Feminism Quotes

I think one of the primary goals of a feminist landscape architecture would be to work toward a public landscape in which we can roam the streets at midnight, in which every square is available for Virginia Woolf to make up her novels

~ Rebecca Solnit

If any of us had heard the word feminist we would have thought it meant a girl who wore too much makeup, but we were, without knowing it, feminists ourselves, bound together by the freemasonry that exists among intelligent women who know they are intelligent. It is the only kind of female bonding that works, which is why most men do not like intelligent women. They don't mind one female brain if they can enjoy it privately; it's the idea of two or more on the loose that upsets them. The girls in the college-bound group might not have been friends in every case--Sharon Cohen and I gave each other willies--but our instincts told us that we had the same enemies.

~ Florence King

Do not define me by my gender or my socio-economic status, Noah Willis. Do not tell me who I am and do not tell me who society thinks I am and then put me in that box and expect me to stay there. Because, I swear to God, I will climb the hell out of that box and I will take that box you've just put me in and I will use that box to smash your face in until you're nothing more than a freckly, bloodied pulp. You got that, sweet cheeks?

~ Megan Jacobson

I've heard it said that God made all men, but Samuel Colt made all men equal.We'd see what Mr. Colt could do for a woman.

~ Cherie Priest

Whatever my powers--feminine or the contrary--God had given them, and I felt resolute to be ashamed of no faculty of his bestowal.

~ Charlotte Brontë

Nowadays it is seen as a shame, to marry a girl who is a mother, who has never been married. I want to get rid of that prejudice.

~ Frederick The Great

We have gone on too long blaming or pitying the mothers who devour their children, who sow the seeds of progressive dehumanization, because they have never grown to full humanity themselves. If the mother is at fault, why isn't it time to break the pattern by urging all these Sleeping Beauties to grow up and live their own lives? There never will be enough Prince Charmings or enough therapists to break that pattern now. It is society's job, and finally that of each woman alone. For it is not the strength of the mothers that is at fault but their weakness, their passive childlike dependency and immaturity that is mistaken for femininity. Our society forces boys, insofar as it can, to grow up, to endure the pains of growth, to educate themselves to work, to move on. Why aren't girls forced to grow up - to achieve somehow the core of self that will end the unnecessary dilemma, the mistaken choice between femaleness and humanness that is implied in the feminine mystique?

~ Betty Friedan

My sister burns, and she does not burn for you.

~ E.k. Johnston

The demon got up. The demon said Fool. To think you can eat their food and not talk to them. To think you can take their money and not be afraid of them. To think you can depend on their company and not suffer from them.

~ Joanna Russ

Women and our right to choose were going to be challenged with Ashcroft around. When Bush appointed Ashcroft, I went out and got me four abortions. I stocked up. The doctor was like, 'Listen, you're not pregnant.' I said, 'Hey, just shut up and do your job. I'm exercising my right while I can, dammit.

~ Wanda Sykes

Anytime there's a bad female stand-up somewhere, some dickhead Interblogger will deduce that “women aren't funny.” Using that same math, I can state: Male comedy writers piss in cups.

~ Tina Fey

Why do I write? I write because I have to, because it is all I know, because it is my truth, because I am compelled, because I am driven to make the worldacknowledge that women like me exist, and we possess a dangerous wisdom.

~ Patrick Califia-Rice

Women are already born so far ahead ability-wise. The day men can give birth, that's when we can start talking about equal rights.

~ Chuck Palahniuk

Men write more books. Men give more lectures. Men ask more questions after lectures. Men post more e-mail to Internet discussion groups. To say this is due to patriarchy is to beg the question of the behavior's origin. If men control society, why don't they just shut up and enjoy their supposed prerogatives? The answer is obvious when you consider sexual competition: men can't be quiet because that would give other men a chance to show off verbally. Men often bully women into silence, but this is usually to make room for their own verbal display. If men were dominating public language just to maintain patriarchy, that would qualify as a puzzling example of evolutionary altruism—a costly, risky individual act that helps all of one's sexual competitors (other males) as much as oneself. The ocean of male language that confronts modern women in bookstores, television, newspapers, classrooms, parliaments, and businesses does not necessarily come from a male conspiracy to deny women their voice. It may come from an evolutionary history of sexual selection in which the male motivation to talk was vital to their reproduction.

~ Geoffrey Miller

Rachel,” I snap, “I don’t care if Janelle wants to work at Hooters. I don’t care if you and the rest of the world want to go spend your money on dried-out chicken and ketchup-based sauces. And least of all—less than almost anything else I can imagine—I don’t care how much sex your sister is or isn’t having. That’s kind of the deal with the whole uptight feminazi thing—we don’t care when other women want to wear stupid orange Soffe shorts with white tennis shoes and have a lot of sex, or when they want to wear habits and live in a convent, or if they want to walk around in pasties and never French kiss, so long as they’re allowed to do what they want. And right now, all I want is to go to bed. Okay?

~ Emily Henry

When a person feels powerless in regard to controlling his life, he can defend against the discomfort of such an experience by asserting control over someone else.

~ A. Nicholas Groth

With boys there was a fundamental assumption that they had a right to be there—not always, but more often than not. With girls, Why her? came up so quickly.

~ Helen Oyeyemi

Reason, you'll always be half-blind.

~ Marguerite Porete

When our mother is seen only as the one-dimensional Mary of modern times, instead of the great dual force of life and death, She is relegated to the same second-class status of most women in the world. She is without desires of Her own, selfless and sexless except for Her womb. She is the cook, the mistress, bearer and caretaker of children and men. Men call upon Her and carry Her love and magic to form a formidable fortress, a team of cannons to protect them against their enemies. But for a long, long time the wars that women have been left to wage on behalf of men, on behalf of the human race, have started much sooner, in the home, in front of the hearth, in the womb. We do what we must to protect and provide for our young our families, our tribes

~ Ana Castillo

It is not possible to preserve one's identity by adjusting for any length of time to a frame of reference that is in itself destructive to it. It is very hard indeed for a human being to sustain such an 'inner' split - conforming outwardly to one reality, while trying to maintain inwardly the value it denies.

~ Betty Friedan

Every woman, hell, every man should be a feminist, that is the only way to render this word obsolete.

~ Aysha Taryam

Here's a tip. If you touch a girl, even as joke, and she pushes you off, leave... her... alone. Don't touch her. Anywhere! Just stop. Your touch does nothing but sicken her.

~ Jay Asher

My mother told me to be a lady. And for her, that meant be your own person, be independent

~ Ruth Bader Ginsburg

So tell me gentleman, tell me the time and place where it was easy to be a woman.

~ Andrew Sean Greer

Moving from phonetics to etymology, ‘vagina’ originates from a word meaning sheath for a sword. Ain’t got no vagina.

~ Inga Muscio

Maidens who stay maidens turn into saints. Old women become sorceresses. Tough jobs, both of these.

~ Tanith Lee

I'd learned myself by the age of sixteen that just as girls guarded their virginity, boys guarded something less tangible which they called Themselves.

~ Joyce Johnson

It is in the interests of both sexes to hear the other sex's experience of powerlessness.

~ Warren Farrell

There are politics in sexual relationships because they occur in the context of a society that assigns power based on gender and other systems of inequality and privilege.

~ Susan Shaw

something about giving himself over to a woman was worse than having lunch with the devil...

~ Ana Castillo

you will rise.and are you less of a woman for this? nowhat is woman?woman is this—enduring.listen girl, you will survive this–you will.but what fool said you had to do it silently?here is a tip—scream

~ Salma Deera

Women are raising children, picking up socks, and making sure you feel like a man by supporting you when you need it and looking sexy (but not trying too hard, because that would be pathetic). We're being independent and bad bitches while wearing fucking lipstick and heels so as not to offend your delicate aesthetic sensibility, yet even just the word feminist pisses you off. How dare we.

~ Jessica Valenti

This semester has born in me the flame of hope to one day become a leader in the modern feminist movement. I can and will be the force that blows new life into it, giving a face and name to associate with instead of those women now who’s names I don’t know because they weren’t listed on Wikipedia.

~ Christy Leigh Stewart

Batman doesn’t want a baby in order to feel he’s ‘done everything’. He’s just saved Gotham again! If this means that Batman must be a feminist role model above, say, Nicola Horlick, then so be it.

~ Caitlin Moran

It is dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate and provoke study, and when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide—plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard of contradictions.

~ Charlotte Perkins Gilman

The essence of oppression is that one is defined from the outside by those who define themselves as superior by criteria of their own choice.

~ Andrea Dworkin

You all watched a sketch about feminism and you didn't even know it because of all the jokes. It's like when Jessica Seinfeld puts spinach in kids' brownies. Suckers!

~ Tina Fey

It's like I tell people at my stand-up shows: by making me a bitch, you have given me my freedom, the freedom to say and do things I couldn't do if I was a nice girl with some sort of stupid, goody-two-shoes image to keep up. Things that require courage. Things that require balls. Things that need to be done. By making me a bitch, you have freed me from the trite, sexist, bourgeois prison of likeability. Any idiot can be liked. It takes talent to scare the crap out of people.

~ Alison Arngrim

The significance of feminist movement (when it is not co-opted by opportunistic, reactionary forces) is that it offers a new ideological meeting ground for the sexes, a space for criticism, struggle, and transformation.

~ Bell Hooks

Larsson was an active and lifelong feminist, partly for personal reasons but also because he saw that ending gender slavery was as crucial to next-stage evolution as ending race slavery was to the last stage. It's a noble fight, not least because the various fundamentalisms threatening Western democracy are united in their urgent need to re-cage women's sexuality.

~ Elizabeth Farrelly