Popular quotes about Feminism! Wisdom and inspiration are here!
What we need is a tough new kind of feminism with no illusions. Women do not change institutions simply by assimilating into them. We need a feminism that teaches a woman to say no - not just to the date rapist or overly insistent boyfriend but, when necessary, to the military or corporate hierarchy within which she finds herself. We need a kind of feminism that aims not just to assimilate into the institutions that men have created over the centuries, but to infiltrate and subvert them.
Barbara EhrenreichPeople sometimes say that we will know feminism has done its job when half the CEOs are women. Thatโs not feminism; to quote Catharine MacKinnon, itโs liberalism applied to women. Feminism will have won not when a few women get an equal piece of the oppression pie, served up in our sistersโ sweat, but when all dominating hierarchies - including economic ones - are dismantled.
Lierre KeithBecause my work discusses feminism and disapproves of feminism, it is important from the leftist standpoint to destroy Dave Sim as an individual and to ignore his work.
Dave SimFor me, the issue of feminism is just not an interesting concept... Whenever people bring up feminism, Iโm like, god. Iโm just not really that interested.
Lana Del ReyFeminism is a way of understanding reality, not just a series of things to do. Feminism challenges our predilection for one right answer, one right God, one size fits all.
Phyllis CheslerI think feminism means what it has always meant - women want to use all their gifts, all their talents and be judged impartially for them. I don't think feminism has ever meant anything else.
Erica JongWhat feminism sought to do, when you get right down to it feminism was brought to us by a bunch of angry women whose major grievance and beef was with human nature and God. And they sought to reverse, undo, change, whatever, basic human nature, things that we're born with.
Rush LimbaughThe media is such a huge piece of how we understand feminism, particularly celebrity feminism, and I really do think that so much of how that stuff gets filtered through can be either finessed or really stymied by how media talks about it.
Andi ZeislerI consider myself 100 percent a feminist, at odds with the feminist establishment in America. For me the great mission of feminism is to seek the full political and legal equality of women with men. However, I disagree with many of my fellow feminists as an equal opportunity feminist, who believes that feminism should only be interested in equal rights before the law. I utterly oppose special protection for women where I think that a lot of the feminist establishment has drifted in the last 20 years.
Camille PagliaShe watched the first episode and she was like, 'This is feminism?' And then by the end of the season, she was like, 'This is feminism.' The tone changed completely. She was really psyched about it.
Allison WilliamsReading about feminism when I was a teenager and seeing it as a young woman, I realized that feminism really hadn't dealt with sexuality; it really hadn't dealt with transgender or gay women.
Lorna SimpsonAll year there have been these cover stories that the women's movement is dead and about the death of feminism and the post-feminist generation of young women who don't identify with feminism - and then we have the biggest march ever of women in Washington. More people than had ever marched for anything - not only more women, but more people.
Betty FriedanMuch male fear of feminism is the fear that, in becoming whole human beings, women will cease to mother men, to provide the breast, the lullaby, the continuous attention associated by the infant with the mother. Much male fear of feminism is infantilismโthe longing to remain the motherโs son, to possess a woman who exists purely for him.
Adrienne RichAn indigenous feminism has been present in every culture in the world and in every period of history since the suppression of women began.
Robin MorganI think that feminism permits women to speak among themselves, instead of simply being resentful, having personal complaints, which get them nowhere and which make them sick and ill-tempered, depressive and poison the lives of their husbands and children. It's much better to arrive at a collective consciousness of this problem, which is both a kind of therapy and the basis for a struggle.
Simone de BeauvoirFeminism is an attack on social practices and habits of thought that keep women and men boxed into gender roles that are harmful.
Robert WebbPeople can say what they want, but historically, feminism in the Dominican Republic has been extremely strong.
Junot DiazFeminism seeks to turn the biggest, bloodiest carnivore in the world - passion - into a right-on cud-chewing vegan. It can never work. Sex was never meant to be that way. Sex, on the whole, was meant to be short, nasty and brutish. If what you want is cuddling, you should buy a puppy.
Julie BurchillFeminism is dead in the world. It comes from another time. I'm a feminist. I want to fight, but I don't see many people with this desire to fight for something. Women don't help each other, especially in fashion.
Donatella VersaceFeminism is a political practice of fighting male supremacy on behalf of women as a class, including all the women you don't like, including all the women you don't want to be around, including all the women who use to be your best friends whom you don't want anything to do with any more. It doesn't matter who the individual women are.
Andrea DworkinHere's the progression. Feminism won; you can have it all; of course you want children; mothers are better at raising children than fathers; of course your children come first; of course you come last; today's children need constant attention, cultivation, and adoration, or they'll become failures and hate you forever; you don't want to fail at that; it's easier for mothers to abandon their work and their dreams than for fathers; you don't want it all anymore (which is good because you can't have it all); who cares about equality, you're too tired; and whoops--here we are in 1954.
Susan J. DouglasWe think that maybe feminism isn't appropriate anymore, since Western women have really made enormous strides. But check out the rest of the world if you'd like to not be able to sleep tonight.
Elizabeth LesserThe idea that feminism is a 'battle of the sexes' about blaming all men and setting up a 'gender war' is a handy, controversial media hook. But it doesn't reflect reality.
Laura BatesThe true mission of feminism today is not to carp about the woes of affluent Western career women but to turn the spotlight on life-and-death issues affecting women in the Third World, particularly in rural areas where they have little protection against exploitation and injustice.
Camille PagliaOne difference with the political writings, whether about feminism or class, is that the intent is to change how people think of a certain political reality; whereas with cultural criticism, the goal is to illuminate something that is already there.
Bell HooksI was in just the right generation to have taken feminism seriously by osmosis - also the generation when the breakdown of the family really began and for whom The Smiths were something new and essential.
Quentin S. CrispI hope that by modeling feminism in my own life, work and relationships that it will haut become an organic part of my daughter's life. But I'm also fully prepared for her to become a Republican as a way to rebel as a teenager - that would be just my luck!
Jessica ValentiI'm really aware of how feminism and feminist rhetoric has been appropriated by the right.
Jessica ValentiFeminism's latest victory: the right to get your limbs blown off in war. Congratulations.
Tucker CarlsonI spend a lot of time on college campuses, and I don't quite understand where the idea comes from that young women are not moving forward. In fact, statistically, if you look at the public opinion polls, young women are much more supportive of feminism and feminist issues than older women are.
Gloria SteinemAs a concept [androgyny] raise[s] anxiety levels by conjuring up a conformist, unisex vision, the very opposite of the individuality and uniqueness that feminism actually has in mind.
Gloria SteinemIt's about labeling. For me feminism is bra-burning lesbianism. It's very unglamorous. I'd like to see it rebranded. We need to see a celebration of our femininity and softness.
Geri HalliwellFeminism justified female victim power by convincing the world that we lived in a sexist, male-dominated, and patriarchal world.
Warren FarrellThereโs Socialism and Communism and Capitalism and thereโs Feminism and Hedonism, and thereโs Catholicism and Bipedalism and Consumerism, but I think Narcissism is the system that means the most to me.
Tony HoaglandLGBT people are really convenient: we're sort of the ultimate foreign agent in Russia. There's no doubt in anyone's mind that the values that affirm nontraditional relationships, that affirm feminism, come from abroad. If you've established - and this isn't up for discussion - that foreign agents are bad, and foreign influence is bad, and the West is our enemy, then there's no better expression of the West's influence than gays and lesbians.
Masha GessenFor many people, feminism is one of those words of which, as St. Augustine said about time, they know the meaning as long as no one is asking.
Katha PollittI think that blogging and the Internet has completely changed feminism for ever, I think. You know, it used to be, 10 years ago, if you wanted to have a strong, influential voice in the feminist movement, you really needed to be part of this New York/D.C. elite group of feminists, or part of a mainstream feminist organization. And now it's kind of an amazing thing that you can just start a blog and put your voice out there and build your readership.
Jessica ValentiHer [Hillary Clinton's] husband is running around on her with everything that walks. He's having an affair with Gennifer Flowers, he's having an affair with... I forget the names, but they're legion. He's cheating on her frequently, and she knows about it and yet puts up with it and stays in Arkansas. Why? At the beginning of feminism, when this is exactly the kind of boorish behavior women are not gonna put up with anymore, no way.
Rush LimbaughEquity feminism is a moral doctrine about equal treatment that makes no commitments regarding open empirical issues in psychology or biology.
Steven PinkerI hate how box office failures are blamed on an actress, yet I donโt see a box office failure blamed on men. I think a lot of the time in films, men get roles where they create their own destiny and women are just tools, supporters for that. I guess itโs because we live in a patriarchal society, where feminism is a dirty word.
Ellen Page