Rebecca Traister

“Being able to control your reproduction is essential to women's ability to flourish in the United States.”

“Like everyone else, I can barely take the waves of embarrassment that come with watching someone do something so badly. Roseanne Barr singing the national anthem, Sofia Coppola acting in 'The Godfather: Part III,' Sarah Palin talking about Russia - they all create the same level of eyeball-squinching discomfort.”

“There may be many benefits to working outside the home for wages, but it's certainly not been done as an act of liberation. It's an act of economic necessity and has been since the beginning of time.”

“'The Cosby Show' was a show about black people that was fundamentally and unequivocally friendly to whiteness and to white people. The Huxtables had white friends.”

“Scores of African-Americans have written both appreciatively and critically about what 'The Cosby Show' meant to them over the years.”

“In 2008, I started the election season as a critic of Hillary Clinton, a fan of Barack Obama, and a supporter of John Edwards. But by the end of Clinton's historic drive toward nomination, the gendered rhetoric used against her - as well as the way so many men in my own party diminished the value of electing a female president - had radicalized me.”

“Changing professional expectations and technological tools have created an impossibility of balancing work and life.”

“There are all kinds of ways in which especially white men in this country have been helped by the government.”

“When I say, 'The choice to not marry,' that doesn't always translate into, 'I am a woman, and I am deciding that I am not going to get married,' or 'I am rejecting marriage.'”

“Bill Clinton had to propose to Hillary Rodham several times before she agreed to marry him and move to Arkansas.”

“In 1970, the average woman had her first child at 21.4; by 2012, it was almost 26, an age by which many young adults are at least a few years deep into jobs or careers.”

“It was impossible for Hillary Clinton to have chosen a path to the White House that bypassed the loathing, jeering derision and gendered stereotyping built on two centuries of male power. What was interesting was how hard she tried to do just that.”

“Women are living independently, but we don't yet have the social and economic policies behind us to support that independence.”

“In work, it is possible to find commitment, attachment, chemistry, and connection. In fact, it's high time that more people acknowledged the electric pull that women can feel for their profession, the exciting heat of ambition and frisson of success.”

“There are a whole bunch of structural and systemic factors we need to address in order to move away from the model in which women really are still dependent on men.”

“The first big impact that feminism in the 1960s and '70s had was a big divorce boom in the '70s and '80s. That, in part, had an impact on how the children of that divorce boom viewed marriage.”

“In some ways, privileged women who are closer to power wind up being able to exert their influence in ways that change public policy in ways that women with less power don't have access to.”

“Single women will get us closer to gender equality, and that will take many forms, including a reimagining of what families entail and what it means to have a full female life. Also, their presence will force the government to support a population of independent women more capably.”

“All the epic allusions contribute to the difficulty Clinton has long had in coming across as, simply, a human being. She is uneasy with the press and ungainly on the stump. Catching a glimpse of the 'real' her often entails spying something out of the corner of your eye, in a moment when she's not trying to be, or to sell, 'Hillary Clinton.'”

“'Living Single' was on in early 1990s - the show about Queen Latifah living with a bunch of friends. And then there's 'Friends,' and that's called the groundbreaking show about unmarried adults living in New York!”