In the struggle to remain a complete person and to love from her fullness instead of her inadequacy a woman may appear hard. She may feel her early conditioning tugging her in the direction of...

When will women become civilized enough to stop mistreating men? When will they cease from training their lovers to become providers, merely because they have the power to do so?As long as they continue as...

When men decided women could be educated – this is what I think – they educated them on the male plan; they put them into schools with mottoes and school songs and muddy team games,...

In the back of the fridge I checked out some stewed apples destined to fester. I examined them closely and reckoned they had only a day to go, even by my standards. I spooned the...

I know, I know, I’m being a girl.

The problem with gender is that is prescribes how we ´should’ be rather than recognizing how we are.

And I breathe large at home. I drop my cloak,Unclasp my girdle, loose the band that tiesMy hair…now could I but unloose my soul!We are sepulchred alive in this close world,And want more room.

When women have so absorbed the disease of sexism that they themselves can inflict it on each other, we clearly have a perfect, self-replenishing machine for the continuation of sexism. Unable to turn our assertiveness...

A story once went the rounds of Israel to the effect that Ben-Gurion described me as ‘the only man’ in his cabinet. What amused me about is that he (or whoever invented the story) thought...

Todavía siento que en muchos ámbitos de nuestra sociedad, si no eres santa y sumisa, si protestas, reivindicas, si molestas y te revelas, te señalan indicando que eres conflictiva, que eres peligrosa. (…) Ser feminisita...

untidy woman.” But since we live in a world that relies on women to be tidy in all ways, to be quiet and obedient and agreeable and available (but never aggressive), those of us who...

When you grow up as a girl, it is like there are faint chalk lines traced approximately three inches around your entire body at all times, drawn by society and often religion and family and...

The way I saw it, I was fully capable of being treated with indifference that bordered on disdain while maintaining a strong sense of self-respect. I obeyed his commands, sure that I could fulfill this...

Women are complicated and messy and we are certainly not perfect, but we are funny and challenging and kind, and I wouldn’t change a thing

Ni dieu ni maître!(Neither God nor master)[Feminist and labour slogan translated to ‘No gods, no masters’]

WE WUZ PUSHED.

I’m tough, I’m ambitious, and I know exactly what I want. If that makes me a bitch, okay.

But time and time again, I saw the change in their eyes once they’d conquered me. Dehumanization always follows penetration.

Young women are not putting themselves in danger. The people around them are doing the real damage. Who? you might wonder. The abstinence teacher who tells her students that they’ll go to jail if they...

When my father is stern, no one chastises him. I don’t think it’s fair that when I act similarly, I’m seen as cruel. I’m making a huge decision, and I’m trying to be wise about...

One of the most popular genital surgeries is labia minora reduction. When a similar procedure is performed on healthy girls in some African countries as a coming-of-age rite to control their sexuality, Westerners denounce it...

Freedman and Barnouin reveal the truth in Skinny Bitch, but they encase the truth in lies–women must be skinny to be attractive and being attractive should be a priority–via the typical verbiage of female disempowerment.

Sadly, the signals that allow men and women to find the partners who most please them are scrambled by the sexual insecurity initiated by beauty thinking. A woman who is self-conscious can’t relax to let...

Cosmetic surgery is not “cosmetic,” and human flesh is not “plastic.” Even the names trivialize what it is. It’s not like ironing wrinkles in fabric, or tuning up a car, or altering outmoded clothes, the...

Maybe that was the root of my dislike for her: she had what I wanted, which earned her my jealousy, and since I was ashamed of myself for wanting it, my scorn, as well.

Since violence is largely a male pastime, cultures that empower women tend to move away from the glorification of violence and are less likely to breed dangerous subcultures of rootless young men.

Capabilities are clearly manifested only when they have been realized.

Selene’s life is a lesson to us that the trajectory of women’s equality hasn’t always been a forward march. In some ways the ancients were more advanced than we are today; there have been setbacks...

My hope for the future, not just in the music industry, but in every young girl I meet…is that they all realize their worth and ask for it.

I love being single. It’s almost like being rich.

I didn’t plan on either children or writing. Once I realized that writing satisfied me in some enormous way, I had to make adjustments. The writing was always marginal in terms of time when the...

It is in the interests of both sexes to hear the other sex’s experience of powerlessness.

If one can know how good a city is by its smell, one should know how good a society is by the women’s status.

Here she tossed her foot impatiently, and showed an inch or two of calf. A sailor on the mast, who happened to look down at the moment, started so violently that he missed his footing...

The thing women have yet to learn is nobody gives you power. You just take it.

…here is, very simply, what I learned about Jesus and the ladies: he loves us. He loves us. On our own terms. He treats us as equals to the men around him; he listens; he...

I pursued education not instead of being a good mother, but because being a good mother required that I build a better life for my family.

Men who shared the load at home seemed just as pressed for time as their wives, and torn between the demands of career and small children…But the majority of men did not share the load...

Freedom is not an abstaction, nor is a little of it enough. A little more is not enough either. Having less, being less, empoverished in freedom and rights, women then invariably have less self-respect: less...

In a culture which holds the two-parent patriarchal family in higher esteem than any other arrangement, all children feel emotionally insecure when their family does not measure up to the standard. A utopian vision of...

I cannot understand anti-abortion arguments that centre on the sanctity of life. As a species we’ve fairly comprehensively demonstrated that we don’t believe in the sanctity of life. The shrugging acceptance of war, famine, epidemic,...

The feminist girls she knew at Oberlin, her roommate among them, were the kind of people who made you feel bad for liking what you liked. Sometimes when Emily was tired or blue she liked...

Male experience is what patriarchal culture uses to represent human experience, even when it is women who most often live it.

The feminist anti-pornography movement, no less than the feminist movement of a century ago, encourages the assumption that male and female sexuality, and possibly morality, are as unlike as yin and yang.

How pleased I was to see I strick the Beast to the heart.

Oh, let us lose our milk teeth and cut instead the strong teeth of hate and love.

But what if, either by choice or by reluctant necessity, you end up not participating in this comforting cycle of family and continuity? What if you step out? Where do you sit at the reunion?...

Renton looks at her and sees her pain and anger. It cuts himup. It confuses him. Kelly has a great sense of humour. What’s wrong with her? The knee–jerkthought: Wrong time of the’ month is...

A child must have care and attention, but that care and attention need not emanate from a single, permanently present individual. Children are more disturbed by changes of place than by changes in personnel around...

If I am to die tonight, let me die a fighter.