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Sexism Quotes

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Sexism Quotes

“In the 21st century, the pornographic vogue of ‘ass to mouth’, in which the feminine, after being sodomised by the masculine, is expected to orally clean the penis, is an eroticised example of the same impulse. Women, who for centuries have metaphorically eaten shit, are now expected to literally do so, like swine.”

FeminismFeministSexismPornographyBrutalityAtmPornographicAss To MouthSexual Brutality
Book:Apple: Sex, Drugs, Motherhood and the Recovery of the Feminine
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“People keep using the term "pu**y" to refer to someone weak. I say, have you ever studied a "pu**y"? Let me tell you something as a biologist and behaviorist. A "pu**y" is ten times stronger and more resilient than any "d**k" in the world. A vagina can do whatever a penis can do, ten times more efficiently, and that too while bleeding.”

FeminismFeministSexismWomens RightsPatriarchyGirl PowerGender EqualityToxic MasculinityWomens EmpowermentMisogny
Book:Find A Cause Outside Yourself: Sermon of Sustainability
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“Mujeres de todas las posiciones defendeos, que el enemigo es formidable, pero no le temáis, que segun es el tamaño es su cobardia Women of all positions defend yourself, that the enemy is formidable, but do not fear him, that according to his size is his cowardice”

FeminismSexism
Book:A Nation Of Women: An Early Feminist Speaks Out; Mi Opinion Sobre Las Libertades, Derechos y Deberes de la Mujer (Recovering the U.s. Hispanic Literary Heritage)
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“I came to two conclusions. One, being a woman, in this world, ultimately makes you crazy. And, two, you're more likely to be labeled crazy anyway if you're female." I pulled out some sheets from the World Health Organization. "Look, these guys are in charge of the health of the entire WORLD. And they're basically saying gender is the cause of loads of mental health problems. People don't wake up one day and think, Oooh, I think I'll go completely gaga. It's usually a case of spiraling circumstances. And, if you're a woman, think about it, we have a shitload of spiraling circumstances. We're paid less, we're told we have to beautiful, and thin, but we're also told to eat chocolate all the time otherwise we're not 'fun', and we're constantly being objectified and told to calm down when we care about something...Isn't all this likely to make us a little mental? Isn't being subjected to daily inequality going to be a spiraling circumstance?”

FeminismMental HealthGenderDiscriminationMental IllnessSexismPatriarchy
Book:Am I Normal Yet?
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“I resent having to refer to my career as my baby in order to explain myself to parents. It suggests that as long as a woman has something she feels maternal toward, then she passes as a regular human being. "She want to swaddle her career! So we'll make an exception and give her a pass." Women don't have to have maternal urges to be women. My career is not my surrogate baby, just like my car is not my surrogate sex slave just because I turn it on and ride it. Men don't call their careers their sons or daughters. A fireman without kids doesn't have to pretend his job is his baby replacement. "Oh yeah, when I walk up those forty flights of stairs fighting back the burning and falling asbestos, I just cradle the hose in my arms and think, 'this is my baby'.”

HumorComedyFeminismMotherhoodSexismChildfree
Book:I Can Barely Take Care of Myself: Tales From a Happy Life Without Kids
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“I am a Black woman. True, I have been told time and time again that my best chance of success is to emulate the preferred traits of white maleness as much as possible. Still, mine is not the image of the great leaders in our history books, nor that of the heroes in our stories. For someone like me to expect any greatness without having exceptional talent and luck was, at best, foolish and, at worst, dangerous. This is not my birthright.”

FeminismRacismSexismWhite Feminism
Book:Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America
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“When they reached their ship, Ed gazed out at the bay. It was black. The sky was black, but the bay was even blacker. It was a slick, oily blackness that glowed and reflected the moonlight like a black jewel. Ed saw the tiny specks of light around the edges of the bay where he knew ships must be docked, and at different points within the bay where vessels would be anchored. The lights were pale and sickly yellow when compared with the bright blue-white sparkle of the stars overhead, but the stars glinted hard as diamonds, cold as ice. Pg. 26.”

LoveStoriesSexAdventureRacismShipsSexismUnrequited LoveNavySegregationCubaProstitutionOld DaysHomophobiaShort StoriesRite Of PassageHavanaSavannahShort Story Collection1950sHigh SeasDeep SouthPolitical IntrigueAdolescent Angst
Book:Once upon a Decade: Tales of the Fifties
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“Consider: Anyone can turn his hand to anything. This sounds very simple, but its psychological effects are incalculable. The fact that everyone between seventeen and thirty-five or so is liable to be (as Nim put it) "tied down to childbearing," implies that no one is quite so thoughly "tied down" here as women, elsewhere, are likely to be -- psuchologically or physically. Burden and privilege are shared out pretty equally; everybody has the same risk to run or choice to make. Therefore nobody here is quite so free as a free male anywhere else.”

SexSocial JusticeSexismGender Roles
Book:The Left Hand of Darkness
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“Consider: Anyone can turn his hand to anything. This sounds very simple, but its psychological effects are incalculable. The fact that everyone between seventeen and thirty-five or so is liable to be (as Nim put it) "tied down to childbearing," implies that no one is quite so thoughly "tied down" here as women, elsewhere, are likely to be -- psychologically or physically. Burden and privilege are shared out pretty equally; everybody has the same risk to run or choice to make. Therefore nobody here is quite so free as a free male anywhere else.”

SexSexismGender EqualityGender RolesSocial CommentarySocial Norms
Book:The Left Hand of Darkness
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“Oh, I need help—Bernice, Bernice. The touch of your hand on my face is telegraphed all over me. Can’t you see I’m half-crazed? You’ve got to get me out of this state—” She laughed a little, and then she said, “How am I to blame? It’s in you, and in all of them, to torture the life out of some poor girl. And because you came across me, you react like a caged chimpanzee, and then try to tell me I got you into the state you’re in. That's a laugh!”

LoveSexSexismVictim Blaming
Book:Manhattan Love Song
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“All our wonderful sexual freedom is dependent on two very important conditions: freedom from sexism and freedom from rape. These changes must take place at both the individual and community levels. Prosecuting rape and child molestation is quite difficult, so our communities need to work for our own safety. We can seldom send offenders to jail, but we can uninvite them from our parties, and remove them from the other environments that we control, both online and in the physical world. (...) Much of this conflict is the consequence of our absurd cultural insistence that in sex, men should be the initiators and women the withholders. Thus, some people learn that they are supposed to be pushy and others that saying anything but no is, well, slutty. This pattern leads to “no” being heard as an invitation to push harder, with predictably disastrous results.”

SexFreedomFeminismSexismPatriarchyRapeRape CultureSexual FreedomSex PositiveSex Positivity
Book:The ethical slut: a guide to infinite sexual possibilities
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“When pressed, hunters who claim that they just want “to be out in the wilderness,” will admit that the kill is essential—or at least the hope of a kill. As it turns out, there is no correlation between hunting and hiking, climbing, backpacking, kayaking, or any other outdoor activity. Hunters do not purposefully linger in the woods after a kill, but quickly begin the process of preparing to head home with the corpse. For hunters, the kill is the climax—the most important moment. They are not driving into the woods (or sometimes actually walking) for the sake of beauty, but in the hope of a kill. The kill can be likened to male orgasm. Sex is traditionally thought to be over when the man has an orgasm, and the hunt is never so decisively over as it is after a successful kill. As a teacher, I impatiently listened to a young man matter-of-factly defend the importance of hunting because he found the experience “orgasmic.” From his point of view, all that mattered was how exciting and wonderful the experience was for him. The “side affects” of the man’s preferred action—the experience of the deer (and the woman)—are deemed to be so irrelevant that they are not even mentioned.”

SexKillingSexismHuntingHuntersOrgasmClimaxMale Privilege
Book:Speaking Up for Animals: An Anthology of Women's Voices
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“In 1996 Dorothy Mackey wrote an Op-ed piece, “Violence from comrades a fact of life for military women.” ABC News 20/ 20 did a segment on rape in the military. By November four women came forward at Aberdeen Proving Ground, in Maryland, about a pattern of rape by drill sergeants. In 1997 the military finds three black drill sergeants to scapegoat. They were sent to prison and this left the commanding generals and colonels untouched to retire quietly. The Army appointed a panel to investigate sexual harassment. One of the panelists was the sergeant Major of the Army, Eugene McKinney. On hearing his nomination, former associates and one officer came forward with charges of sexual coercion and misconduct. In 1998 he was acquitted of all charges after women spoke (of how they were being stigmatized, their careers stopped, and their characters questioned. A Congressional panel studied military investigative practices. In 1998, the Court of Appeals ruled against Dorothy Mackay. She had been outspoken on media and highly visible. There is an old Arabic saying “When the hen crows cut off her head.”“This court finds that Col. Milam and Lt. Col. Elmore were acting in the scope of their duties” in 1991-1992 when Capt. Mackey alleged they harassed, intimidated and assaulted her. A legislative remedy was asked for and she appealed to the Supreme Court. Of course the Supreme Court refused to hear the case in 1999, as it always has under the feres doctrine. Her case was cited to block the suit of one of the Aberdeen survivors as well!”

LawUnited StatesMilitaryRacismArmyCourtCongressSexismLegislationSupreme CourtRapeSoldiersSexual AssaultAir ForceAbuse Of PowerRape CultureColonelsSexual HarassmentCoverupComradesAbuse Of AuthorityMilitary Sexual AssaultFeres DoctrineFeresWomen In The Military
Book:Conduct Unbecoming: Rape, Torture, and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from Military Commanders
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“FORGET FERES DOCTRINE And the military has immunity! Yes! The feres doctrine! It states “the Government is not liable under the Federal Tort Claims Act for injuries to servicemen where injuries arise out of or are in the course of activity incident to service” (U.S. Supreme Court 1950). Federal law and our Supreme Court shield acts of rape and sexual brutality in the military as proven by its subsequent ruling on a 2001 case that denied a plaintiffs right to file a civil suit against her accusers. Yet when women report the crime, it is handled internally Commanders are given the discretion to resolve complaints. The report may not go beyond his office. Many times he's part of the problem or a sympathizer with the offender. This certainly was my case! Our Supreme Court ruled as recently as 2001 that rape is an injury incident to the course of activity in the service! THE HEINOUS CRIME OF RAPE IS ACCEPTABLE AND CONDONED BY OUR SUPREME COURT! WOMEN ARE FAIR GAME FOR RAPE AND HARRASSMENT, ACCORDING TO OUR SUPREME COURT! CONGRESS IS NO BETTER! NO LAWS ARE PASSED TO PROTECT US IN THE MILITARY AGAINST THE STATUTE OF LIMITATION FOR THE FELONY OF RAPE!”

GovernmentLawUnited StatesMilitaryRacismArmyCourtCongressEqualitySexismLegislationSupreme CourtRapeSoldiersSexual AssaultAir ForceAbuse Of PowerRape CultureColonelsFelonySexual HarassmentCoverupComradesHarrassmentAbuse Of AuthorityMilitary Sexual AssaultFeres DoctrineFeresWomen In The MilitaryFederealStatute Of Limitations
Book:Conduct Unbecoming: Rape, Torture, and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from Military Commanders
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“The history of hysteria is a history of the relation between the colonizing father and the colonized devalued other.”

SexismSexual AbuseHysteriaBiasedHystericalDiscreditMental Health StigmaDevalueMental Illness StigmaMental Health BiasMelodramaticStigmatizedDehumanizeColonizedDevaluedPerjorative
Book:Sexual Abuse Recalled: Treating Trauma in the Era of the Recovered Memory Debate
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“Disclosures of childhood sexual abuse have frequently been discredited through the diagnosis of hysteria. In this view, women/female children were seen either as culpable seducers who were not really damaged by the sex abuse or as dramatic fantasizers projecting their own incestuous wishes onto the father. I will argue that this view pervades the false-memory movement and can be found, for example, in Gardner's work (1992).”

FantasySexismSexual AbuseChild Sexual AbuseHysteriaBiasedHystericalIncestDiscreditMental Health StigmaFalse MemoriesChildhood Sexual AbuseMental Illness StigmaFalse Memory SyndromeMental Health BiasMelodramaticStigmatizedFantasizingFalse Memory Syndrome MythPerjorative
Book:Sexual Abuse Recalled: Treating Trauma in the Era of the Recovered Memory Debate
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“Conviction rates in the military are pathetic, with most offenders going free AND THERE IS NO RECOURSE FOR APPEAL! The military believes the Emperor has his clothes on, even when they are down around his ankles and he is coming in the woman's window with a knife! Military juries give low sentences or clear offender's altogether. Women can be heard to say “it's not just me” over and over. Men may get an Article 15, which is just a slap on the wrist, and doesn't even follow them in their career. This is hardly a deterrent. The perpetrator frequently stays in place to continue to intimidate their female victims, who are then treated like mental cases, who need to be discharged. Women find the tables turned, letters in their files, trumped up Women find the tables turned, letters in their files, trumped up charges; isolation and transfer are common, as are court ordered psychiatric referrals that label the women as lying or incompatible with military service because they are “Borderline Personality Disorders” or mentally unbalanced. I attended many of these women, after they were discharged, or were wives of abusers, from xxx Air Force Base, when I was a psychotherapist working in the private sector. That was always their diagnosis, yet retesting tended to show something different after stabilization, like PTSD.”

MilitaryArmyInjusticeSexismPtsdIntimidationAbuse Of PowerRape CultureBorderline Personality DisorderMilitary HistoryMisdiagnosisHarrassmentAbuse Of AuthorityMilitary RapePsychiatric AbuseMilitary PsychiatryEmotional InstabilityMilitary Sexual Trauma
Book:Conduct Unbecoming: Rape, Torture, and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from Military Commanders
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“Many black intellectuals spoke about the experience of racism mainly, and sometimes exclusively, from a black male perspective, highlighting the various ways their humanity had been degraded and denied. While this discussion was something I cared about deeply, it was rarely balanced with one about all the unique ways in which black women have suffered. Even the scholars who spoke about race without focusing so much on the particular experience of black men still failed to fully capture and dissect the compounded challenges black women faced as they dealt with racism and sexism. The result of discussions of race being unfairly tilted toward the male point of view is that the experiences of black women have taken a backseat to those of black men, although they've suffered in ways that black men haven't. Racism and sexism were stacked against them. And too often they've borne the brunt of the very masculinity that has been historically debased in black men when black men asserted their power over the only people they could - black women...The hard truth is that black men have contributed to these struggles both subtly and overtly...we contribute to the degradation of black women by glorifying the kind of common rap that reduces them to bitches, hoes, and body parts.”

SexismBlack WomenBlacknessIntersectionalityBipocIntersectional FeminismBlack Experience
Book:Uncensored
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“Don't tell me I'm "too tall" just because my height happens to threaten your rather fragile sense of masculinity. The fact that men cannot look down upon women who are taller than them is the very reason that many men find tall women so intimidating.”

WomenFeministHeightTallSexismMasculinityFemininityIntimidatingIntimidationMaleTall WomenTallerTall GirlsBody Shape
Book:Embrace Your Sexual Self: A Practical Guide for Women
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“Life, it has been agreed by everyone whose opinion is worth consulting, is the only fit subject for novelist or biographer; life, the same authorities have decided, has nothing whatever to do with sitting still in a chair and thinking. Thought and life are as the poles asunder. Therefore — since sitting in a chair and thinking is precisely what Orlando is doing now — there is nothing for it but to recite the calendar, tell one’s beads, blow one’s nose, stir the fire, look out of the window, until she has done… Surely, since she is a woman, and a beautiful woman, and a woman in the prime of life, she will soon give over this pretence of writing and thinking and begin at least to think of a gamekeeper (and as long as she thinks of a man, nobody objects to a woman thinking). And then she will write him a little note (and as long as she writes little notes nobody objects to a woman writing either) and make an assignation for Sunday dusk… She was kind to dogs, faithful to friends, generosity itself to a dozen starving poets, had a passion for poetry. But love — as the male novelists define it — and who, after all, speak with greater authority? — has nothing whatever to do with kindness, fidelity, generosity, or poetry. Love is slipping off one’s petticoat and — But we all know what love is… If then, the subject of one’s biography will neither love nor kill, but will only think and imagine, we may conclude that he or she is no better than a corpse and so leave her.”

WritingSexismBiographyIntellectualismDH Lawrence
Book:Orlando
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“The truth, and the threat it poses, can be too overwhelming to bear, and for many women in the aftermath of the sexual revolution, the truth was that their experiences were being dismissed by the men in their lives. Although many of the women in the films of this period are clearly meant to be schizophrenic, sociopathic or downright psychotic, the underlying implication (and there always is one in horror films) is that these ‘illnesses’ come in at the break between the woman’s experience and the man’s experience of the same situation- and what is ‘true’ or ‘right’ is often whatever the man says it is.”

TruthSexismMisogynyBreakdownSchizophreniaPsychosisSexulal Revolution
Book:House of Psychotic Women: An Autobiographical Topography of Female Neurosis in Horror and Exploitation Films
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“A nod at Beatrice who held absolutely still. "She said she would come with me. She insisted on it. She stamped her little foot at me." He pointed down to her toes as if she were a child yet. Then he straightened his shoulders. "But I sent her back to the nursery, where she belonged, and told her to play with her dolls instead. As everyone knows, a female on a hunt is a distraction at best and bad luck at worse." Which explained why Beatrice went into the woods with her hound alone, George thought. She looked now as though she had gone to some other place where she could not hear her father's words and thus could not be hurt by them. George wondered how often she was forced to go to that place. Did King Helm not see how much she was like him? It seemed she was rejected for any sign of femininity yet also rejected for not showing enough femininity, How could she win?”

FatherDaughterSexismPrincessKingMockeryWithdrawalUnkindnessCallousnessInconsiderateEmotional Walls
Book:The Princess and the Hound
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“We must be at least as well qualified as [Men] to teach the sciences; and if we are not seen in university chairs, it cannot be attributed to our want of capacity to fill them, but to that violence with which the Men support their unjust intrusion into our places. (...) If then we set custom and prejudice aside, where wou'd the oddity be to see us dictating sciences from a university chair; since to name but one of a thousand, that foreign young lady, whose extraordinary merit and capacity but a few years ago forced a university in Italy to break through the rules of partiality, custom, and prejudice, in her favour, to confer on her a DOCTOR'S DEGREE, is a living proof that we are as capable, as any of the Men, of the highest eminences in the sphere of learning, if we had justice done us.”

FeminismSexismMisogynyPatriarchy18th CenturyDouble StandardsMale Privilege18th Century FeminismWomen In ScienceWomen S OppressionWomen In Stem
Book:Woman Not Inferior to Man
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“The Men who cannot deny us to be rational creatures, wou'd have us justify their irrational opinion and treatment of us, by descending to a mean compliance with their irrational Expectations. But I hope, while Women have any spirit left, they will exert it all, in shewing how worthy they are of better usage, by not submitting tamely to such misplaced arrogance.”

FeminismSexismMisogynyPatriarchy18th CenturyDouble StandardsMale Privilege18th Century Feminism
Book:Woman Not Inferior to Man
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“(...) How many ladies have there been, and still are, who deserve place among the learned; and who are more capable of teaching the sciences than those who now fill most of the university chairs? The age we live in has produced as many, as any heretofore (...) And as our sex, when it applies to learning, may be said at least to keep pace with the Men, so are they more to be esteem'd for their learning than the latter: Since they are under a necessity of surmounting the softness they were educated in (...) to which cruel custom seem'd to condemn them; to overcome the external impediments in their way to study; and to conquer the disadvantageous notions, which the vulgar of both sexes entertain of learning in Women. (...) it is self-evident, that many of our sex have far outstript the Men. Why then are we not as fit to learn and teach the sciences, at least to our own sex, as they fancy themselves to be?”

FeminismSexismMisogynyPatriarchy18th CenturyMale Privilege18th Century FeminismWomen S Oppression
Book:Woman Not Inferior to Man
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“There are some however more condescending, and gracious enough to confess, that many Women have wit and conduct; but yet they are of opinion, that even such of us as are most remarkable for either or both, still betray something which speaks the imbecility of our sex. Stale, thread-bare notions, which long since sunk'd with their own weight; and the extreme weakness of which seem'd to condemn to perpetual oblivion; till an ingenious writer, for want of something better to employ his pen about, was pleased lately to revive them in one of the weekly * papers, lest this age should be ignorant what fools there have been among his sex in former ones. To give us a sample then of the wisdom of his sex, he tells us, that it was always the opinion of the wisest among them, that Women are never to be indulged the sweets of liberty; but ought to pass their whole lives in a state of subordination to the Men, and in an absolute dependance upon them. And the reason assigned for so extravagant an assertion, is our not having a sufficient capacity to govern ourselves. It must be observed, that so bold a tenet ought to have better proofs to support it, than the bare word of the persons who advance it; as their being parties so immediately concern'd, must render all they say of this kind highly suspect.”

FeminismSarcasmSexismMisogynyPatriarchy18th Century18th Century FeminismMras
Book:Woman Not Inferior to Man
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“the many absurd notions the Men are led into by custom: Tho' there is none more absurd, than that of the great difference they make between their own sex and ours. Yet it must be own'd that there is not any vulgar error more antient or universal. For the learned and illiterate alike are prepossest with the opinion that Men are really superior to Women, and that the dependence we now are in, is the very state which nature pointed out for us.”

FeminismPrejudiceSexismPatriarchy18th CenturyMale Privilege18th Century FeminismWoman Not Inferior To Man
Book:Woman Not Inferior to Man
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“the Men, biased by custom, prejudice, and interest, have presumed boldly to pronounce sentence in their own favour, because possession empowered them to make violence take place of justice. And the Men of our times, without trial or examination, have taken the same liberty from the report of other Men. (...) If a Man could thus divest the partiality attach'd to this self, and put on for a minute a state of neutrality, he would be able to see, and forced to acknowledge, that prejudice and precipitance are the chief causes of setting less value upon Women than Men, and giving so much greater excellence and nobility to the latter than to the former. In a word, were the Men Philosophers in the strict sense of the term, they would be able to see that nature invincibly proves a perfect equality in our sex with their own.”

FeminismSexismMisogynyPatriarchy18th CenturyMale Privilege18th Century FeminismWoman Not Inferior To Man
Book:Woman Not Inferior to Man
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“it appears that there is no other difference between Men and Us than what their tyrany has created, it will then appear how unjust they are in excluding us from that power and dignity we have a right to share with them; how ungenerous in denying us the equality of esteem, which is our due; and how little reason they have to triumph in the base possession of an authority, which unnatural violence, and lawless usurpation, put into their Hands. Then let them justify, if they can, the little meannesses, not to mention the grosser barbarities, which they daily practise towards that part of the creation”

FeminismSexismPatriarchy18th CenturyMale Privilege18th Century FeminismMsogyny
Book:Woman Not Inferior to Man
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“There will be great reason to suspect the Men of jealousy; and it cannot be rash to say, that their only reason for locking up from us all the avenues of knowledge, is the fear of our excelling them in it. (...) Had we the same advantages of study allowed us which the Men have, there is no room to doubt but we should at least keep pace with them in the sciences, and every useful knowledge. It can only then be a mean dastardly jealousy in them to exclude us from those advantages, in which we have so natural a right to emulate them.”

KnowledgeFeminismSexismMisogynyPatriarchy18th CenturyDouble StandardsMale Privilege18th Century FeminismWomen S OppressionMen Threatened By Women
Book:Woman Not Inferior to Man
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“What a wretched circle this poor way of reasoning among the Men draws them insensibly into. Why is learning useless to us? Because we have no share in public offices. And why have we no share in public offices? Because we have no learning. They are sensible of the injustice they do us, and therefore are reduced to the mean shift of cloaking it at the expence of their own reason. But let truth speak for once: Why are they so industrious to debar us that learning we have an equal right to with themselves, but for fear of our sharing with, and outshining them in, those public offices they fill so miserably? The same sordid selfishness which urged them to engross all power and dignity to themselves, prompted them to shut up from us that knowledge which wou'd have made us their competitors.”

FeminismSexismMisogynyPatriarchy18th CenturyDouble StandardsMale Privilege18th Century FeminismWomen S OppressionMen Threatened By Women
Book:Woman Not Inferior to Man
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“But where have [the Men] proved that we are not as capable of guarding ourselves from dangers, as they are of guarding us; had we the same power and advantages allowed us, which they have? (...) Are we safer under their conduct than our own? (...) There is scarce an instance in a million among Women, of one Woman of a middling capacity, who does not, or would not, govern herself better than most Men in parallel circumstances, if the circumvention, treachery, and baseness of that sex did not interfere. (...) Most Women are ruin'd, instead of being improv'd in heart or mind under the conduct of the Men. And therefore, since we are at most in no greater safety under their government than our own, there can be no solid reason assign'd why we shou'd be subject to it.”

FeminismSexismMisogynyPatriarchy18th CenturyMale Privilege18th Century FeminismWomen S Oppression
Book:Woman Not Inferior to Man
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“I shou'd not myself have thought [Cato] worth so much notice as I have here taken of him; but that the Men are weak enough in general, to suffer their sense to be led away captive, by such half-thinking retailers of sentences. Among whom, This in particular, was he worth the pains, might be easily proved to have been often grossly in the wrong in other matters as well as in the present case; and therefore, when he happens to be in the right, the merit of it is more to be imputed to blind chance than to his wisdom: Since the greatest fools, when active, may blunder into the right sometimes: And great talkers among many absurdities, must here and there drop a good saying, when they least design it. Of this stamp, are the generality of evidence brought against us. Men avers'd to the labour of thinking; who found reason a drudgery (...); who have gain'd all their reputation by a pretty gimness of expressions, which wou'd no more bear examination than their heads, their hearts, or their faces; and who (to mimic this sage) wou'd rather see common-sense in confusion, than a word misplaced in one of their sentences. Yet these are sages among the Men, and their sentences are so many divine oracles; whereas perhaps, had we lived in their own times, to have heard the many more foolish things they said than sensible ones, we shou'd have found them as oafish as the dupes who revere them. And tho' perhaps we might have been more surprized to hear such dotards talk sometimes rationally, than we now are, to read their sayings; we shou'd have had reason still to think them more fit to extort our admiration than deserve it. Care has been taken to hand down to us the best of their sentences, many of which nevertheless are weak enough: But had the same care been taken to register all their absurdities, how great a share of their present applause wou'd they have lost!”

FeminismSarcasmSexismMisogynyPatriarchy18th Century18th Century FeminismWomen S OppressionFeminist Snark
Book:Woman Not Inferior to Man
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“IT is enough for the Men to find a thing establish'd to make them believe it well grounded. In all countries we are seen in subjection and absolute dependence on the Men, without being admitted to the advantages of sciences, or the opportunity of exerting our capacity in a public station. Hence the Men, according to their usual talent of arguing from seemings, conclude that we ought to be so. (...) But why do the Men persuade themselves that we are less fit for public employments than they are? Can they give any better reason than custom and prejudice form'd in them by external appearances (...)? (...) For if Women are but consider'd as rational creatures, abstracted from the disadvantages imposed upon them by the unjust usurpation and tyranny of the Men, they will be found, to the full, as capable as the Men, of filling these offices.”

SexismMisogynyPatriarchy18th CenturyDouble StandardsMale Privilege18th Century FeminismWomen S Oppression
Book:Woman Not Inferior to Man
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“So weak are their [Men's] intellectuals, and so untuned are their organs to the voice of reason, that custom makes more absolute slaves of their senses than they can make of us. They are so accustom'd to see things as they now are, that they cannot represent to themselves how they can be otherwise. It wou'd be extremely odd they think to see a Woman at the head of an army giving battle, or at the helm of a nation giving laws; pleading causes in quality of counsel; administring justice in a court of judicature; preceded in the street with sword, mace, and other ensigns of authority; as magistrates; or teaching rhetoric, medicine, philosophy, and divinity, in quality of university professors.”

FeminismPrejudiceSexismMisogynyPatriarchy18th CenturyDouble Standards18th Century FeminismMen Threatened By Women
Book:Woman Not Inferior to Man
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