quotes about Feminism
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The modern woman is the curse of the universe. A disaster, that's what. She thinks that before her arrival on the scene no woman ever did anything worthwhile before, no woman was ever liberated until her time, no woman really ever amounted to anything.
-- Adela Rogers St. Johns -
A belief in feminism is a belief in personal freedom - the freedom to live a life free of fear of violence, to select a fulfilling career and be compensated fairly, to choose when to start a family, to marry whom you love. I want everyone, regardless of gender, to live a life free of restriction or fear, able to pursue their own personal brand of happiness and fulfillment.
-- Aisha Tyler -
I’m glad mainstream culture is starting to catch up to where lesbian-feminism was 30 years ago.
-- Alison Bechdel -
She watched the first episode and she was like, 'This is feminism?' And then by the end of the season, she was like, 'This is feminism.' The tone changed completely. She was really psyched about it.
-- Allison Williams -
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Feminism requires precisely what patriarchy destroys in women: unimpeachable bravery in confronting male power
-- Andrea Dworkin -
Women have been taught that, for us, the earth is flat, and that if we venture out, we will fall off the edge. Some of us have ventured out nevertheless, and so far we have not fallen off. It is my faith, my feminist faith, that we will not.
-- Andrea Dworkin -
One can know everything and still be unable to accept the fact that sex and murder are fused in the male consciousness, so that the one without the imminent possibly of the other is unthinkable and impossible.
-- Andrea Dworkin -
Just because we're sisters under the skin doesn't mean we've got much in common.
-- Angela Carter -
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The US bombed them back to traditional values – feminism does not exist in Japan. While I don’t like judging an entire culture…that does not excuse them.
-- Anita Sarkeesian -
But never fear, gentlemen; castration was really not the point of feminism, and we women are too busy eviscerating one another to take you on.
-- Anna Quindlen -
I'm appalled that the word 'feminism' has been denigrated to a place of almost ridicule and I very passionately believe the word needs to be revalued and reintroduced with power and understanding that this is a global picture. It isn't about us and them.
-- Annie Lennox -
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Why are we not valuing the word 'feminism' when there is so much work to be done in terms of empowerment and emancipation of women everywhere?
-- Annie LennoxSource : "Dem debaters target Bush", www.cnn.com. January 23, 2004.
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I would like to see the gay population get on board with feminism. It's a beautiful organisation and they've done so much. It seems to me a no-brainer.
-- Annie Lennox -
It should not prejudice my voice that I'm not born a man, if I say something advantageous to the present situation. For I'm taxed too, and as a toll provide men for the nation.
-- Aristophanes -
There is no thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.
-- Audre Lorde -
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We must reclaim and retake feminism from our fellow idiotic women.
-- Ayaan Hirsi Ali -
One of the greatest gifts of Black feminism to ourselves has been to make it a little easier simply to be Black and female.
-- Barbara SmithSource : Barbara Smith (1983). “Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology”, p.36, Rutgers University Press
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Feminism as a theoretical enterprise is approached differently by Black women depending on where we are. There are more reformist Black women who tend to use the phrase "Black feminism".
-- Bell Hooks -
Power feminism is just another scam in which women get to play patriarchs and pretend that the power we seek and gain liberates us.
-- Bell Hooks -
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Feminism is a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression.
-- Bell Hooks -
Feminism has never emerged from the women who are most victimized by sexist oppression; women who are daily beaten down, mentally, physically, and spiritually - women who are powerless to change their condition in life. They are a silent majority.
-- Bell Hooks -
Feminism is a struggle to end sexist oppression. Therefore, it is necessarily a struggle to eradicate the ideology of domination that permeates Western culture on various levels.
-- Bell Hooks -
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We have done almost everything in pairs since Noah, except govern. And the world has suffered for it.
-- Bella Abzug -
The word, and the concept of feminism, was a gift because it gave me a sense of identity and a way of defining how I wished to live my life.
-- Betty Buckley -
It was critical to finding a way out. I had assumed young women knew the history of feminism and must have felt gratitude to the movement for the opportunities that the work we have done has afforded them.
-- Betty Buckley -
Feminism - the word - can give us a handle, a rallying point, a common ground, and help us build a bridge. Why not claim the gift of the word as a place to begin?
-- Betty Buckley -
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Feminism is not a fad. It's not like Angry Birds. Although it does involve a lot of angry birds. Bad example.
-- Bridget Christie -
People don't like the word 'feminism' - that's what needs to change, because we're not going to find another word.
-- Bridget Christie -
Feminism, as it stands, well... stands. It has ground to a halt.
-- Caitlin Moran -
Feminism means something - legislation, cultural change - but 'Girl Power' meant nothing more than being friends with your friends.
-- Caitlin Moran -
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Men threatened by feminism either don't understand it or don't like that they now have to modify their own shitty behavior.
-- Caitlin Stasey -
I think of feminism as more of a political ideology.
-- Callie Khouri -
Patriarchy, routinely blamed for everything, produced the birth control pill, which did more to free contemporary women than feminism itself.
-- Camille PagliaSource : Camille Paglia (2011). “Vamps & Tramps: New Essays”, p.38, Vintage
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What feminism calls patriarchy is simply civilization , an abstract system designed by men but augmented and now co-owned by women.
-- Camille Paglia -
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Feminism has exceeded its proper mission of seeking political equality for women and has ended by rejecting contingency, that is, human limitation by nature or fate.
-- Camille Paglia -
Women are not in control of their bodies; nature is. Ancient mythology, with its sinister archetypes of vampire and Gorgon, is more accurate than feminism about the power and terror of female sexuality.
-- Camille Paglia -
Not a shred of evidence supports the existence of matriarchy anywhere in the world at any time. [...] The matriarchy hypothesis, revived by American feminism, continues to flourish outside the university
-- Camille Paglia -
Feminism has tried to dismiss the femme fatale as a misogynist libel, a hoary cliche. But the femme fatale expresses woman's ancient and eternal control of the sexual realm. The specter of the femme fatale stalks all of men's relationships with women.
-- Camille Paglia -
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Madonna is the true feminist. She exposes the puritanism and suffocating ideology of American feminism, which is stuck in an adolescent whining mode. Madonna has taught young women to be fully female and sexual while still exercising control over their lives.
-- Camille Paglia -
When feminism and gay activism set themselves against organized religion, they have the obligation to put something better in its place.
-- Camille Paglia -
In my opinion, no feminism worthy of the name is not methodologically post-marxist.
-- Catharine MacKinnon -
Sexuality is to feminism what work is to Marxism...
-- Catharine MacKinnonSource : Catharine A. MacKinnon (1989). “Toward a Feminist Theory of the State”, p.3, Harvard University Press
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But life is a battle: may we all be enabled to fight it well!
-- Charlotte Bronte -
Feminism is a transformational force, an individual and social force. It is a way of looking at the world-a questioning of power/domination issues, an affirmation of women's energy.
-- Charlotte Bunch -
Feminism is an entire world view or gestalt, not just a laundry list of women's issues.
-- Charlotte Bunch -
Feminism is the radical notion that women are human beings
-- Cheris Kramarae -
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Third World feminism is about feeding people in all their hungers.
-- Cherrie MoragaSource : Cherríe Moraga (1983). “Loving in the war years: lo que nunca pasó por sus labios”, South End Pr
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The left ask people to believe that there is no conflict between feminism and the family.
-- Christopher Lasch -
Male supremacy has kept woman down. It has not knocked her out.
-- Clare Boothe Luce -
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I think feminism has had a major impact on anthropology
-- Clifford Geertz -
Women's liberation is the liberation of the feminine in the man and the masculine in the woman.
-- Corita KentSource : 1974 In the Los Angeles Times, 11 Jul.
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[S]exual intercourse remains a means or the means of psychologically making a woman inferior.
-- Crystal Eastman -
The meeting [in San Antonio of the National Women's Political Caucus] featured a cattle show at which a herd of Democratic candidates- Glenn, Cranston, Mondale, Hart, and Hollings- pantingly pantomined their fidelity to feminism, stopping just short of a pledge to use nuclear weapons against any states that omit to ratify the Equal Right Amendment.
-- Daniel Seligman -
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The test of democracy is freedom of criticism.
-- David Ben-Gurion -
Rather than seeing the opportunities that feminism created they very easy morph into expectations.
-- Debora Spar -
I came from this very traditional background and I benefited hugely from feminism. I felt privileged going to university and doing a PhD. Most people of my background don't get to do that.
-- Denise Mina -
Has feminism increased the pool of happy women?
-- Dennis Prager -
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continually measuring women's wants by men's achievements seems out of date, ignominious, and intolerably boring. ... Now that we have secured possession of the tools of citizenship, we intend to use them not to copy men's models but to produce our own.
-- Eleanor RathboneSource : Ray Strachey, Eleanor Florence Rathbone (1936). “Our freedom and its results”
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Feminist humor raises consciousness. And the reason it's funny is because it stands something on its head. Goodness knows you've got to have a sense of humor if you do feminism full-time, I tell you.
-- Eleanor Smeal -
Feminism has led the way in demystifying personal relations, forcefully insisting they are political to the core.
-- Elizabeth Fox-Genovese -
A viable new feminism must directly confront the realm of practice.
-- Elizabeth Fox-Genovese -
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I do think in general, women have a value system. And it's that value system that I think is feminism. Not "men are bad, women are good, let's get women empowered" - it's let's get this value system, which is about the capacity to feel and empathize with life, and therefore to protect it.
-- Elizabeth Lesser -
Merely external emancipation has made of the modern woman an artificial being. Now, woman is confronted with the necessity of emancipating herself from emancipation, if she really desires to be free.
-- Emma Goldman -
You might be thinking who is this Harry Potter girl? And what is she doing up on stage at the UN. It's a good question and trust me I have been asking myself the same thing. I don't know if I am qualified to be here. All I know is that I care about this problem. And I want to make it better.
-- Emma Watson -
We don't often talk about men being imprisoned by gender stereotypes but I can see that that they are and that when they are free, things will change for women as a natural consequence.
-- Emma Watson -
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Really I was open-minded about doing anything, but the one thing I didn't want to do was get myself into a corset, because I was worried I'd never get out again.
-- Emma Watson -
Better that we should die fighting than be outraged and dishonored... . Better to die than to live in slavery.
-- Emmeline Pankhurst -
Feminism is really the right of women to be full human beings and to not be defined only by their childbearing function. Feminism is really the right of women to be human beings. That's it, yet that's so frightening to a lot of people. A full human being wants satisfying work and love. A full human being is entitled to both, and is not simply defined by only one aspect of her being.
-- Erica Jong -
We don't have a clear path forward, and that's been the case for feminism since the 18th century, when the idea of the rights of women actually began.
-- Erica Jong -
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Feminism is teaching. I've gotten a lot of pleasure pushing younger writers that I've met and worked with.
-- Erica Jong -
We will ask two central questions throughout this course: 1. What difference does gender make? 2. For which women does it make a difference? Which women?
-- Estelle Freedman -
Men have influenced my activism and feminism both positively and negatively. As most gender differences are social, not genetic, we still need to change what we do and what we expect of each other... The potential exists for societies where men and women do not have to conform to unwanted stereotypes.
-- Eva Cox -
I'm very proud of being a woman, and as a woman, I don't even like the word feminism because when I hear that word, I associate it with women trying to pretend to be men, and I'm not interested in trying to pretend to be a man. I don't want to embrace manhood, I want to embrace my womanhood.
-- Evangeline LillySource : Source: pitchfork.com
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There is nothing wrong with "women's studies" that studying the right women can't cure, but feminist literary scholars have a penchant for dragging the rivers of deserved obscurity for third-rate neurotics.
-- Florence King -
Feminism means revolution and I am a revolutionist.
-- Frances Perkins -
Feminism liberated women from the natural dignity of their sex and turned them into inferior men.
-- Francis Parker Yockey -
It's about labeling. For me feminism is bra-burning lesbianism. It's very unglamorous. I'd like to see it rebranded. We need to see a celebration of our femininity and softness.
-- Geri HalliwellSource : "Girl power comes of age" by Joanna Moorhead, www.theguardian.com. October 24, 2007.
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For me feminism is bra-burning lesbianism. It's very unglamorous.
-- Geri Halliwell -
It's a Crime for the Slave to Love her Bonds.
-- Ghada al-Samman -
The purpose of feminism is to free the uniqueness of the individual and to understand that inside each of us is a unique human being who is a combination of heredity and environment.
-- Gloria SteinemSource : Source: bigthink.com
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A liberated woman is one who has sex before marriage and a job after.
-- Gloria Steinem -
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In every century, there are a handful of writers who help the human race to evolve. Andrea is one of them.
-- Gloria Steinem -
A woman reading Playboy feels a little like a Jew reading a Nazi manual.
-- Gloria Steinem -
How does it feel to be a woman minister? I don't know; I've never been a man minister.
-- Golda Meir -
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A Smith & Wesson does more for empowering women than Feminism ever could
-- Greg Gutfeld -
Feminism was about making women's lives less constrained and giving them more choices.
-- Hanna Rosin -
That is why I have called feminism nihilism. It says that being a woman is nothing definite and that the duty of women is to advance that nothingness as a cause.
-- Harvey MansfieldSource : Harvey Claflin Mansfield (2007). “Manliness”, p.147, Yale University Press
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I feel that faith and feminism have a deep relationship to each other and that both are responses to the deep human yearning for connection and for peace on earth, and that they both have a vision of universal human equity.
-- Helen LaKelly Hunt -
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I am blackly bored when they are at large and at work; but somehow I am still more blackly bored when they are shut up in Holloway and we are deprived of them.
-- Henry James -
Feminism hasn't failed, it's just never been tried.
-- Hilary MantelSource : Hilary Mantel (2007). “An Experiment in Love: A Novel”, p.75, Macmillan
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All women are feminists, whether they know it or not.
-- Isabelle Holland -
For whatever reason, various outlets and individuals are committed to making the world think that young girls don't talk or care about feminism anymore, that it's totally over. But it's not.
-- J. Courtney Sullivan -
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I would suggest that a feminism which does not also seek to alter the exploitation of poorer women is not feminism at all, but is simply a varient for of upper-class politics & self-privileging.
-- Jack D. ForbesSource : "Columbus and Other Cannibals: The Wetiko Disease of Exploitation, Imperialism, and Terrorism".
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Feminism is what I do with my life, it’s how I spend my days, it’s my job, it’s not just an opinion I have among many other opinions.
-- Jaclyn FriedmanSource : "Fucking While Feminist, With Jaclyn Friedman". Interview with Amanda Hess, www.washingtoncitypaper.com. March 26, 2010.
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I don't belong to any clubs, and I dislike club mentality of any kind, even feminism - although I do relate to the purpose and point of feminism. More in the work of older feminists, really, like Germaine Greer.
-- Jane Campion -
I knew that my newfound activism and feminism was going to improve my acting, because I was seeing things not just in very narrow, individual, kind of Freudian terms, but seeing them in a much broader, societal way that was going to deepen and enrich my talent.
-- Jane Fonda -