Feminism Quotes

“Give me some credit. You don't get far in my game with your eyes closed. I get it-who doesn't like a man in uniform? But trust me, men are never worth it. Behind every great man is a woman who gave up on greatness and tied herself into an apron. Romance is for saps, Abbie. You're sharp, and you've got pluck. Don't waste it.”

“Feminism has been so co-opted, but the fact is, feminism benefits men as well.”

“At breakfast one Saturday I decided to tell Hank my desire to go back to work. He explodes, 'What can you do? You can't make enough to buy your own Kotex”

“Maybe, long ago, we used to be good. Maybe all little girls are good in the beginning.”

“Having ascended to some spiritual strength by focusing on the power of the feminine, it is no doubt tempting to wield this strength against that which triggers memories of having once been weaker.”

“For thousands of years, servants and slaves--or in lesser households, wives and daughters--were stuck with the same pestles and sieves, with few innovations. This technological stagnation reflects a harsh truth. There was very little interest in attempting to save labor when the labor in question was not your own.”

“Although we are feminists and lesbians, we feel solidarity with progressive black men and do not advocate the fractionalization that white women who are separatists demand.”

“Feminism is the radical notion that women are human beings.”

“Besides, a life without freedom to choose is not worth having.”

“Men don’t think, high and low-alike, they take what a woman does for them for granted.”

“This tension-the idea that there is a right way to be a woman, a right way to be the most essential woman- is ongoing and pervasive.”

“The secrets of the kitchen were revealed to you in stages, on a need-to-know basis, just like the secrets of womanhood. You started wearing bras; you started handling the pressure cooker for lentils. You went from wearing skirts and half saris to wearing full saris, and at about the same time you got to make the rice-batter crepes called dosas for everyone’s tiffin. You did not get told the secret ratio of spices for the house-made sambar curry powder until you came of marriageable age. And to truly have a womanly figure, you had to eat, to be voluptuously full of food. This, of course, was in stark contrast to what was considered womanly or desirable in the West, especially when I started modeling. To look good in Western clothes you had to be extremely thin. Prior to this, I never thought about my weight except to think it wasn’t ever enough. Then, with modeling, I started depending on my looks to feed myself (though my profession didn’t allow me to actually eat very much). When I started hosting food shows, my career went from fashion to food, from not eating to really eating a lot, to put it mildly. Only this time the opposing demands of having to eat all this food and still look good by Western standards of beauty were off the charts. This tug-of-war was something I would struggle with for most of a decade.”

“Look, you had it easier than me,' she says. 'You think Nana and Papa were busy supporting women's rights? No, they wanted me to meet a nice man and get married and cook and clean for him and give them grandchildren, and that's it. You were born into a world where feminism existed and was readily available to you. I had to acquire that knowledge. I didn't know I could be on my own.”

“This is the underside of my world.Of course you don’t want me to be stupid, bless you! you only want to make sure you’re intelligent. You don’t want me to commit suicide; you only want me to be gratefully aware of my dependency. You don’t want me to despise myself; you only want the flattering deference to you that you consider a spontaneous tribute to your natural qualities. You don’t want me to lose my soul; you only want what everybody wants, things to go your way; you want a devoted helpmeet, a self-sacrificing mother, a hot chick, a darling daughter, women to look at, women to laugh at, women to come for comfort, women to wash your floors and buy your groceries and cook your food and keep your children out of your hair, to work when you need the money and stay home when you don’t, women to be enemies when you want a good fight, women who are sexy when you want a good lay, women who don’t complain, women who don’t nag or push, women who don’t hate you really, women who know their job and above all—women who lose. On top of it all, you sincerely require me to be happy; you are naively puzzled that I should be wretched and so full of venom in this the best of all possible worlds. Whatever can be the matter with me? But the mode is more than a little outworn.As my mother once said: the boys throw stones at the frogs in jest.But the frogs die in earnest.”

“I've thought often about why - why?! - anyone, especially other women, would try to disrupt feminist work that combats violence. What in the world could be the point of that? The only reason I've come up with, and I think it makes sense, is fear of becoming that "impure" woman.”

“If women really choose prostitution, why is it mostly marginalized and disadvantaged women who do? If we want to discuss the issue of choice, let’s look at who is doing the actual choosing in the context of prostitution. Surely the issue is not why women allegedly choose to be in prostitution, but why men choose to buy the bodies of millions of women and children worldwide and call it sex.Philosophically, the response to the choice debate is ‘not’ to deny that women are capable of choosing within contexts of powerlessness, but to question how much real value, worth, and power these so-called choices confer.Politically, the question becomes, should the state sanction the sex industry based on the claim that some women choose prostitution when most women’s choice is actually 'compliance’ to the only options available?When governments idealize women’s alleged choice to be in prostitution by legalizing, decriminalizing, or regulating the sex industry, they endorse a new range of 'conformity’ for women.Increasingly, what is defended as a choice is not a triumph over oppression but another name for it.”

“Feminism isn't simply about being a woman in a position of power. It's battling systemic inequities; it's a social justice movement that believes sexism, racism and classism exist and interconnect, and that they should be consistently challenged.”

“Don't we teach our women to view all men according to the actions of a few?”

“I don’t want your babies, Felix. I can assure you I’m not sitting up here like some tragic fallen woman every night dreaming of having your babies.” She began tracing a figure of eight with her fingernail along his stomach. The movement looked idle but the nail pressed in hard. “You realize of course that if it were the other way round there would be a law, there would be an actual law: John versus Jen in the high court. And John would put it to Jen that she did wilfully fuck him for five years, before dumping him without warning in the twilight of his procreative window, and taking up with young Jack-the-lad, only twenty-four years old and with a cock as long as my arm. The court rules in favor of John. Every time. Jen must pay damages. Huge sums. Plus six months in jail. No—nine. Poetic justice.”

“Naomi Wolf dares to explode the myth of 'victim feminism' and pleads for allowing women to be as full of good and bad desires as men, as avid for sexual fulfilment and power as men, but held back by the twin myths of good-girlism and sentimental sisterhood. Though she is perhaps too sanguine about women quickly overcoming their fear of power, Wolf fills me with hope because I see her analysis as having shattered the false categories that imprisoned my generation. Women do not have to agree about everything to join in alliance with each other to promote female power. Women do not have to cast out their inner bad girl to assert their right to power. Women do not have to cast out their sexuality to be 'good sisters'.”