Gender Critical Feminism Quotes

If a given idea has been held in the human mind for many generations, as almost all our common ideas have, it takes sincere and continued effort to remove it; and if it is one of the oldest we have in stock, one of the big, common, unquestioned world ideas, vast is the labor of those who seek to change it. ~ Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Female is real, and it's sex, and femininity is unreal, and it's gender. ~ Germaine Greer

Our laws as we support them now are slow, wasteful, cumbrous systems, which require a special caste to interpret and another to enforce; wherein the average citizen knows nothing of the law, and cares only to evade it when he can, obey it when he must. ~ Charlotte Perkins Gilman

A man hits me--I hit the man a little harder--then he won't do it again.' Unfortunately he did do it again--a little harder still. The effort to hit harder carried on the action and reaction till society, hitting hardest of all, set up a system of legal punishment, of unlimited severity. It imprisoned, it mutilated, it tortured, it killed; it destroyed whole families, and razed contumelious cities to the ground. ~ Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Women accept [man-made] conventions, repeat them, enforce them upon their daughters; but they originate with men. ~ Charlotte Perkins Gilman

In exact proportion as women grow independent, educated, wise and free, do they become less submissive to men-made fashions. ~ Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Society' consists mostly of women. Women carry on most of its processes, therefore women are its makers and masters, they are responsible for it, that is the general belief.

We might as well hold women responsible for harems--or prisoners for jails. To be helplessly confined to a given place or condition does not prove that one has chosen it; much less made it.

No; in an androcentric culture "society," like every other social relation, is dominated by the male and arranged for his convenience. ~ Charlotte Perkins Gilman

The connection between our archaic system of punishment and our androcentric culture is two-fold. The impulse of resistance, while, as we have seen, of the deepest natural origin, is expressed more strongly in the male than in the female. The tendency to hit back and hit harder has been fostered in him by sex-combat till it has become of great intensity. The habit of authority too, as old as our history; and the cumulative weight of all the religions and systems of law and government, have furthermore built up and intensified the spirit of retaliation and vengeance.

They have even deified this concept, in ancient religions, crediting to God the evil passions of men. As the small boy recited; 'Vengeance. A mean desire to get even with your enemies: 'Vengeance is mine saith the Lord'--'I will repay. ~ Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Democratic government is no longer an exercise of arbitrary authority from one above, but is an organization for public service of the people themselves--or will be when it is really attained.

In this change government ceases to be compulsion, and becomes agreement; law ceases to be authority and becomes co-ordination. When we learn the rules of whist or chess we do not obey them because we fear to be punished if we don't, but because we want to play the game. ~ Charlotte Perkins Gilman

[Christianity] is a religion for slaves and women!' said the warrior of old. (Slaves and women were largely the same thing.) 'It is a religion for slaves and women' says the advocate of the Superman.

Well? Who did the work of all the ancient world? Who raised the food and garnered it and cooked it and served it? Who built the houses, the temples, the aqueducts, the city wall? Who made the furniture, the tools, the weapons, the utensils, the ornaments--made them strong and beautiful and useful? Who kept the human race going, somehow, in spite of the constant hideous waste of war, and slowly built up the real industrial civilization behind that gory show?--Why just the slaves and women. ~ Charlotte Perkins Gilman

It is the old masculine spirit of government as authority which is so slow in adapting itself to the democratic idea of government as service. That it should be a representative government they grasp, but representative of what? of the common will, they say; the will of the majority;--never thinking that it is the common good, the common welfare, that government should represent. ~ Charlotte Perkins Gilman

In order to validate our Africanness, we hold on to tradition at all cost, banning critical engagement in an attempt to preserve its sacredness ~ Malebo Sephodi

As women must be more empowered at work, men must be more empowered at home. I have seen so many women inadvertently discourage their husbands from doing their share by being too controlling or critical. Social scientists call this "maternal gatekeeping" which is a fancy term for "Ohmigod, that's not the way you do it! Just move aside and let me!"...Anyone who wants her mate to be a true partner must treat him as an equal--and equally capable partner. And if that's note reason enough, bear in mind that a study found that wives who engage in gatekeeping behaviors do five more hours of family work per week than wives who take a more collaborative approach.

Another common and counterproductive dynamic occurs when women assign or suggest taks to their partners. She is delegating, and that's a step in the right direction. But sharing responsibility should mean sharing responsibility. Each partner needs to be in charge of specific activities or it becomes too easy for one to feel like he's doing a favor instead of doing his part. ~ Sheryl Sandberg

I think the key to writing the truth of our existences, so much of this is being incubated online, is examining the conflicts and the messiness, our sometimes dividedness, dealing with gender and other hierarchies, and also our identities outside of them, deeply personal and yet somehow critical and circumspect. ~ Kate Zambreno

In the most basic terms it was about how when we experience art without critical awareness we consent to the ideas being promoted, either intentionally or unintentionally, by the filmmaker. For instance, if you watch a racist comedian and laugh at his jokes, you are consenting to the prejudices inherent within them. Similarly, if you watch a movie which perpetuates conventional ideas about race, gender, etc., you are consenting to them and not affecting change in any way. ~ Simon Pegg

The effective, identity-safe practices "avoid cues that might instantiate a sense of stereotype threat in students and are, instead, aimed at making everyone in the class feel...as valued and contributive...regardless of their ethnic group or gender." [Dorothy Steele]

...The cohering principle is straightforward: they foster a threat-mitigating narrative about one's susceptibility to being stereotyped in the schooling context. And though no single, one-size-fits-all strategy has evolved, the research offers an expanding set of strategies for doing this: establishing trust through demanding but supportive relationships, fostering hopeful narratives about belonging in the setting, arranging informal cross-group conversations to reveal that one's identity is not the sole cause of one's negative experiences in the setting, representing critical abilities as learnable, and using child-centered teaching techniques. More will be known in the years ahead. But what we know now can make a life-affecting difference for many people in many important places. ~ Claude M. Steele

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

... to wander far from the familiar "home" of his adolescent ways of belonging, doing, and being. He must, as poet Mary Oliver puts it, "stride deeper and deeper into the world." His culture will greatly influence the manner in which he wanders, as will his gender, physical constitution, psychological temperament, age, and bio-region. In one culture, his wandering might take him geographically far from his hometown or village. In another culture, geographic movement will have little importance for the true depth of his wandering. What is critical is not whether he engages in this practice or that, or undergoes this ritual or another, but that his wandering changes his relationship to the world, that he leaves the home of his adolescent identity, and that his border crossings usher him into the mysteries of nature and psyché. ~ Bill Plotkin

Bourdieu's concept of symbolic violence, which is 'violence that is exercised upon a social agent with his or her complicity'...provides an explanation of how social inequalities can continue largely unabated. Within this perspective, individual subjects are subjected to various forms of violence, such as being treated unfairly or denied resources, or are limited in their social mobility and aspirations, but they do not tend to see it that way; rather it is misrecognised by individual subjects as the natural order of things. Gender domination in the patriarchal family is an example of symbolic violence in operation. Through habitus formation in this context, women were often confined emotionally, socially, economically and physically and the perception that women were inferior to men in the home and more generally in society was perpetuated. Women's misrecognition of this violence as 'natural' and 'normal' gendered relations in the world led to their being complicit in reinscribing through their daily practices, their own domination. ~ Kerry H Robinson

It is important and vital is to keep that education for critical consciousness around intersectionalities, so that people are able to not focus on one thing and blame one group, but be able to look holistically at the way intersectionality informs all of us: whiteness, gender, sexual preferences, etc. Only then can we have a realistic handle on the political and cultural world we live within. ~ Bell Hooks

Critical interventions around race did not destroy the women's movement; it became stronger . . . It shows us that no matter how misguided feminist thinkers have been in the past, the will to change, the will to create the context for struggle and liberation, remains stronger than the need to hold on to wrong beliefs and assumptions. ~ Bell Hooks

Theory is, of course, critical to the development of specific analyses of women's situation. Explicitly or implicitly, empirical phenomena must be organised in terms of a theoretical construct in order to be grasped conceptually. At the same time, theory is, by its very nature, severely limited. As a structure of concepts, a theoretical framework simply provides guidance for the understanding of actual societies, past and present. However indispensable this theoretical guidance may be, specific strategies, programmes, or tactics for change cannot be deduced directly from theory. Nor can the phenomenon of variation in women's situation over time, and in different societies, be addressed solely by means of theory. These are matters for concrete analysis and historical investigation. ~ Lise Vogel

The 1970s and 1980s: feminism, androgyny, modernism, aesthetics

In the 1970s and 1980s, Woolf studies expanded in a number of directions,
most notably in relation to feminism. Critical interest in Woolf developed at the same time as feminism developed in related academic disciplines. In this period her writings became central to the theoretical framing of feminism, in
particular to debates on Marxist and materialist feminism and to the emergent theories of androgyny. Both these areas of debate takeWoolf 's A Room of One's Own as a major point of reference...
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At the same time as feminist approaches to Woolf were developing and expanding, so, too, was the critical interest in her modernist theories and her formal aesthetics. Again, Woolf 's writing became central to critical and theoretical formulations on modernism.

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This period also saw considerable critical interest in the influence of the visual arts on Woolf 's writing, and particularly in the influence of the formalist theories of her Bloomsbury colleagues Roger Fry and Clive Bell. ~ Jane Goldman

The right to choose to abort a fetus is critical, as is the ability to effect that choice in real life, so it's great that Hillary Clinton wants to repeal the Hyde Amendment. But without welfare, single-payer health care, a minimum wage of at least $15--all policies she staunchly opposes--many people have to forgo babies they'd really love to have. That's not really a choice.

It seems ill-conceived to have tethered feminism to such a narrow issue as abortion. Yet it makes sense from an insular Beltway fundraising perspective to focus on an issue that makes no demands--the opposite, really--of the oligarch class; this is probably a big reason why EMILY'S List has never dabbled in backing universal pre-K or paid maternity leave; a major reason 'reproductive choice' has such a narrow and negative definition in the American political discourse.

The thing is, an abortion is by definition a story you want to forget, not repeat and relive. And for the same reason abortion pills will never be the blockbuster moneymakers heartburn medications are, abortion is a consummately foolish thing to attempt to build a political movement around. It happens once or twice in a woman's lifetime.

Kids, on the other hand, are with you forever. A more promising movement--one that goes against everything Hillary Clinton stands for--might take that to heart. ~ Liza Featherstone

Where is there a Woman, who having generously trusted her liberty with a husband, does not immediately find the spaniel metamorphosed into a tyger, or has not reason to envy the lesser misery of a bond-slave to a merciless tyrant? ~ Sophia Fermor

Pornography is the theory, and rape is the practice. ~ Robin Morgan

Were we [Women] to express our conceptions of God, it wou'd never enter into the head of any one of us to describe him as a venerable old man. ~ Sophia Fermor

Words evolve, perhaps more rapidly and tellingly than do their users, and the change in meanings reflects a society often more accurately than do the works of many historians. In he years preceding the first collapse of NorAm, the change in the meaning of one word predicted the failure of that society more immediately and accurately than did all the analysts, social scientists, and historians. That critical word? 'Discrimination.' We know it now as a term meaning 'unfounded bias against a person, group, or culture on the basis of racial, gender, or ethnic background.' Prejudice, if you will.

The previous meaning of this word was: 'to draw a clear distinction between good and evil, to differentiate, to recognize as different.' Moreover, the connotations once associated with discrimination were favorable. A person of discrimination was one of taste and good judgment. With the change of the meaning into a negative term of bias, the English language was left without a single-word term for the act of choosing between alternatives wisely, and more importantly, left with a subterranean negative connotation for those who attempted to make such choices.

In hindsight, the change in meaning clearly reflected and foreshadowed the disaster to come. Individuals and institutions abhorred making real choices. At one point more than three-quarters of the youthful population entered institutions of higher learning. Credentials, often paper ones, replaced meaning judgment ~ L.E. Modesitt Jr.

Smoke and mirrors' is a useful metaphor for the ways in which organised abuse has chided conceptualisation and understanding. The chapter provides an overview of cite often incendiary debates over organised abuse before going on to suggest that critical theories on gender, crime and intersubjectivity may offer new insights into the phenomenon. ~ Michael Salter

I can critique the bad; I can take the good, and I can add whatever I want. ~ Justine Larbalestier

Violent men, and men in authority over violent men, and the broader public that authorises those men, are not yet shamed by the harm of coercive control over women ... Maybe we can rest some hope on the growing activity of men of goodwill calling on each other to change. When that group hits a critical mass, the majority of men will be more likely to want to change. ~ Lee Lakeman

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

In May 2012 - a year after the Arab awakening erupted - the United States made two financial commitments to the Arab world that each began with the numbers 1 and 3. The U.S. gave Egypt's military regime $1.3 billion worth of tanks and fighter jets. It also gave Lebanese public school students a $13.5 million merit-based college scholarship program, putting 117 Lebanese kids through local American-style colleges that promote tolerance, gender and social equality, and critical thinking. Having visited both countries at that time, I noted in a column that the $13.5 million in full scholarships bought the Lebanese more capacity and America more friendship and stability than the $1.3 billion in tanks and fighter jets ever would. So how about we stop being stupid? ~ Thomas L. Friedman

Reproductive freedom is critical to a whole range of issues. If we can't take charge of this most personal aspect of our lives, we can't take care of anything. It should not be seen as a privilege or as a benefit, but a fundamental human right. ~ Faye Wattleton

It's critical we examine the kind of standards we hold fictional girls to and consider how it reflects in the way we treat real girls and, most important, what kind of emotional impact that has on them. What are we saying to girls when we cannot accept difficult, hurting female characters as being worthy of love because they are difficult and hurting? ~ Courtney Summers

The premise of Nossiter in 'Mondovino' would have been a lot more accurate when I started writing about wine in 1978 than when the movie was made in 2003. When I started, I was enormously critical of California wines, and I thought the entire wine industry was on a real slippery slope. ~ Robert M. Parker, Jr.

They say women have no conscience about laws, don't they?" Mrs MacAvelly suggested.
"Why should we?" answered her friend. "We don't make 'em– nor God– nor nature. Why on earth should we respect a set of silly rules made by some men one day and changed by some more the next? ~ Charlotte Perkins Gilman

We can learn to work with them, understand them, find meaning in them, make critical choices, and use their energies to grow in strength, wisdom, and compassion. ~ Jon Kabat-Zinn

By leaving, we are not necessarily disobeying the men according to the Bible, because we, the women, do not know exactly what is in the Bible, being unable to read it. Furthermore, the only reason why we feel we need to submit to our husbands is because our husbands have told us that the Bible decrees it. ~ Miriam Toews

People assume Wall Street is a certain culture and tech is a certain culture. But if you look at the (gender) numbers at the top of (those) industries, they don't vary very much. I think in finance, women hold 19 percent of the top jobs, and women are 21 percent of the leaders in nonprofits. ~ Sheryl Sandberg

Consider this: Google grew into a multibillion-dollar sensation by helping us find the right Web page. How much more valuable will it be, in every conceivable industry, to find the right person? That information is worth fortunes, and the personal data we throw off draws countless paths straight to our door. Even if you hold back your name, it's a cinch to find you. A Carnegie Mellon University study recently showed that simply by disclosing gender, birth date, and postal zip code, 87 percent of people in the United States could be pinpointed by name. ~ Stephen Baker

I'm sure a few marriages broke up because of feminism; it doesn't make feminism a cult. ~ Stefan Molyneux

With communication technology in general, there's a kind of certain critical mass of people. Once you get to 15% of the world's entire population using one communication technology, that's a big deal. It's beyond the theoretical at this point. The people who think it's a fad have probably not been paying that much attention. ~ Ben Horowitz

If the Constitution doesn't say anything about a woman's right to abortion, I'm damn sure it doesn't say anything about the rights of the unborn. ~ Israel Morrow

There are transitional forms between the metals and non-metals; between chemical combinations and simple mixtures, between animals and plants, between phanerogams and cryptogams, and between mammals and birds [ ... ]. The improbability may henceforth be taken for granted of finding in Nature a sharp cleavage between all that is masculine on the one side and all that is feminine on the other; or that any living being is so simple in this respect that it can be put wholly on one side, or wholly on the other, of the line. ~ Otto Weininger

She had resolved to never take another step backward. ~ Kate Chopin

Heightened awareness often gives the illusion that a problem is lessening. This is most often not the case. It may mean simply that a problem has become so widespread it can no longer remain hidden or be ignored. ~ Bell Hooks

He grinned like a proud male and moved closer. "It was good."
"Are you asking or telling?"
"I know it was good."
She'd just experienced the longest orgasm in modern history. Who was she to be critical? "It was amazing."
He cupped her face and kissed her. "We could do it again."
"I don't think that's possible."
Instead of answering, he bent down and drew her nipple into his mouth. Then he reached between her legs and lightly touched her. Instantly jolts shot through her. She found herself wanting to pull him close and beg to be taken.
He drew back. "What do you think?"
She looked into his amused eyes. "That maybe I might have a little more time to make up for."
"I figured."
"Did you bring more condoms?"
"Yes."
"Thank God. ~ Susan Mallery

The best way to destroy the decrepit is to build the glorious. ~ Stefan Molyneux