best at this disappearing act earn the highest praise: She is so selfless. Can you imagine? The epitome of womanhood is to lose one’s self completely. That is the end goal of every patriarchal culture. Because a very effective way to control women is to convince women to control themselves.”

“Men who are in prison for rape think it's the dumbest thing that ever happened... it's isn't just a miscarriage of justice; they were put in jail for something very little different from what most men do most of the time and call it sex. The only difference is they got caught. That view is nonremorseful and not rehabilitative. It may also be true. It seems to me that we have here a convergence between the rapists's view of what he has done and the victim's perspective on what was done to her. That is, for both, their ordinary experiences of heterosexual intercourse and the act of rape have something in common. Now this gets us into immense trouble, because that's exactly how judges and juries see it who refuse to convict men accused of rape. A rape victim has to prove that it was not intercourse. She has to show that there was force and that she resisted, because if there was sex, consent is inferred. Finders of fact look for "more force than usual during the preliminaries". Rape is defined by distinction from intercourse - not nonviolence, intercourse. They ask, does this event look more like fucking or like rape? But what is their standard for sex, and is this question asked from the women's point of view? The level of force is not adjudicated at her point of violation; it is adjudicated at the standard for the normal level of force. Who sets this standard?”

“Until that moment I'd thought I could have it both ways; to be one of them, and also my husband's wife. What conceit! I was his instrument, his animal. Nothing more. How we wives and mothers do perish at the hands of our own righteousness. I was just one more of those women who clamp their mouths shut and wave the flag as their nation rolls off to conquer another in war. Guilty or innocent, they have everything to lose. They are what there is to lose. A wife is the earth itself, changing hands, bearing scars.”

“All of Life Her Grand Design (Sonnet 2840-2841) Silence sold as golden virtue, names erased in toxic ink - told to walk behind the man, never question, never think. We're more than borrowed titles, more than shadows wearing rings - we are roots of all survival, we are breath in everything. They built a world on domination, called tradition, called it fate, but every empire of oppression meets its end at woman's wake. Why must love erase her surname, why must birth deny her throne - she is the one who forms existence, yet there's nothing she can call her own! Every child that walks this planet, carries more than just one name - every mother is a cosmos, creation brews in her sacred flame. They said she came from a man's rib, but truth runs deeper than toxic lies, the world itself is carved from woman, all of life is her grand design.”

“जहां रौब दिखाना हो, वहां बाराती बनकर आदमी पहुंच जाते हैं लेकिन जहां शरीर को तकलीफ देनी हो, जहां परीक्षा की सूली पर चढ़ना हो, वहां महिलाओ को आगे कर दिया जाता है। हमारी मासूम कौम पीढ़ी दर पीढ़ी इस राह पर आगे बढ़ती चली जा रही है।”

“ऐसा क्यों है कि अंधेरे में सुबह चार बजे मम्मी के साथ मैं, कुएं के ठंडे पानी से नहाने जाती हूँ। कार्तिक का महीना बहुत ठंड लिए रहता है। ऐसे में सारी तपस्या सिर्फ महिलाएं क्यों कर रही हैं? पापा और पापा की तरह सब पुरूष रजाई में क्यों सो रहे हैं? क्या उन्होंने कोई पाप नहीं किए? जवाब में परंपराओं का हवाला दे दिया जाता था। मुझे फक्र होता है उस शीक्षा पर, सवाल पूछने के अधिकार के उपयोग पर जो हमें सहज उपलब्ध था।”

“Adrienne Rich, who I was reading at the time, said it exactly like it is: 'No woman is really an insider in the institutions fathered by masculine consciousness.' That was the weird thing. It was becoming clear to me that Motherhood was an institution fathered by masculine consciousness. This male consciousness was male unconsciousness. It needed its female partners who were also mothers to stamp on her own desires and attend to his desires, and then to everyone else's desires. We had a go at cancelling our own desires and found we had a talent for it. And we put a lot of our life’s energy into creating a home for our children and for our men”

“You may need to witness several false dawns fully to understand that all women are, in patriarchal terms, the losers. That is our role; it is baked into patriarchal understandings of history, progress, success, failure, creativity, genius, what really matters, what doesn’t. Insisting yours is the cohort of women who will finally smash the patriarchy, whereas the one that preceded it represents its last stand, is itself patriarchal.”

“Also, this formulation ‘the great man’ of course should bring up the question of women; are they included in this description? Or should we describe history as being the story of women wresting back the political power that they lost with the introduction of agriculture and the creation of surplus wealth? Would the gradual and unfinished defeat of patriarchy be the larger story of history? Along with, perhaps, the gradual and uncertain defeat of infection disease? So that we have been battling microparasites and macroparasites, eh? The bugs and the patriarchs?”

“I think of the wedding, how it just went on and on. And everyone was so happy, and I was just there. And the happier they were, the more there I was. I go further back, to the day we met. I knew we would get married right away. I knew it like it had been chosen for me. I said to myself, Here is a man I can stand. Here is someone I can definitely put up with. So maybe it was before that. And I think of being young, how women are taught, piece by piece, how they fit into the world. But that's not where it started either. I was born a woman. I was born to disappear.”