Decolonial Feminism Quotes

Decolonial feminism arrives at a similar conclusion that gender is not an innocent concept. This school of thought points to gender as a colonial introduction. As a concept gender did not exist among indigenous and black people; more fluid categorisations prevailed ~ Gloria Wekker

She threw herself across her bed, weeping into a pillow. She knew just what she wanted -- the desire was a fierce ache inside her. But fiercer still was the knowledge that it was beyond the reach of a female. ~ Libbie Hawker

It's not new, our valuation of young female people for how they can serve, satisfy, and satiate. Our girls are both the platter and the meal, and we eat them up--we eat their meat, we lap up their sweetness, we covet and control and consume. ~ Elana K. Arnold

My idea of feminism is self-determination, and it's very open-ended: every woman has the right to become herself, and do whatever she needs to do. ~ Ani DiFranco

I've written 18 books, mostly dealing with issues of social justice, ending racism, feminism, and cultural criticism. ~ Bell Hooks

Normative statements about "women's roles" and girls' and women's behaviour being "appropriately feminine" were replaced with more neutral statements about what women and girl versus boys and men do and think and say they want. In this way, conventionally gendered behaviour was taken out of the context of prescription and presented as simple description. This had the possibly unanticipated consequence, though, of taking these behaviours out of the context of the social world. The descriptive approach significantly deemphasised the role of norms, social structures, and modelling in developing gendered traits. Instead, disembodied as "naked facts" of sex differences, they began to look more and more like simple reflections of male and female behaviour. ~ Rebecca M. Jordan-Young

It's the way some med say, "I'm not the problem" or that they shifted the conversation from actual corpses and victims as well as perpetrators to protecting the comfort level of bystander males. An exasperated woman remarked to me, "What do they want--a cookie for not hitting, raping, or threatening women? ~ Rebecca Solnit

I love analogies! Let's have one.

Imagine that you dearly love, absolutely crave, a particular kind of food. There are some places in town that do this particular cuisine just amazingly. Lots of people who are into this kind of food hold these restaurants in high regard. But let's say, at every single one of these places, every now and then throughout the meal, at random moments, the waiter comes over and punches any women at the table right in the face. And people of color and/or LGBT folks as well! Now, most of the white straight cis guys who eat there, they have no problem–after all, the waiter isn't punching them in the face, and the non-white, non-cis, non-straight, non-guys who love this cuisine keep coming back so it can't be that bad, can it? Hell, half the time the white straight cis guys don't even see it, because it's always been like that and it just seems like part of the dining experience. Granted, some white straight cis guys have noticed and will talk about how they don't like it and they wish it would stop.

Every now and then, you go through a meal without the waiter punching you in the face–they just give you a small slap, or come over and sort of make a feint and then tell you they could have messed you up bad. Which, you know, that's better, right? Kind of?

Now. Somebody gets the idea to open a restaurant where everything is exactly as delicious as the other places–but the waiters won't punch you in the face. Not even once, ~ Ann Leckie

He is a gentleman, and I am a gentleman's daughter. So far we are equal. ~ Jane Austen

The sadness of the women's movement is that they don't allow the necessity of love. See, I don't personally trust any revolution where love is not allowed. ~ Maya Angelou

[On Jane Austen] She was fully possessed of the idealism which is a necessary ingredient of the great satirist. If she criticized the institutions of earth, it was because she had very definite ideas regarding the institutions of heaven. ~ Rebecca West

Feminism is, of course, part of human rights in general--but to choose to use the vague expression "human rights" is to deny the specific and particular problem of gender. It would be a way of pretending that it was not women who have, for centuries, been excluded. It would be a way of denying that the problem of gender targets women. That the problem was not about being human, but specifically about being a female human. ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Girls are better at this sort of labour, often called 'emotional labour', not because there's anything in the meat and matter of our living cells that makes us naturally better but because we're trained for it from birth. Trained to make other people feel good. Trained to serve the coffee, fill in the forms, organise the parties and wipe the table afterwards. Trained to be feisty, if we must, but not strong. To be bubbly, not funny. You must at no stage appear to have a body that functions in a normal human way, that pisses and shits and sweats and farts and falters. Decorate the prison of your body. Make yourself useful. Shut up and smile. ~ Laurie Penny

There is
a heaviness in me
worth my weight in gold,
passed over for copper. ~ Olivia Barnes

I fell into a hornets' nest of revolutionary feminism. ~ Julian Assange

This condition in which women live is created out of, and defended by, a system of ideas represented by the world's religions, by psychoanalysis, by pornography, by sexology, by science and medicine and the social sciences. ~ Sheila Jeffreys

The important thing is that we are participating-whether it's by running, voting, or supporting (financially or otherwise) candidates who make a difference to women. Don't leave shit up to others, 'cause that's how we get fucked over. ~ Jessica Valenti

I'm appalled 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. ~ Annie Lennox

She smiled, and as she hugged me, the scent of lavender intensified. It was intoxicating; it wrapped its long, soft arms around my head, and whispered tales in my ear. Tales of elegant women living in houses with large gardens where peacocks could wander. Tales of women who lived exactly as they wanted. Tales of women who did as they pleased. Tales of women who loved how and whom they wanted. Tales that could become reality.
Yes, the lavender smelled of freedom. At that moment I understood: this was what I wanted. To live as I pleased, not as I was supposed to. ~ Petra Pavlíková

What we so often forget is that God has honored the woman by giving her value in relation to God - not in relation to men. But as Western feminism erases God from the scene, there is no standard left - except men. As a result, the Western feminist is forced to find her value in relation to a man. And in so doing, she has accepted a faulty assumption. She has accepted that man is the standard, and thus a woman can never be a full human being until she becomes just like a man.

When a man cut his hair short, she wanted to cut her hair short. When a man joined the army, she wanted to join the army. She wanted these things for no other reason than because the "standard" had it. ~ Yasmin Mogahed

It was only when I got to college that I realized that the rest of the world didn't run the way my world was run, and that there was a need for feminism. I'd thought it was all solved. There are people like my mom, clearly everyone is equal and it's all fine. Then I get into the world and I hear the things people are saying. Then I get to Hollywood and hear the very casual, almost insidious misogyny that just runs through so much of the fiction. It was just staggering to me. ~ Joss Whedon

Remember to draw a line between being nice in a strong way and simply being a people pleaser.

Nice: Positive, yet honest and straightforward.
People pleaser: Sweeping things under the rug to avoid making waves. ~ Fran Hauser

Women's bodies do not give up their babies so easily, and so silently, is the message. The heart will always remember. ~ Caitlin Moran

First world babies are eating this planet like termites. ~ Caitlin Moran

In every generation there is a chosen one. She alone will stand against the vampires the demons and the forces of darkness. She is the slayer. ~ Joss Whedon

She told me to picture little Georgia, at five years old or so (when this behavior was learned), and imagine calling her a "stupid fucking idiot" for making a mistake. It made me want to cry. Five-year-old Georgia doesn't deserve that; she deserves understanding and patience and to know that mistakes can be made without them making her a broken person. And so when I berated myself for that wrong turn, I was perpetuating the narrative that Georgia doesn't deserve to be treated with kindness. Even though I didn't start it, the only person who could stop that cycle was myself, and a great way to do that was to picture myself as a little kid when I was being cruel to myself. It's taken some time, but I've definitely been kinder to myself since I learned that. ~ Georgia Hardstark

When two people marry they become in the eyes of the law one person, and that one person is the husband. ~ Shana Alexander

One whose testimony made a major impact more than a decade ago is Ben Barres, formerly Barbara Barres, a biologist at Stanford University. In 2006, he wrote in the journal Nature about the bias he had experienced as a woman in the sciences, from losing fellowships to less qualified male candidates to being told a boyfriend must have helped her with her math. He was told that he was smarter than his sister by a man who confused his former, female self for that sister.
("A Short History of Silence") ~ Rebecca Solnit

When her soul is on fire.
Her head in the clouds.
And her heart on her sleeves.
She is under no obligations to neither
Make any sense to you
Nor
To put on a different skin in order to owe your heart... ~ Samiha Totanji

In the back of the fridge I checked out some stewed apples destined to fester. I examined them closely and reckoned they had only a day to go, even by my standards. I spooned the apples into tiny bowls, tossed in some dried fruit and sprinkled them with crumble topping. Delicious, they said that night, scraping the bowls so clean they hardly needed to go in the dishwasher. The fools. ~ Helen Brown

By educating women to use all their brains, men will not only be just, but will also ensure the future of a new social order in which women will apply their intelligence and warm feelings to the problems of living. Men are fools to entrust the upbringing of their sons, whom they expect to grow up to love freedom, to women who have never known freedom themselves. ~ Eugenio Maria De Hostos