The nineteenth-century wave of feminism was started by older women who had been through the radicalizing experience of getting married and becoming the legal chattel of their husbands (or the equally radicalizing experience of not getting married and being treated as spinsters).
Gloria SteinemI want us to organize, to tell the personal stories that create empathy, which is the most revolutionary emotion.
Gloria SteinemPatriarchy requires violence or the subliminal threat of violence in order to maintain itself... The most dangerous situation for a woman is not an unknown man in the street, or even the enemy in wartime, but a husband or lover in the isolation of their home.
Gloria SteinemI wouldn't want to generalize, but we still do live in a society that's sexist and racist and addicted to class and has the ridiculous idea that if you have money you're smarter, which Donald Trump by himself should be able to disprove.
Gloria SteinemIt doesn't matter what word we use, if it has the same content, it will be treated in the same way. There are other words - there's "womanist," there's "mujerista," there's "women's liberationist" - all mean the same thing and they get the same ridicule. I think we just need to choose what word we feel comfortable with that says women are full human beings, and whatever that word is, it will get a lot of opposition. But it will also attract a lot of support. But this is a revolution, not a public relations movement.
Gloria Steinem