Quotes About Feminism

My debt to feminism is simply incalculable. Feminism allowed me to see past a 'reality' that I had once taken as a given. It helped me to pay attention to countless voices, my own included, that I had been taught 'don't count.' Feminism allows me to maintain hope.

People sometimes say that we will know feminism has done its job when half the CEOs are women. That’s not feminism; to quote Catharine MacKinnon, it’s 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 sisters’ sweat, but when all dominating hierarchies - including economic ones - are dismantled.

Something I say a lot when it comes to anti-feminist stereotypes is that they exist for a reason. The stereotypes of feminists as ugly, or man-haters, or hairy, or whatever it is - that's really strategic. That's a really smart way to keep young women away from feminism, is to kind of put out this idea that all feminists hate men, or all feminists are ugly; and that they really come from a place of fear. If feminism wasn't powerful, if feminism wasn't influential, people wouldn't spend so much time putting it down.

We need to reclaim the word feminism. We need to reclaim the word feminism real bad.

People associate feminism with hate - with man hate - and that's really negative. I don't think that's what feminism is about at all - it's really positive. I think that's why women became reluctant to use the word.

I know I certainly wouldn't be writing books if it hadn't been for the feminist blogosphere, and I think that's a really amazing thing. And just the sheer power of outreach I think is incredible. It used to be that if someone was to get involved in feminism, it was probably because they were already interested. They were already interested in feminism; they were already interested in being an activist, and they found their way to like a NOW meeting or to a consciousness-raising group or something like that.

I have been villainized because of my identity - I've received nasty blog comments and emails just based on my willingness to identify with feminism by people who clearly don't understand what I value and why I identify as a feminist. Ultimately, I'm less concerned with whether or not people identify as feminist and am more concerned with whether or not people understand what feminism is. If they don't want to identify as a feminist that's fine. I respect people's decision to identify any way they want and expect that same respect in return, although I don't always get it.

You have to have your personal life, and at the end of the day I think what people forget, especially when you're online, is that you're a person too, right, and that you're not this ideal of feminism, that everything you do like feminism just like falls in your wake.

Much of the appeal of feminism is that it encourages women to do what they always felt like doing anyway: take everything personally. But to succeed at the highest level, you need some objectivity, which feminism hates. Feminists see objective reality as a conspiracy out to make them feel bad about themselves.

It certainly wasn't taught in school beyond the idea of "girls can do anything that boys can do" - I understood that kind of pop culture feminism. I did not understand anything else about feminism.

I've thought about what is an alternative word to feminism. There isn't one. It's a perfectly good word. And it can't be changed.

In truth, feminism is flawed because it is a movement powered by people and people are inherently flawed.

I prefer to call the most obnoxious feminists what they really are: feminazis. Tom Hazlett, a good friend who is an esteemed and highly regarded professor of economics at the University of California at Davis, coined the term to describe any female who is intolerant of any point of view that challenges militant feminism.

I've heard a hundred different variations of instances of unadulterated female victimhood, yet the silence of the feminists is deafening. Where two pieties--feminism and multi-culturalism--come into conflict, the only way of preserving both is an indecent silence.

Radical militant feminist believes that women of color and Black women in particular have written the cutting edge theory and really were the individuals who exploded feminist theory into the directions that has made it more powerful. So I see us as the leaders not just of Black people and Black women in terms of feminism but in terms of the movement as a whole.

...feminism differs from reform of any kind, even franchise reform. Feminists, I should say, are not reformers at all, but ratherintellectual biologists and psychologists.

To recommend that women become identical to men, would be simple reversal, and would defeat the whole point of androgyny, and for that matter, feminism: in both, the whole point is choice.

Second Wave feminism started with consciousness-raising groups, which sounds "big" but it's really just house parties. Women getting together and saying, "You feel this way?! Me too!" Hanging out is consciousness-raising.

Spinsterhood is Nature's Own Feminism.

...feminism never harmed anybody unless it was some feminists. The danger is that the study and contemplation of "ourselves" may become so absorbing that it builds by slow degrees a high wall that shuts out the great world of thought.

When we think about Islamic feminism, it is not just about women's rights. It's about a more progressive and tolerant expression of Islam in the world for all people. Women's rights is one aspect of it, it's not the end-all, but I also think that the women's issue is the strongest entry point that we've got to challenging extremism. You raise a woman's issue and you get the backs of the conservatives up against the wall faster than just about any other issue in our community. It's the fastest path that we've got to making change happen.

The key in terms of mental ability is chess. There's never been a woman Grand Master chess player. Once you get one, then I'll buy some of the feminism.

Feminism - the word - can give us a handle, a rallying point, a common ground, and help us build a bridge. Why not claim the gift of the word as a place to begin?

Feminism's agenda is basic: It asks that women not be forced to 'choose' between public justice and private happiness.

Contemporary feminism cut itself off from history and bankrupted itself when it spun its puerile, paranoid fantasy of male oppressors and female sex-object victims. Woman is the dominant sex.

Feminism is a good venue for getting yourself across as much as for getting your point across.

You have to take the basics of feminism and the kind of outline of it and do what you do with it. You have to make things work for your own life.

I think of feminism as more of a political ideology.

I feel excited in that I think boys born to feminists have a leg up. At least, the ones I've met seem like they do. There's something really vital about that exchange. I think I'd only imagined, beforehand, handing down a feminism to a young girl. But I'm newly excited by the challenge of raising a boy.

But never fear, gentlemen; castration was really not the point of feminism, and we women are too busy eviscerating one another to take you on.

I think we need to embrace feminism, we need to embrace all of the gifts women bring to the workplace.

My political views have definitely changed over the years. Maybe a better way of saying it is that I have grown into my convictions; the values and ideas of radical feminism that I started to articulate in my late teens feel more internalized or "second nature."

Any action a woman engages in from a spirit of joy, and within a similarly safe and joyous environment, falls within the city-walls of feminism. A girl has a right to dance how she wants, when her favourite record comes on.

I am a sworn atheist and therefore from my point of view the Talmud or the Koran don't constitute works of political philosophy but rather writings that stand in utter contradiction to concepts like logic, freedom, feminism, secularism, brotherhood - which are my ideals.

I fell into a hornets' nest of revolutionary feminism.

I don't have this sort of checklist of things that have to be done, andif they're not checked, then I've failed some part of my feminism or my being a woman or my worth and my value as a woman because I haven't birthed a child. I've birthed a lot of things, and I feel like I've mothered many things. And I don't feel like it's fair to put that pressure on people.

I think that it's incredibly important that we're actually paying attention to the feminism that's going on on the ground in different countries and see what we can do to support the work that's already going on, as opposed to kind of assuming that we know best for women in other areas.

For 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.

It was the Spice Girls who messed it all up. And obviously, the appropriating of the phrase "girl power", which at that point overrode any notion of feminism, and which was a phrase that meant absolutely nothing apart from being friends with your girlfriends.

Hillary Clinton said that white women did not vote for her because their husbands told them not to. You remember that? And we all said, "Wait a minute. What happened to feminism? Who are all of these docile women who are only doing what their husbands and boyfriends tell 'em to do?" But Hillary said that. White women didn't vote for her because their husbands didn't like Hillary and their husbands are telling them.

There are so many problems. Women can go to work on these as well without giving up their feminism.

The idea of being a feminist-so many women have come to this idea of it being anti-male and not able to connect with the opposite sex-but what feminism is about is equality and human rights. For me that is just an essential part of my identity. I hope [Girls] contributes to a continuance of feminist dialogue

Feminism freed my mind. Yoga freed my body. It's one thing to intellectualize self-love and another to embody it.

Feminism is still one of those taboo words, so hardly anybody talks about it. People usually go gender-neutral and say the book and film [Room] are about "the triumph of the human spirit.

The stories I would hear from men who were going through divorces and in child custody battles, the lies their wives told about them being predators, that they had fondled or abused the children, and these guys didn't know what to do. It wasn't true. They had no idea how to combat it. And I said, "A large part of this is modern feminism. You've gotta understand it."

Men have influenced my activism and feminism both positively and negatively. As most gender differences are social, not genetic, we still need to change what we do and what we expect of each other... The potential exists for societies where men and women do not have to conform to unwanted stereotypes.

Gay marriage! That's a huge change and a huge win-win for feminism.

The enemy of feminism isn’t men. It’s patriarchy, and patriarchy is not men. It is a system, and women can support the system of patriarchy just as men can support the fight for gender equality.