Mothers And Feminism Quotes

Once becoming a mother, a woman might be radicalized in her feminism. She had a greater stake in saving the earth from male politicians. She had a greater stake in education and health, in the environment, in all social policy. She finally understood the way our society makes children and mothers the lowers of priorities.
...
I was hardly mellowed by the maternal transformation. If anything, my feminism grew more fierce. ~ Erica Jong

I laughed too, but not at the hateful jokes made on my people.I laughed because, except that she was white, the big movie star looked just like my mother. Except that she lived in a big mansion with thousands servants. she lived just like my mother. And it was funny to think of the whitefolks' not knowing that the woman they were adoring could be my mother's twin, except that she was white and my mother was prettier. Much prettier. ~ Maya Angelou

Taught from their infancy that beauty is woman's sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft

I started out doing my mother's nightclub act, and I had stage fright. ~ Carrie Fisher

Did any great genius ever enter the world in the wake of commonplace pre-natal conditions? Was a maker of history ever born amidst the pleasant harmonies of a satisfied domesticity? Of a mother who was less than remarkable, although she may have escaped being great? Did a woman with no wildness in her blood ever inform a brain with electric fire? The students of history know that while many mothers of great men have been virtuous, none have been commonplace, and few have been happy. ~ Gertrude Atherton

I could never, I knew then, lose myself "in love." Margery had accused me of coldness, and she was right, but she was also wrong: For me, for always, the paramount organ of passion was the mind. Unnatural, unbalanced, perhaps, but it was true: Without intellect, there could be no love. ~ Laurie R. King

Let your children uplift your burdens and allow your role as a mother - to flourish and grow. ~ Eleesha

In college, educated women (I found out) were frigid; active women (I knew) were neurotic; women (we all knew) were timid, incapable, dependent, nurturing, passive, intuitive, emotional, unintelligent, obedient, and beautiful. You can always get dressed up and go to a party. Woman is the gateway to another world; Woman is the earth-mother; Woman is the eternal siren; Woman is purity; Woman is carnality; Woman has intuition; Woman is the life-force; Woman is selfless love.

"I am the gateway to another world," (said I, looking in the mirror) "I am the earth-mother; I am the eternal siren; I am purity," (Jeez, new pimples) "I am carnality; I have intuition; I am the life-force; I am selfless love." (Somehow it sounds different in the first person, doesn't it?)

Honey (said the mirror, scandalised) Are you out of your fucking mind?
I AM HONEY
I AM RASPBERRY JAM
I AM A VERY GOOD LAY
I AM A GOOD DATE
I AM A GOOD WIFE
I AM GOING CRAZY
Everything was peaches and cream. ~ Joanna Russ

One day Cunegonde, while walking near the castle, in a little wood which they called a park, saw between the bushes, Dr. Pangloss giving a lesson in experimental natural philosophy to her mother's chamber-maid, a little brown wench, very pretty and very docile. As Miss Cunegonde had a great disposition for the sciences, she breathlessly observed the repeated experiments of which she was a witness; she clearly perceived the force of the Doctor's reasons, the effects, and the causes; she turned back greatly flurried, quite pensive, and filled with the desire to be learned; dreaming that she might well be a sufficient reason for young Candide, and he for her. ~ Voltaire

It continues to baffle me that people's main concern about my activities around peace and grassroots activism in a full-on police state at first centred on my clothes - not my ideas, not my message, not my intentions; all those came second to what I was wearing and whether or not 'a girl' could walk that far. ~ Scarlett Curtis

Many people are concerned with children of India, with the children of Africa where quite a few die of hunger, and so on. Many people are also concerned about the violence in this great country of the United States. These concerns are very good. But often these same people are not concerned with the millions being killed by the deliberate decision of their own mothers. And this is the greatest destroyer of peace today- abortion which brings people to such blindness. ~ Mother Teresa

The Lord Almighty leads this Church, and he will never suffer you to be led astray if you are found doing your duty. You may go home and sleep as sweetly as a babe in its mother's arms, as to any danger of your leaders leading you astray, for if they should try to do so the Lord would quickly sweep them from the earth. Your leaders are trying to live their religion as far as they are capable of doing so ~ Brigham Young

Some women just aren't cut out to be mothers, and unfortunately it had taken Susanna three kids to realize she was one of them. ~ Kelley Armstrong

But the overwhelming number of mothers who think they have too little milk have babies who are taking plenty of milk and are gaining weight well. These mothers have based their conclusions on misinformation or a misinterpretation of their babies' behavior. ~ Kathleen Huggins

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

Maman's death: perhaps it is the one thing in my life that I have not responded to neurotically. My grief has not been hysterical, scarcely visible to others (perhaps because the notion of "theatralizing" my mother's death would have been intolerable); and doubtless, more hysterically parading my depression, driving everyone away, ceasing to live socially, I would have been less unhappy. And I see that the non-neurotic is not good, not the right thing at all. ~ Roland Barthes

The urge to leap across feminism to "human liberation" is a tragic and dangerous mistake. It deflects us from our real sources of vision, recycles us back into old definitions and structures, and continues to serve the purposes of the patriarchy, which will use "women's lib," as it contemptuously phrases it, only to buy more time for itself - as both capitalism and socialism are now doing. Feminism is a criticism and subversion of all patriarchal thought and institutions - not merely those currently seen as reactionary and tyrannical. ~ Adrienne Rich

As soon as the nurse handed our newborn to me, I felt an overwhelming connection to him, a bond I cannot describe, but one that other mothers understand. I thought he was the most incredible thing I had ever seen. In a moment I will never forget, I took Reed in my arms for the first time, and he turned his head all the way around to face me and looked straight into my eyes. I could hardly believe this baby, only a few minutes old, who had never seen a face before, found mine. I still wonder how he knew to look into my eyes, and after all these years, that powerful communication between mother and newborn still amazes me. ~ Missy Robertson

A man can be beautiful, I see that now. It's not just a woman's term, not a word reserved for romantic, virtuous, elegant things. I don't think beauty is neat anymore. It's unordered. It's unbrushed hair and a torn back pocket. It's bright and strange and lovely, and if I were to paint him, I'd use all the warm colours - ochre, gold, plum, terracotta, scarlet, burnt orange. I want him to see me as I saw him then, I want him to find me alone at the end of the day with the sun in my hair. I want his heart to buckle, too. I want him to stop someone out in the square and say, who's that? Do you know her? Where is she from?"

- from Eve Green's mother's account.
"It is written on a piece of thin, yellow paper, and is folded in half. I like this account. I like it because it's true, she's right. We all want out lovers to see us that way - unaware, natural, serene. We want to change their world with one glance, to stop their breath at the sight of us. ~ Susan Fletcher

*marissa tries to get her single, working mother's attention by suggesting something outrageous, to which mom replies:*

'You're a smart girl. Use your head and avoid any guy who reminds you of your father. ~ Camille Pagan

At Bob Dylan's induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988, Bruce Springsteen described hearing Dylan's music for the very first time. Springsteen was fifteen, he said, riding in the car with his mother, idly listening to the radio, when "Like a Rolling Stone" came on. It was as though, Springsteen recalled, "somebody took his boot and kicked open the door to your mind." His mother's verdict: "That man can't sing." Mrs. Springsteen's response reminds us that we don't all react the same way to the same experience - and her son's reminds us that life holds moments when our perspective dramatically shifts, when our assumptions are deeply challenged, when we see new possibilities or sense for the first time that whatever has been holding us back from freedom or creativity or new ventures might actually be overcome. There ~ Sharon Salzberg

At my glummest, I sometimes think women get to chose- between being punished for being unsubjugated and the continual punishment of subjugation. ~ Rebecca Solnit

Do you know why people like me are shy about being capitalists? Well, its because we, for as long as we have known you, were capital, like bales of cotton and sacks of sugar, and you were commanding, cruel capitalists, and the memory of this so strong, the experience so recent, that we can't quite bring ourselves to embrace this idea that you think so much of. As for hat we were like before we met you, I no longer care. No periods of time over which my ancestors held sway, no documentation of complex civilisations, is any comfort to me. Even if I really came from people who were living like monkeys in trees, it was better to be that than what happened to me, what I became after I met you. ~ Jamaica Kincaid

Then up he got with a light heart, free from all his troubles, and walked on till he reached his mother's house, and told her how very easy the road to good luck was. ~ Jacob Grimm

My guys saw you on Fremont last week, Dan. You know what they saw you doing?" "Their mothers?" I replied. "Funny," he said and turned back to Juliette. ~ Craig Schaefer

Feminism makes it possible for women and men to know love. ~ Bell Hooks

The lie [of compulsory female heterosexuality] is many-layered. In Western tradition, one layer - the romantic - asserts that women are inevitably, even if rashly and tragically, drawn to men; that even when that attraction is suicidal (e. g, Tristan and Isolde, Kate Chopin's 'The Awakening') it is still an organic imperative. In the tradition of the social sciences it asserts that primary love between the sexes is 'normal,' that women need men as social and economic protectors, for adult sexuality, and for psychological completion; that the heterosexually constituted family is the basic social unit; that women who do not attach their primary intensity to men must be, in functional terms, condemned to an even more devastating outsiderhood than their outsiderhood as women. ~ Adrienne Rich

No, when the stresses are too great for the tired metal, when the ground mechanic who checks the de-icing equipment is crossed in love and skimps his job, way back in London, Idlewild, Gander, Montreal; when those or many things happen, then the little warm room with propellers in front falls straight down out of the sky into the sea or on to the land, heavier than air, fallible, vain. And the forty little heavier-than-air people, fallible within the plane's fallibility, vain within its larger vanity, fall down with it and make little holes in the land or little splashes in the sea. Which is anyway their destiny, so why worry? You are linked to the ground mechanic's careless fingers in Nassau just as you are linked to the weak head of the little man in the family saloon who mistakes the red light for the green and meets you head-on, for the first and last time, as you are motoring quietly home from some private sin. There's nothing to do about it. You start to die the moment you are born. The whole of life is cutting through the pack with death. So take it easy. Light a cigarette and be grateful you are still alive as you suck the smoke deep into your lungs. Your stars have already let you come quite a long way since you left your mother's womb and whimpered at the cold air of the world. Perhaps they'll even let you go to Jamaica tonight. Can't you hear those cheerful voices in the control tower that have said quietly all day long, 'Come in BOAC. Come in Panam. Come in KLM'? ~ Ian Fleming

Becoming a mother makes you the mother of all children. From now on each wounded, abandoned, frightened child is yours. You live in the suffering mothers of every race and creed and weep with them. You long to comfort all who are desolate. ~ Charlotte Gray

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

Since everyone could not be given a knowledge of the Savior, God gave every soul a mother. Maybe He hoped that through some of these mothers, He could give all His children a taste of the selfless sacrifice and perfect love of Christ. Perhaps it it through the love of good mothers that God prepares all of His children to one day recognize and accept the love of their good Savior. ~ Brad Wilcox

And, most important, if you like shaving your entire region, and somebody tells you that it's wrong because it makes you look like a baby, that person is a lunatic. You are an adult woman who happens to have no pubic hair. You are not a Lolita. You are an adult woman. ~ Alida Nugent

At about 40, the roles started slowing down. I started getting offers to play mothers and grandmothers. ~ Kathleen Turner

When, in the street, I see a mother walking with her grown-up daughter, I can hardly bear to witness the mother's pride, the softening of her face, her incredulous joy at being granted her daughter's company; and the iron discipline she imposes on herself, to muffle and conceal this joy. ~ Helen Garner

Julian wore his favorite good-luck red-striped soccer jersey. He was planning to make money to build cement walls for his mother's house. He was recently married, and he and his wife were expecting a child that October.
His father said Julian had promised to "always behave with respect," and that he would do nothing to cost his father his feelings of pride.
He had a note from his bridge in his pocket. ~ Luis Alberto Urrea

I disapprove of matrimony as a matter of principle ... Why should any independent, intelligent female choose to subject herself to the whims and tyrannies of a husband? I assure you, I have yet to meet a man as sensible as myself! (Amelia Peabody) ~ Elizabeth Peters

A long time ago, when you were a wee thing, you learned something, some way to cope, something that, if you did it, would help you survive. It wasn't the healthiest thing, it wasn't gonna get you free, but it was gonna keep you alive. You learned it, at five or six, and it worked, it *did* help you survive. You carried it with you all your life, used it whenever you needed it. It got you out--out of your assbackwards town, away from an abuser, out of range of your mother's un-love. Or whatever. It worked for you. You're still here now partly because of this thing that you learned. The thing is, though, at some point you stopped needing it. At some point, you got far enough away, surrounded yourself with people who love you. You survived. And because you survived, you now had a shot at more than just staying alive. You had a shot now at getting free. But that thing that you learned when you were five was not then and is not now designed to help you be free. It is designed only to help you survive. And, in fact, it keeps you from being free. You need to figure out what this thing is and work your ass off to un-learn it. Because the things we learn to do to survive at all costs are not the things that will help us get FREE. Getting free is a whole different journey altogether. ~ Mia McKenzie

I have attempted to draw an accurate and unexaggerated picture of my family in the following pages; they appear as I saw them. To explain some of their more curious ways, however, I feel that I should state that at the time we were in Corfu the family were all quite young: Larry, the eldest, was 23; Leslie was 19; Margo was 18; while I was the youngest, being of the tender and impressionble age of 10. We had never been certain of my mother's age for the simple reason she could never remember her date of birth; all I can say is she was old enough to have four children. My mother also insists that I explain that she is a widow for, as she so penetratingly observed, you never know what people might think. ~ Gerald Durrell

I had wondered if all mothers shared a fear of how vibrant and alive their children were. ~ Alice Sebold

We must be tolerant with ourselves and allow ourselves some deviations from the straight line we set up to follow. Even more we must allow others the same prerogative. ~ Jill Lepore

We conceived of the planet as female, an all-giving Mother Nature, just as we conceived of the female body, infinitely alterable by and for man; we serve both ourselves and our hopes for the planet by insisting on a new female reality on which to base a new metaphor for the earth:
the female body with its own organic integrity that must be respected. ~ Naomi Wolf

So many mothers are unable to let their children go into the adult life and become literally attached to them giving rise to codependency ~ Sunday Adelaja

I did not raise my son, Sam, to celebrate Mother's Day. I didn't want him to feel some obligation to buy me pricey lunches or flowers, some annual display of gratitude that you have to grit your teeth and endure. ~ Anne Lamott

Even though trauma has a way of
becoming the wallpaper of my head,

watch me drag the art
out of my suffering.

Watch me plant seeds down my spine
and bloom into a garden of poetry

from every horrible thing that has ever
happened to me, all the nights my voice
turned to cement and I couldn't say anything-

Watch me build an empire from the ashes
of everything that tried to destroy me. ~ Blythe Baird