Popular quotes about Feminism! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 6
Feminism involves so much more than gender equality and it involves so much more than gender. Feminism must involve consciousness of capitalism (I mean the feminism that I relate to, and there are multiple feminisms, right). So it has to involve a consciousness of capitalism and racism and colonialism and post-colonialities, and ability and more genders than we can even imagine and more sexualities than we ever thought we could name.
Angela DavisSome of the biggest advocates for feminism seem to believe that in order to feel powerful you have to make another woman subservient, and that is not what feminism is about at all.
Tori AmosIf you ask me what I believe in today, I believe in feminism. I believe that all human beings are equal. I believe that no one has the right to authority over anyone else. Feminism has to do with everything in the world, a vision of how the world can be. I have great doubts about Utopias, but I just keep on thinking there is a better way to live than the way we live now.
Marilyn FrenchOn Girls I like being a mouthpiece for the issues I think young females face today. Itโs always shocking when people question whether itโs a feminist show. How could a show about women exploring women not be? Feminism isnโt a dirty word. Itโs not like weโre a deranged group who think women should take over the planet, raise our young on our own and eliminate men from the picture. Feminism is about women having all the rights that men have.
Lena DunhamWhen feminism falls short of our expectations, we decide the problem is with feminism rather than with the flawed people who act in the name of the movement.
Roxane GayI was called a feminist, and what I heard was, 'You are an angry, sex-hating, man-hating victim lady person.' This caricature is how feminists have been warped by the people who fear feminism most, the same people who have the most to lose when feminism succeeds.
Roxane GayShe 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 WilliamsYou 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.
Jessica ValentiIt 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.
June Diane RaphaelWe have the beginnings of feminism starting to rear its head, where all of that got blown up. The whole point of going to college became not to find a husband - screw that! - feminism became, "You don't want anything about a man to be defining you, and you don't want your relationship to define, you! You don't want a relationship to be your happiness. You certainly don't want marriage to be the sole determining reason you live".
Rush LimbaughFeminism is really the right of women to be full human beings and to not be defined only by their childbearing function. Feminism is really the right of women to be human beings. That's it, yet that's so frightening to a lot of people. A full human being wants satisfying work and love. A full human being is entitled to both, and is not simply defined by only one aspect of her being.
Erica JongI was living in the moment that feminism came out of, and I think it's only through the work that women are doing today that they are making out better than men. So it's important that you are a feminist in your mind but that you have an attitude sometimes like men.
Franca SozzaniIt's not enough just to be a mother. It's not only the social pressure on mothers by certain kinds of feminism and other sources. There is also economic pressure on them.
James HillmanWe all fight over what the label 'feminism' means but for me it's about empowerment. It's not about being more powerful than men - it's about having equal rights with protection, support, justice. It's about very basic things. It's not a badge like a fashion item.
Annie LennoxI'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.
Annie LennoxI'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.
Theodore DalrymplePeople can say what they want, but historically, feminism in the Dominican Republic has been extremely strong.
Junot DiazWhen women turn on women, and take cheap shots at their decisions purely to score political points it serves as proof that feminism, as a movement, is dead and no longer relevant or credible.
S. E. CuppWomen, who are the prime victims of religion, and perhaps in some, stockholm syndrome effect, often form the most fervent advocates of the very thing that degrades them. I believe that in the end, it will be women who will turn this around. This should be the final stage of feminism. For a feminist to still believe in god is like a freed slave still living on the plantation.
Matthew ChapmanI should say that feminism gave me permission to deal with my own emotional life and put it up front in certain ways, or use film as a way to examine, at that time, my own heterosexual experience. Lives of Performers was the beginning of that kind of investigation. But also, the film was influenced by the aesthetics and structures of experimental film as that was taking place at the same time. Hollis Frampton was a big influence on me at that time.
Yvonne RainerOne 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 HooksBeing a housewife is an illegitimate profession... The choice to serve and be protected and plan towards being a family-maker is a choice that shouldn't be. The heart of radical feminism is to change that
Vivian GornickIn my opinion, no feminism worthy of the name is not methodologically post-marxist.
Catharine MacKinnonFeminism gave me a way to see myself in culture, in society, in history, and that was very important.
Vivian GornickIn my freshman year of college, when a male professor asked the class, "Who here identifies as a feminist?" Only one girl raised her hand, and the rest of us just sat there. He basically just shamed us for the rest of the classโโ - โโin a constructive way. He went around the room and said to each girl, "Why didn't you raise your hand? Feminism means men and women deserve the same rights, and that the balance in the world is currently tilted in men's favour.
Lindy WestSo often feminism is built up as this thing where you have to be perfect. You have to be consistent and you can't ever deviate. That's just not realistic.
Roxane GayI 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.
Maggie NelsonBy now, legions of tireless essayists and op-ed columnists have dressed feminists down for making such a fuss about entering the professions and earning equal pay that everyone's attention has been distracted from the important contributions of mothers working at home. This judgment presumes, of course, that prior to the resurgence of feminism in the '70s, housewives and mothers enjoyed wide recognition and honor. This was not exactly the case.
Mary BlakelyFeminism is the struggle to end sexist oppression. Its aim is not to benefit solely any specific group of women, any particular race or class of women. It does not privilege women over men. It has the power to transform meaningfully all our lives
Bell HooksFeminism is not antisexuality. On the contrary. It says that sexuality shouldn't be confused with violence and dominance and that it should be a matter of free choice. It shouldn't be forced on you by economics, including dependence on a husband, or by pressure.
Gloria SteinemI think we need to embrace feminism, we need to embrace all of the gifts women bring to the workplace.
Mary PortasI feel sad that we have allowed these knee-jerk feminists who want to act like it's a struggle against men...but again that's the least politically developed strand of feminism.
Bell HooksAnd the first commandment of feminism is: I am woman; thou shalt not tolerate strange gods who assert that women have capabilities or often choose roles that are different from men's.
Phyllis SchlaflyMy local paper, The New York Times, Yahoo News, CBS, and The Washington Post, all agreed to stop using the word 'mistress.' The big one was the Associated Press. They made a style change, and it's the gold standard that sets the guide for news outlets around the world. That's a small step for the American language, a medium step for feminism, and a huge step for me personally.
Paula BroadwellThere was a dance that everyone was doing that was heavily skewed with the power in one direction, but the dance was basically working, and then the dance got really disrupted with the first wave of feminism, and nobody found their footing yet - not the guys, not the women.
Amanda PalmerThere's nothing bad about feminism. We have to help each other, because there's a lot of women in the world who are suffering because the fact is we're not equal. It's as plain as that. It's still a men's world. I don't know. We'll go on with it.
Yoko OnoMost of these feminists are radical, frustrated lesbians, many of them, and man-haters, and failures in their relationships with men, and who have declared war on the male gender. The biblical condemnation of feminism has to do with its radical philosophy and goals. That's the bottom line.
Jerry FalwellFeminism died in 1998 when Hillary allowed henchlings and Democrats to demonize Monica as an unbalanced stalker, and when Gloria Steinem defended Mr. Clinton against Kathleen Willey and Paula Jones by saying he had merely made clumsy passes, then accepted rejection, so there was no sexual harassment involved. As to his dallying with an emotionally immature 21-year-old, Ms. Steinem noted, 'Welcome sexual behavior is about as relevant to sexual harassment as borrowing a car is to stealing one.' Surely what's good for the Comeback Kid is good for the Terminator.
Maureen DowdFeminism is not simply the idea that women can benefit from rediscovering themselves but also that our whole culture can benefit from correcting its psychic/sexual imbalance through each person becoming whole again.
Anne RushThere may be an art to conversation, and some are better at it than others, but conversation's virtue lies in randomness and possibility: people, without a plan, could speak a spontaneous, unexpected truth, because revelation rules. Telling words recur in this smart, generous conversation between Stephen Andrews and Gregg Bordowitz: patience, responsibility, feminism, ethics, cosmology, AIDS, gift, freedom, mortality.
Lynne TillmanI see many more men who are feminist, or at least who have learned about life in the context of feminism.
Jane FondaThe fact that there's a more open discussion about everything from feminism to racismโ...โI look at my two boysโ...โthis is their future I'm talking about. When I'll be long gone, it'll be them and their kids. I know that sometimes the darkest times are followed by the lightest. Sometimes bad things have to happen for good things to happen. At the very worst, we're having very open discussions, discussions about things we didn't even know f-king existed. I talk to my friends about it and they are absolutely shocked. They didn't even know.
Michael Buble