Naomi Wolf Quotes

We should be telling girls what they already know but rarely see affirmed: that the lives they lead inside their own self-contained bodies; the skills they attain through their own concentration and rigor, and the unique phase in their lives during which they may explore boys and eroticism at their own pace - these are magical. And they constitute the entrance point to a life cycle of a sexuality that should be held sacred.

~ Naomi Wolf

Women are not wrong if they react instinctively – often jealously – against their partner’s interest in porn, since pornography is actually, neurologically, a woman’s destructive rival for her man’s sexual capabilities.

~ Naomi Wolf

What if she doesn't worry about her body and eats enough for all the growing she has to do? She might rip her stockings and slam-dance on a forged ID to the Pogues, and walk home barefoot, holding her shoes, alone at dawn; she might baby-sit in a battered-women's shelter one night a month; she might skateboard down Lombard Street with its seven hairpin turns, or fall in love with her best friend and do something about it, or lose herself for hours gazing into test tubes with her hair a mess, or climb a promontory with the girls and get drunk at the top, or sit down when the Pledge of Allegiance says stand, or hop a freight train, or take lovers without telling her last name, or run away to sea. She might revel in all the freedoms that seem so trivial to those who could take them for granted; she might dream seriously the dreams that seem to obvious to those who grew up with them really available. Who knows what she would do? Who knows what it would feel like?

~ Naomi Wolf

Some women have become far too proscriptive of other women's pleasures and private arrangements, and the definition of feminism has become ideologically overloaded.

~ Naomi Wolf

Rape and sexual assault ... should be understood not just as a form of forced sex, they should also be understood as as a form of injury to the brain and body, and even as a variant of castration.

~ Naomi Wolf

Camille Paglia is: 'the nipple-pierced person's Phyllis Schlafly who poses as a sexual renegade but is in fact the most dutiful of patriarchal daughters.

~ Naomi Wolf

Many of the signals that either stoke or diminish female desire have to do with the female brain's question: Is it safe here?

~ Naomi Wolf

Peaceful, lawful protest - if it is effective - is innately disruptive of 'business as usual.' That is why it is effective.

~ Naomi Wolf

Of course a woman who decides to work full time as a mother in the home can be happy and deserves full respect from us. Motherhood is one of the most challenging and creative jobs anyone can do. The goal is to remake the world so that our choices are not so stark.

~ Naomi Wolf

Obstacles, of course, are developmentally necessary: they teach kids strategy, patience, critical thinking, resilience and resourcefulness.

~ Naomi Wolf

'Beauty' is a currency system like the gold standard. Like any economy, it is determined by politics, and in the modern age in the West is is the last, best belief system that keeps male dominance intact.

~ Naomi Wolf

After we were hit on September 11, 2001, we were in a state of national shock. Less than six weeks later, on October 26 2001, the U.S.A. Patriot Act was passed by a Congress that had little chance to debate it; many said that they scarcely had time to read it.

~ Naomi Wolf

The idea that women are innately gentle is a fantasy, and a historically recent one. Kali, the Hindu goddess of destruction, is depicted as wreathed in male human skulls; the cruel entertainments of the Romans drew audiences as female as they were male; Boudicca led her British troops bloodily into battle.

~ Naomi Wolf

I am delighted to be joining 'Guardian U.S.'s team as a weekly columnist, and to have the chance to address American and global current events on its distinguished platform. 'Guardian U.S.' brings the 'Guardian's hard-hitting investigative brand to a new focus on American news and opinion.

~ Naomi Wolf

Kim Kardashian's marriage to Kris Humphries famously lasted 72 days, and was reported in the tabloids as being all about the big bucks paid by magazines for the bridal photos: it is a spectacle of a bride-to-be as entrepreneur, not as romantic heroine; the groom, in this scenario, is nothing but a prop.

~ Naomi Wolf