Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
As a feminist, I consider the female pronoun to be an honorific, a term that conveys respect. Respect is due to women as members of a sex caste that have survived subordination and deserve to be addressed with honour. Men who transgender cannot occupy such a position.
What troubles me about the "hostile workplace" category of sexual harassment policy is that women are being returned to their old status of delicate flowers who must be protected from assault by male lechers. It is anti-feminist to ask for special treatment for women.
I have read more about Oprah Winfrey’s ass than I have about the rise of China as an economic superpower. I fear this is no exaggeration. Perhaps China is rising as an economic superpower because its women aren’t spending all their time reading about Oprah Winfrey’s ass.
When you say you're not a feminist, if feminism hadn't existed, and you didn't live in a feminist world, you wouldn't be saying that, because you'd be too busy scrubbing out the toilets in back while cooking up your husband's tea and dying in childbirth at the age of 34.
I have been told that I am a "natural" feminist, someone who was born a feminist. In fact I was quite blind to what the problem was: I couldn't understand why anyone would hesitate to do what they wanted to do just because they were told that women didn't do such things.
I don't agree with a core statement by most feminists, the statement by Simone de Beauvoir: "One is not born a woman, one becomes one." Even as a schoolgirl I wasn't convinced by the claim that gender has nothing to do with biology and is only shaped by one's environment.
Feminists are forever discovering subtle new forms of sexism and then beating men around the head and shoulders with it. It is left to the rest of us to suffer the inevitable backlash this provokes among men. Besides, the feminists have the Federal Government behind them.
I don't know about calling yourself a feminist. I also, for me, it's difficult for me to call myself a feminist in the classic sense because it seems to be very anti-male and it certainly is very pro-abortion in this context. And I'm neither anti-male or pro- abortion, so.
We are born into a world in which sexual possibilities are narrowly circumscribed. . . . We are programmed by the culture as surely as rats are programmed to make the arduous way through the scientist's maze, and that programming operates on every level of choice and action.
I remain interested in the potential of art, except I've always been more struck by applied modernism than high modernism. It's partly because of feminist theory and being brought up in the '70s, with questioning who is speaking, and why, and what authority they're carrying.
Absolutely, but let me qualify that - I consider myself an authentic feminist. Not as defined by the modern movement. And, let me clarify that a little bit more. I was an English major, so break it down: -ist means one who celebrates. As a feminist, I celebrate my femininity.
I don't like every other musician's work. The same way that filmmakers don't like every other filmmakers' work. Just because I'm a feminist doesn't mean I'm gonna say that I like every other woman's work, or that I appreciate another statement that another woman publicly made.
When you speak up about any sense of unfairness or injustice, you're told that you're overreacting, you're too angry, too silly-shut up already. It takes a tremendous amount of fortitude to be able to live in this world as a woman, let alone a woman who wants things to change.
Socialists find me too far left; Trotskyites not far enough; ecologists say I am too happy eating foie gras, defending nuclear energy and GM plants; feminists find I am not enough of a woman; anarchists a petit-bourgeois who has sold out because I believe in universal suffrage.
The world - and America - has been defined by people who haven't necessarily abided by the laws and the rules. Civil disobedience is part of our nation's history and has redirected our country in many instances, from the feminist movement to the Civil Rights movement and beyond.
I feel in my bones that Lady Gaga is a true strident feminist and good for my soul - but how do I square this with the fact that she's constantly walking around in her bra and pants, even at, like, airports and stuff, where even nudists wear a fleece and linen drawstring trousers?
It's not my business to remedy deaths! It's my business to tell stories. Lyra and the other heroines didn't come with placards saying, "Make this a feminist story!" I'm glad people enjoy seeing a female protagonist in a big adventure story, but I didn't do it for political reasons.
But millions at one time, beyond gender or race, had their attention fixed on her, and with that power, she chose to flash the word "feminist" all over our TV screens. If that don't do nothin' but make people Google the word, then that should make every feminist in the world proud.
Every species has a dinner date as part of courting ritual. A woman who won't let you pay for dinner is rejecting your courtship. She may think she's playing fair, or that she's being a feminist, but a very deep level, she knows that she's crossing you off her list of possibilities.
Womanists is what black feminists used to call themselves. Very much so. They were not the same thing. And also the relationship with men. Historically, black women have always sheltered their men because they were out there, and they were the ones that were most likely to be killed.
I suggest that Black feminist thought consists of specialised knowledge created by African-American women which clarifies a standpoint of and for Black women. In other words, Black feminist thought encompasses theoretical interpretations of Black women's reality by those who live it.
It took me quite a while to even admit that I was a feminist because I was ignorant of what it meant to be a feminist. I grew up believing in equality - believing that women and men were created equal and that we could be stronger together - but I didn't know that made me a feminist.
I am a writer and a feminist, and the two seem to be constantly in conflict.... ever since I became loosely involved with it, it has seemed to me one of the recurring ironies of this movement that there is no way to tell the truth about it without, in some small way, seeming to hurt it.
Given the way universities work to reinforce and perpetuate the status quo, the way knowledge is offered as commodity, Women's Studies can easily become the place where revolutionary feminist thought and feminist activism are submerged or made secondary to the goals of academic careerism
A woman who ran a feminist organization in India told me one thing that stands out for her is bride burning. If a groom's family doesn't like an arranged marriage and they want to get rid of the woman, in-laws may set fire to her in the kitchen, or she may commit suicide in a "kitchen fire".
Revolutionary feminism embraces men who are able to change, who are capable of responding mutually in a subject-to-subject encounter where desire and fulfillment are in no way linked to coercive subjugation. This feminist vision of the sexual imaginary is the space few men seem able to enter.
Life in this society being, at best, an utter bore and no aspect of society being at all relevant to women, there remains to civic-minded, responsible, thrill-seeking females only to overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation, and destroy the male sex.
Culture does not make people - people make culture. So if it is in fact true that the full humanity of women is not our culture, we must make it our culture. [...] A feminist is a man or a woman who says, 'yes there is a problem with gender as it is today and we must fix it. We must do better.'
According to polls, a majority (around 60+ percent) opposes the radar base. But it's not necessarily the sensible part of the Czech population. The demonstrations against the base are usually organized by communists, Islamists, and "peaceful feminists" (which is fortunately not a numerous group).
I feel like a lot of artists these days are going out with being a feminist and making it cool, and being outspoken and letting it be mainstream, which is a great thing. I absolutely think it should be mainstream to be a feminist, it should be a no-brainer to speak up about stuff and have a voice.
Colin [Farrell] I talked to several times on the phone, and I said, remember, we have only twenty-five days of doing the movie [Miss Julie], so you must know some of your text. I was a little un-feminist, I didn't want to say [bossy voice] "learn your text!" But when he came, he knew all his text.
I am surely a feminist filmmaker, but not because I set out to become one, or am trying to make any kind of statement. Rather, it's inherent in the act of expressing myself, as a woman who is deeply alienated from mainstream cinematic structures of seeing. I express myself and am instantly feminist.
Man-hating is everywhere, but everywhere it is twisted and transformed, disguised, tranquilized, and qualified. It coexists, never peacefully, with the love, desire, respect, and need women also feel for men. Always man-hating is shadowed by its milder, more diplomatic and doubtful twin, ambivalence.
It was interesting that feminists of my generation told me: You are discouraging younger women; you are confirming stereotypes of women; you are opening a door, initiating a debate, that will harm our movement. And my point was: We are already having this debate, especially in the younger generation.
It really occurred to me at a certain point: women have not been embodied. Feminism has not been embodied. It hasn't gotten into us in a way where it is so undeniable that there is nothing to prove. Do you know what I mean? That we are so in our feminist skin, so to speak, that we are that world now.
Feminist theory has left an indelible mark on my own critical—and creative—thinking . . . For me, everything I questioned about what it meant to be a man – and how much my sexuality would perpetually challenge those meanings—could be found in arguments posed by feminists. What can I say? I identified.
When you say 'revolution' when you have only men outside, you know that something is going wrong. I'm not like a hardcore feminist, but I think that one of the things that makes the society advanced is equality between men and women. If half of the society is oppressed by the other half, it's not fine.
When I did get married, and specifically after I got married and the New York Times style section featured my wedding in the vows column, which is really traditionally kind of seen as an elitist column, and it is, but I was happy to be in it. I thought it was good that they were covering a feminist wedding.
Now what? All the battles feminists won about not being a sex object, not being evaluated based on these things, that now other generations are wallowing in, the extremes they go to, to look sexually attractive? It's stunning how things that one fought desperately for are just being tossed aside with aplomb.
There are moments when you are, um, encouraged to dress a certain way. But I can't. It just erodes my soul. That's no criticism to girls who can wear a tiny dress and kill it - that's awesome. People always attribute being a feminist to hating girls being sexual, and that's not it at all. I'm just not into it.
The word 'feminist' is a word that discriminates, and I'm not into that. I don't think there has to be a separation in life in anything. [...] Labels are for other people to understand us, so for me, I know how I feel and I don't need to call myself a 'feminist' or 'not a feminist' because I know what my truth is.
I literally would go to see Tina Turner any opportunity I had because being in the presence of Tina Turner was like being in the presence of transformative energy, and feminist transformative energy. I remember thinking to myself, whatever this is, it's revolution. Whatever this is, it's change embodied in a woman.
Seeing lesbian photography is just the tip of my radicalized clitoris. I have modeled for, commissioned, published, and fought for these pictures, and answered threats against them. I've seen the feminist movement bring these pictures to life, and I've seen that same movement try to suppress the liberating results.
She divorced her husband, y' know. I never knew him, it was before I met Jane. Apparently she came back from work one mornin' an' found her husband in bed with the milkman. With the milkman, honest to God. Well, apparently, from that day forward Jane was a feminist. An' I've noticed, she never takes milk in her tea.
Truthfully speaking, women are dangerous, even those who aren't feminists, because there has always been a women's revolt. Only it has usually translated itself into solitary, individualist, disagreeable manifestations - the whole history of the taming of the shrew, the woman-shrew. They weren't shrews without cause.
The process begins with the individual woman’s acceptance that American women, without exception, are socialized to be racist, classist and sexist, in varying degrees, and that labeling ourselves feminists does not change the fact that we must consciously work to rid ourselves of the legacy of negative socialization.
I am a feminist. I'm trying to show the relationships between men and women, always the structural relations, not individual villains. I'd never make a husband a villain. I try very hard in my work not to - because if I made one man a villain, the rest would be off the hook. I'm interested in the system of oppression.
To be feminist doesn't mean simply to do nothing, to reduce yourself to total impotence under the pretext of refusing masculine values. There is a problematic, a very difficult dialectic between accepting power and refusing it, accepting certain masculine values, and wanting to transform them. I think it's worth a try.
I am not sure that there has been a "lack of progress." On the contrary, the concept of feminism is not only well established but is now also attracting interest from young women, including teenagers and pre-teens. But a new interest is also symptomatic of the failure of the feminist project and the need for its renewal.
I think there's a part of society that is very for women being confident and being empowered, but I think there's another part of society that feels very threatened by women being powerful. Because of the feminist movement, a lot of women are feeling way more empowered to be themselves and do what they want to do in life.