Feminist Quotes

Some Me of Beauty

I took a good long look at myself in a full length mirror
Sometimes it's good to look in a full length mirror
And what I saw was not some soul sister poetess of the moment
But I saw just a woman
Just a woman feeling
Just a woman human
And what I felt was
What I felt was a spiritual revelation
And what I felt was a root revival of some love coming on
Coming on strong
And I knew then, looking in a full length mirror,
That many things were over
And some me of beauty was about to begin ~ Carolyn Rodgers

Sometimes women's attraction to true crime is dismissed as trashy and voyeuristic (because women are vapid!). Sometimes it is unquestioningly celebrated as feminist (because if women like something, then it must be feminist!). And some argue that women read about serial killers to avoid becoming victims. This is the most flattering theory - and also, it seemed to me, the most incomplete. By presuming that women's dark thoughts were merely pragmatic, those thoughts are drained of their menace. True crime wasn't something we women at CrimeCon were consuming begrudgingly, for our own good. We found pleasure in these bleak accounts of kidnappings and assaults and torture chambers, and you could tell by how often we fell back on the language of appetite, of bingeing, of obsession. A different, more alarming hypothesis was the one I tended to prefer: perhaps we liked creepy stories because something creepy was in us. ~ Rachel Monroe

What bothers me most about my teeth is that they don't travel loin south, don't sprout from the Mother Mouth. Vagina dentata, come closah, say high. ~ Virginia Petrucci

Always happens with men. They promise friendship. They promise to treat you as an equal. In the end, all they want is to possess you. ~ Rick Riordan

I do not want to know things, I want to understand things. I want to answer every question ever posed me. I want to leave no room for anyone to doubt me. ~ Mackenzi Lee

Take Canada again: why does Canada have the health-care program it does? Up until the mid-1960s, Canada and the United States had the same capitalist health service: extremely inefficient, tons of bureaucracy, huge administrative costs, millions of people with no insurance coverage―exactly what would be amplified in the United States by Clinton's proposals for "managed competition" [put forward in 1993].21 But in 1962 in Saskatchewan, where the N.D.P. is pretty strong and the unions are pretty strong, they managed to put through a kind of rational health-care program of the sort that every industrialized country in the world has by now, except the United States and South Africa. Well, when Saskatchewan first put through that program, the doctors and the insurance companies and the business community were all screaming―but it worked so well that pretty soon all the other Provinces wanted the same thing too, and within a couple years guaranteed health care had spread over the entire country. And that happened largely because of the New Democratic Party in Canada, which does provide a kind of cover and a framework within which popular organizations like unions, and then later things like the feminist movement, have been able to get together and do things. ~ Noam Chomsky

My shipmates and I only grasped our roles on the very superficial level we were taught. We were fighting the bad guys. They were the bad guys because we were told that they were the bad guys. We had to control, infiltrate, and shove our authority around the world because we were its greatest nation. We had the shiniest ships, the biggest guns, the deadliest weapons, and the cockiest egos. And if we thought otherwise, we were vicious traitors. The military condemns rebels, thinkers, and doubt. The military loves obedience, loyalty, and oblivion. Its core values are, after all, "Honor, Courage, and Commitment. ~ Maggie Young

It makes me sad to hear girls constantly putting themselves down. We have these unbelievably high expectations of ourselves, when actually we're human beings and our bodies have a function. ~ Emma Watson

I was reading everything under the sun from music history to feminist literature to Shakespeare, which is why I'm not a complete idiot at this time. ~ Emilie Autumn

Patriarchy is women structuring lifelong decisions around men they haven't met. ~ Maggie Young

Becoming a model was very counter-culture for my background, which is hyper-liberal, academic and feminist. ~ Cameron Russell

I've heard people say that 'The Blair Witch Project' is a feminist movie because there's a woman in charge and I've heard it called a completely anti-feminist movie because this woman screws everything up. Who cares really? It's just a movie. ~ Heather Donahue

Animal rights activists gives disillusioned feminists an excuse to go back to being women protecting wee creatures without compromising their radical credentials ~ Florence King

Unfortunately, every era needs to demonize feminist. The Feminazi was the 1990s version. The term was coined by radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh to describe women who support abortion rights. It was taken up by ultra-right-wing conservatives everywhere and came to refer feminists in general. (…) A Feminazi is a strident, controlling bitch who –Oh, horrible crime!– insists on equal right for women. She doesn't agree with the right-wing construct that the man is the ruler of the home. Her goal in life is to turn men into whimpering slaves who take care of the kids and share the housecleaning, something men must resist at all costs or American society will crumple even more. The Guerrilla Girls are still waiting for the day when everyone will think of the Feminist as a positive stereotype. Don't let us wait too long. ~ Guerrilla Girls

When feminist women told the world that patriarchy promotes woman-hating, the response was that feminists were being too extreme, exaggerating the problem. Yet when men who knew nothing about feminism claimed that feminists were man-hating, there was no response from the nonfeminist world saying that they were being too extreme. No feminists have murdered and raped men. Feminists have not been jailed day after day for their violence against men. No feminists have been accused of ongoing sexual abuse of girl children, including creating a world of child pornography featuring little girls. Yet these are some of the acts of men that led some feminist women to identify men as woman-hating. ~ Bell Hooks

I feel in my bones that Lady Gaga is a true strident feminist and good for my soul - but how do I square this with the fact that she's constantly walking around in her bra and pants, even at, like, airports and stuff, where even nudists wear a fleece and linen drawstring trousers? ~ Caitlin Moran

...we should distinguish carefully between women's and feminist institutions, remain aware of the costs of racial exclusiveness, and avoid romanticizing the past. ~ Estelle B. Freedman

I believe I was raised with feminist values, but I don't think I ever heard my Mom call herself a feminist. Before I identified as a feminist myself, I thought of feminism as more of a historical term describing the women's movement in the '70s but didn't know much about what they had done and didn't think it applied to my life at all. ~ Julie Zeilinger

The transsexually constructed lesbian-feminist feeds off woman's true energy source, i.e. her woman-identified self. It is he who recognises that if female spirit, mind, creativity and sexuality exist anywhere in a powerful way it is here, among lesbian-feminists. ~ Janice Raymond

I feel like I'm one of the biggest feminists in the world because I tell women not to be scared of anything, ~ Miley Cyrus

At some point, while you were roaming the globe, making treaties and dividing the spoils of war, I quietly declared my own independence. I am the sovereign nation of Clio now. And there will be no terms of surrender. ~ Tessa Dare

Gone are the days when reality fed the feminist movement. ~ Tammy Bruce

I'm a workaholic and I don't believe in 'no.' If I'm not sleeping, nobody's sleeping. ~ Beyonce Knowles

A materialist feminist approach to women's oppression destroys the idea that women are a 'natural group' ... What the analysis accomplishes on the level of ideas, practice makes actual at the level of facts: by its very existence, lesbian society destroys the artificial (social) fact constituting women as a 'natural group.' A lesbian society pragmatically reveals that the division from men of which women have been the object is a political one ... ~ Monique Wittig

Feminist art may ... though perhaps our imaginations are so mutilated now that we are incapable even of the ambition, introduce a new theme ... should we call it 'joy'? ~ Andrea Dworkin

Besides the money aspect, I guess I was curious about sex work. In the way that most people are, but also because ever since I was a teen I had read feminist writers like Dworkin and Mackinnon and the way they wrote about sex work had an enormous impact on me. Was it really as horrible as they said? ~ Marie Calloway

I was never a feminist because I was never ugly enough for that. ~ Karl Lagerfeld

There is plenty of work that needs to be done by men to dismantle patriarchy ~ Malebo Sephodi

I work toward the liberation of women, but I'm not feminist. I'm just a woman. ~ Buchi Emecheta

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

Revolutionary feminism embraces men who are able to change, who are capable of responding mutually in a subject-to-subject encounter where desire and fulfillment are in no way linked to coercive subjugation. This feminist vision of the sexual imaginary is the space few men seem able to enter. ~ Bell Hooks

For both men and women, Good Men can be somewhat disturbing to be around because they usually do not act in ways associated with typical men; they listen more than they talk; they self-reflect on their behavior and motives, they actively educate themselves about women's reality by seeking out women's culture and listening to women…. They avoid using women for vicarious emotional expression…. When they err - and they do err - they look to women for guidance, and receive criticism with gratitude. They practice enduring uncertainty while waiting for a new way of being to reveal previously unconsidered alternatives to controlling and abusive behavior. They intervene in other men's misogynist behavior, even when women are not present, and they work hard to recognize and challenge their own. Perhaps most amazingly, Good Men perceive the value of a feminist practice for themselves, and they advocate it not because it's politically correct, or because they want women to like them, or even because they want women to have equality, but because they understand that male privilege prevents them not only from becoming whole, authentic human beings but also from knowing the truth about the world…. They offer proof that men can change. ~ Bell Hooks

Lesley Gore's part-time field was pop singer, and in her brief but urgent prime, she was the Queen of Teen Angst. She endured heartbreak as a birthday girl betrayed by her beau in 'It's My Party,' savored revenge in the sequel 'Judy's Turn to Cry' and belted the proto-feminist anthem 'You Don't Own Me.' ~ Richard Corliss

You come to a point where you give up on holding yourself to a perfect feminist ideal - it just feels stifling. ~ Jessica Valenti

Methinks the lady doth protest too much," said Iago.

"Methinks the lady protests just the right amount," said Emilia. "Methinks the lady is just getting fucking started protesting. ~ Christopher Moore

Being a feminist means that you believe in civil rights and social justice. ~ Janeane Garofalo

Feminists have mocked full-time motherhood as silly and old fashioned. Maybe they're right. I mean, what do moms do really? ~ Kimberly Guilfoyle

I deplore the shying away that can go on, within women, from the term 'feminist.' I am, absolutely, all about being a feminist. ~ Cindy Gallop

My parents divorced when I was born, and my mother is a political science professor, like a feminist Mormon, which is sort of an oxymoron. ~ Eliza Dushku

The 1980s: feminism, postmodernism, sexual/textual politics

While it might be tempting to generalise that Woolf 's writing was being discussed almost in two separate camps during the 1980s, formalists on the one hand, and feminists on the other, this would be to simplify things too far.
Many critics were attempting to make sense of and connect her feminist politics with her modernist practices. Such investigations coincided with the explosion of theory in literary studies, and once again the work of Virginia
Woolf was central to the framing of many of the major theoretical developments in literary critical engagements with feminism, postmodernism, deconstruction and psychoanalysis. In the context of the rise of 'high theory'
and the questioning of old-school Marxist, materialist, humanist and historicist literary theories, Woolf studies wrestled with the locating of her radical feminist politics in the avant-garde qualities of the text itself, and its endlessly transgressive play of signifiers, with the Woolfian inscription of radically deconstructed models of the self and of sexuality and jouissance. ~ Jane Goldman

I believe and support the feminist movement, but I am not generally interested in considering women's rights in relation to equality with men, or in a competition with men, but rather within their own rights and feminine space. ~ Shirin Neshat

It makes me really sad that women have been ejected from the seat of their power in this society in terms of what happens around childbirth. In other parts of the world, there are places where women can't drive a car, but they're still in charge of childbirth ... The minute my child was born, I was reborn as a feminist. It's so incredible what women do. I find it metaphorically resonant that a pregnant woman looks like she's just sitting on a couch, but she's actually exhausting herself constructing a human being. The laborious process of growing a human is analogous to how 'women's work' is seen. ~ Ani DiFranco

The only thing I know is that I paint because I need to. ~ Frida Kahlo

I would hope everyone would be a feminist. ~ Mia Wasikowska

With still, underneath, the old respectable-girl-versus-slut thing. It's OK to fuck around if you're a feminist but it's also not OK to fuck around because most guys aren't feminists and won't respect you and won't call you again if you fuck around. ~ David Foster Wallace

Amos and I introduced the idea of a conjunction fallacy, which people commit when they judge a conjunction of two events (here, bank teller and feminist) to be more probable than one of the events (bank teller) in a direct comparison. ~ Daniel Kahneman

I've been a feminist since the day I was born. I wanted to play football. I didn't want to play with dolls; I wanted to play with boys and didn't understand why I couldn't. ~ Lizzy Caplan

It's self-deceptive to think we're in a post-feminist world when we never tried a feminist world. ~ Ellen Goodman

All women are my sisters. ~ Abhijit Naskar

Feminist psychologists have suggested that a toxic friendship is often one in which a women's own personal growth and individuation is sacrificed at the expense of the demands of the other person. Sometimes choosing oneself rather than the friendship is important for future personal growth and individuation. But women have a difficult time separating from each other because emotional connection is so highly valued and broken friendships are seen as failures. ~ Irene S. Levine

Women used to be elected only when their husbands died and they became widows. The men found this was too hard on them. That's why they've become feminists. ~ Gloria Steinem

I'm a radical feminist, not the fun kind. ~ Andrea Dworkin

I wish you would stop and seriously consider, as a broad and long-term feminist political strategy, the conversion of women to a woman-identified and woman-directed sexuality and eroticism, as a way of breaking the grip of men on women's minds and women's bodies, of removing women from the chronic attachment to the primary situations of sexual and physical violence that is rained upon women by men, and as a way of promoting women's firm and reliable bonding against oppression ... ~ Marilyn Frye

I am absolutely not a feminist, I am against stupidity, and if it comes from males or females, it doesn't change anything. If it means that women and men, they are equal, then OK, certainly I am a feminist. ~ Marjane Satrapi

For many people - from secular feminists to observant Jews - the notion of a feminist Judaism is an oxymoron. ~ Judith Plaskow

...women, brave as stars at dawn ~ Edwidge Danticat

There is a reason why America produced the most vigorous feminist movement in the world: We were one of the only countries in which the middle class (which is wealthy by world standards) customarily employed its own women as domestic servants. ~ Barbara Ehrenreich

But millions at one time, beyond gender or race, had their attention fixed on her, and with that power, she chose to flash the word "feminist" all over our TV screens. If that don't do nothin' but make people Google the word, then that should make every feminist in the world proud. ~ Lizzo

Because of how rarely our privilege is examined, even our social justice movements will tend to focus on the most privileged and most well represented people within those groups. Anti-racism groups will often tend to prioritize the needs of straight men of color, feminist groups will tend to prioritize the needs of white women, LGBTQ groups will tend to prioritize the needs of white gay cisgender men, disability rights groups will tend to prioritize the needs of disabled white men...Because the needs of the most privileged are usually the ones prioritized, they are often the only ones considered when discussing solutions to oppression and inequality. These solutions, not surprisingly, often leave the underprivileged populations in our movements behind. ~ Ijeoma Oluo

President Obama and his radical feminist enforcers have had it in for Catholic medical providers from the get-go. It's about time all people of faith fought back against this unprecedented encroachment on religious liberty. First, they came for the Catholics. Who's next? ~ Michelle Malkin

To most middle-class feminists, as to most middle-class non-feminists, working-class women remain mysterious creatures to be "reached out to" in some abstract way. No connection. No solidarity. ~ Irena Klepfisz

No, what Great Aunt Winifred was suffering from was the persecution every happily single woman suffers: the predictable social condemnation of her independence and childlessness. Dorothy reminded herself of what she'd learned during a university course on feminist history (with a strong Marxist slant): spinsters are a threat to patriarchy. ~ Tobsha Learner

If you're not a feminist, you're part of the problem. ~ Jon Krakauer

Earlier feminists were almost universally pro-choice and have dominated political debate until now. Having access to abortion was viewed as the only way women could have full equality with men, who, until recently, couldn't get pregnant. ~ Kathleen Parker

The end goal of feminist revolution must be ... not just the elimination of male privilage but of the sex distinction itself: genital differences between human beings would no longer matter culturally. ~ Shulamith Firestone

I didn't even know I was a feminist until I read it on the back of one of my own books. ~ Fay Weldon

I call [fourth-wave feminism] fainting–couch feminism, a la the delicate Victorian ladies who retreated to an elegant chaise when overcome with emotion. As an equality feminist from the 1970s, I am dismayed by this new craze. Women are not children. We are not fragile little birds who can't cope with jokes, works of art, or controversial speakers. Trigger warnings and safe spaces are an infantilizing setback for feminism - and for women. ~ Christina Hoff Sommers

Being a housewife is an illegitimate profession ... The choice to serve and be protected and plan towards being a family-maker is a choice that shouldn't be. The heart of radical feminism is to change that ~ Vivian Gornick

I had a very feminist mother who exposed me not only to Planned Parenthood - my first job - but also to Betty Friedan and Colette and Naomi Wolf. ~ Liz Goldwyn

But the true feminist deals out of a lesbian consciousness whether or not she ever sleeps with women. ~ Audre Lorde

Authenticity is an act of social justice. ~ Kierra C.T. Banks

A feminist is just someone who recognizes power structures that keep people from having the fullest life they can. ~ Lauren Groff

She's claiming assault,verbal and physical abuse,and now that I know Kate's a lesbian, that explains the sexual abuse she tossed it."
"I am not a lesbian," Kate fumed. "Though the way she said it was an insult to any rational person who supports freedom of sexual preference." From his expression she realized it wasn't the time to get up on any liberal or feminist soapbox. Instead,
she shifted,sulked. "And I never touched her in any sexual way.This is completely out of proportion,Josh and you know it.She gave us grief,and we gave her some back.That's all."
"That's not all.The Templeton Resort isn't second-period gym class. ~ Nora Roberts

A DOZEN PHALLACIES WOMEN BUY
Phallacy 3.
If you use your power to support a man, he'll always support you.
Truth
Alas, not true. It's wonderful to stand by your man, to give to the one you love, but you must never forget yourself, and your children, since he may. Being a man, he takes for granted that his needs come first. Being a woman, you take that for granted too. Don't. Protect yourself -- not with feminist rhetoric or argument, but with actions. A bank account and real estate in your own name, money put aside for your kids' education that he can't touch (or give to the next -- younger -- wife and her spawn), a profession of your own to rely on. Above all, empower yourself, and then help empower him if it pleases you to do so. ~ Erica Jong

I'm not sure that finding a husband at university made me any less of a feminist or an academic. I still soaked up Susan Faludi; I still read Doris Lessing. But I did it at the same time I met someone who I felt was my soulmate. ~ Janine Di Giovanni

There's a side of me that dislikes feminism. I think we surrendered something and women were unable to reveal any kind of vulnerability. ~ Rachel Hunter

I don't think we can afford to emulate the beauty editors of fashion magazines, airbrushing out blemishes and hawking a political ideal in which progressive people have no acne, no stupid remarks. ~ Anna Bondoc

Feminist," he said, clearly amused. "Next you'll be telling us you hate men."

She gave him a blank look. "I only hate stupid men who don't actually understand what 'feminist' means."

He laughed. "You run into a lot of men like that?"

"All the time."

"Really?"

"Even as we speak, Nick."

"Oh no she didn't," said Peter. I groaned. ~ Richelle Mead

By the end of Barber's talk, this event she's celebrating sounds like a product of the imagination of some master of speculative fiction like Philip K. Dick or Ray Bradbury - a mad dystopia in which feminist dreams have led to a forest full of separate clearings in which more and more women keep to smaller and smaller groups for fear of encountering difference. ~ Bruce Bawer

What I really can't stand about the feminist revolution is that it produced some of the smuggest, most unselfcritical people the world has ever seen. They are horrible. ~ Doris Lessing

For many of us it seems that to be a feminist in the way that we have seen or understood feminism is to conform to an identity and way of living that doesn't allow for individuality, complexity, or less than perfect personal histories. We fear that the identity will dictate and regulate our lives, instantaneously pitting us against someone, forcing us to choose inflexible and unchanging sides, female against male, black against white, oppressed against oppressor, good against bad. ~ Rebecca Walker

So many men in my life have tried to "fix me"; they viewed me as a "fiery" being who is in need of taming ~ Mohadesa Najumi

It's so clear that you have to cherish everyone. I think that's what I get from these older black women, that every soul is to be cherished, that every flower Is to bloom. ~ Alice Walker

I'm sure it's why I'm such an odd duck in my feminist generation, because I've always been equally fair to men. ~ Nancy Friday

Very early on in writing the series, I remember a female journalist saying to me that Mrs Weasley, 'Well, you know, she's just a mother.' And I was absolutely incensed by that comment. Now, I consider myself to be a feminist, and I'd always wanted to show that just because a woman has made a choice, a free choice to say, 'Well, I'm going to raise my family and that's going to be my choice. I may go back to a career, I may have a career part time, but that's my choice.' Doesn't mean that that's all she can do. And as we proved there in that little battle, Molly Weasley comes out and proves herself the equal of any warrior on that battlefield. ~ J.K. Rowling

I don't necessarily think of myself as a feminist, but I'm a whole person. ~ Jill Scott

The Feminist Me says that a woman's right to her own body should be inviolate at all times, free from fear of peeping paps. ~ Julie Burchill

Yet censure strikes hard at women, while men, the true agents of trouble, hear no reproach. ~ Euripides

My idea of a true feminist is a woman who feels free enough to do whatever she wants. ~ Lana Del Rey

I need to find a catchy new word for feminism, right? Like 'bootylicious.' ~ Beyonce Knowles

Or perhaps it's "activist," but on environmental and economic problems, without understanding that pressuring women to have too many children is the biggest cause of environmental distress, and economic courses should start with reproduction, not just production. ~ Gloria Steinem

You may debate whether the Disney heroines fit the feminist standard, but they don't live in a democracy. Remember, they're princesses. ~ Richard Corliss

The witch is the ultimate feminist icon because she is a fully rounded symbol of female oppression and liberation. ~ Pam Grossman

It's not always easy being a full-time feminist - especially as a young woman - when you're constantly being told that what you do is irrelevant. I'm on the defense all the time. ~ Jessica Valenti

I am not a Damsel In Distress who needs a Prince Charming. I am more of Rani Laxmi Bai who rides a Sturdy Horse. ~ Nikita Dudani

Feminism differs from reform of any kind, even franchise reform. Feminists, I should say, are not reformers at all, but ratherintellectual biologists and psychologists. ~ Rheta Childe Dorr

Some people are happy to give feminists credit for things they fear - like abortion rights, contraception for teenagers, or gay liberation - but less willing to acknowledge that feminist activism brought about things they support, like better treatment for breast cancer or the opportunity for young girls to play soccer as well as lead cheers.

As Rosalyn Baxandall and Linda Gordon observe, "Although the word 'feminist' has become a pejorative term for to some American women, most women (and most men as well) support a feminist program: equal education, equal pay, child care, freedom from harassment and violence," and so on. ~ Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

I would say that I'm a feminist theorist before I'm a queer theorist or a gay and lesbian theorist. ~ Judith Butler

That a woman claims not to be feminist does not diminish the necessity of feminism. If anything, it makes us see the extent of the problem, the successful reach of patriarchy. ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Feminism? It might change society, but it will certainly not change the man. ~ Ljupka Cvetanova