If female liberation is to happen, if the reservoir of real female love is to be tapped, this sterile self-deception must be counteracted. The only literary form which could outsell romantic trash on the female...

The person I am in the company of my sisters has been entirely different from the person I am in the company of other people. Fearless, powerful, surprising, moved as I otherwise am only when...

The official line is that, after the war, women couldn’t wait to leave the offices and assembly lines and government agencies. But the real story was that the economy couldn’t have men coming home without...

I’ve heard it said that God made all men, but Samuel Colt made all men equal.We’d see what Mr. Colt could do for a woman.

blatant, intentional discrimination against women is far from being something merely to be read about in history books.

Woman’s virtue is man’s greatest invention.

It took me years to learn to sit at my desk for more than two minutes at a time, to put up with the solitude and the terror of failure, and the godawful silence and...

She talks like you. It’s not every day you hear a four-year-old say Prince Charming is a douchebag who’s only holding Cinderella back.” “That’s my girl.

He is a gentleman, and I am a gentleman’s daughter. So far we are equal.

Irony is about contradictions that do not resolve into larger wholes, even dialectically, about the tension of holding incompatible things together because both or all are necessary and true. Irony is about humour an serious...

Our men think earning money and ordering around others is where power lies. They don’t think power is in the hands of the woman who takes care of everyone all day long, and gives birth...

For Cixi, the whole episode taught her that to survive at court she must hold her tongue about state affairs. This was difficult, as she could see that the dynasty was in trouble. The victorious...

There is a pernicious notion held by many that being a submissive means being a victim or a doormat. The so-called Fifty Shades phenomenon gives this repulsive lie some very long legs, spreading it far...

I hope I’m being clear, I didn’t say I hate feminists, that would be weird. I said I hate feminist. I’m talking about the word.I have the privilege living my life inside of words and...

The emerging woman … will be strong-minded, strong-hearted, strong-souled, and strong-bodied…strength and beauty must go together.

Since a time has come, Mademoiselle, when the severe laws of men no longer prevent women from applying themselves to the sciences and other disciplines, it seems to me that those of us who can...

Freedom from one man is just another one.

When men are oppressed, it’s a tragedy. When women are oppressed, it’s tradition.

What other movement has ensured that young women have the rights that they have today? Feminism is responsable not only for the decline in violence against women over the last decade, but also for equal...

Femininity itself has become a brand, a narrow and shrinking formula of commoditised identity which can be sold back to women who have become alienated from their own power as living, loving, labouring beings.

just girls” when they see our makeup and fashions, but we were/are actually guerrilla warriors, fighting undercover in the war to save women from the continuing campaign to make us irrelevant fluff.

And that day will come, when the feminists will come out of their central top secret worldwide headquarters, and say ‘It`s on now, motherfuckers!

Health makes good propaganda.

For I conclude that the enemy is not lipstick, but guilt itself; that we deserve lipstick, if we want it, AND free speech; we deserve to be sexual AND serious–or whatever we please; we are...

the Chosen One” in science fiction and fantasy. Leia is as much the child of Darth Vader as Luke is, but only Luke gets to use the force, be recruited by his dad and ultimately...

I’m going to go out on a limb here. I’ve thought a lot about this one, as a feminist, and as an author. How should traditional roles be portrayed? In fantasy literature there is a...

L’action des femmes n’a jamais été qu’une agitation symbolique; elles n’ont gagné que ce que les hommes ont bien voulu leur concéder; elles n’ont rien pris: elles ont reçu.

[I]n America, wrongs can be righted,warriors can wear skirts and blouses,and the bravest heartsmay beat in girlsonly five feet tall.

The Vatican won’t prosecute pedophile priests but I decide I’m not ready for motherhood and it’s condemnation for me? These are the same people that won’t support national condom distribution that PREVENTS teenage pregnancy.

As women must be more empowered at work, men must be more empowered at home. I have seen so many women inadvertently discourage their husbands from doing their share by being too controlling or critical....

My belief is that if we live another century or so — I am talking of the common life which is the real life and not of the little separate lives which we live as...

Does it explain my astonishment the other day when Z, most humane, most modest of men, taking up some book by Rebecca West and reading a passage in it, exclaimed, ‘The arrant feminist! She says...

I was asked the other day in which era I would choose to live. As a historical novelist, it comes up sometimes. As a woman I’d have to say I’d like to live in the...

…the end goal of feminist revolution must be…not just the elimination of male privilage but of the sex distinction itself: genital differences between human beings would no longer matter culturally.

The woman who refuses to see her sexual organs as mere wood chips, designed to make the man’s life more comfortable, is in danger of becoming a lesbian–an active, phallic woman, an intellectual virago with...

Women piece together their lives from the scraps left over for them.

Chosen motherhood is the real liberation. The choice to have a child makes the whole experience of motherhood different, and the choice to be generative in other ways can at last be made, and is...

The intelligence of women is not out in the world, acting on its own behalf; it is kept small, inside the home, acting on behalf of another. This is true even when the woman works...

In a world where positive expressions of sexual longing connect us we will all be free to choose those sexual practices which affirm and nurture our growth. Those practices may range from choosing promiscuity or...

…for all that people have tried to abuse it and disown it. “feminism” is still the word we need. No other word will do. And let’s face it, there has been no other word, save...

Repudiating the vulnerability I felt had wrecked the lives of women around me, I modelled myself on my controlled father. I wanted his freedom and his focus. To him, a family was an aquarium: controlled,...

You educate a man; you educate a man. You educate a woman; you educate a generation.

Woman-identification is a source of energy, a potential springhead of female power, violently curtailed and wasted under the institution of heterosexuality. The denial of reality and visibility to women’s passion for women, women’s choice of...

Even if you are a woman who achieves the ultimate and becomes like a man, you will still always be like a woman. And as long as womanhood is thought of as something to escape...

To terrify children with the image of hell, to consider women an inferior creation—is that good for the world?

I know nothing of being a wife, but I have learned much about the running and maintenance of an estate. It may be that you will find my manner too straightforward for your tastes, but,...

We can only afford two children’ is a squalid argument, but more acceptable in our society than ‘we don’t like children’.

The concept of virginity is a social construct. If you’re wondering if my commercial value, self-respect, and/or quality of my immortal soul has been affected by things that have gone in or out of my...

the name of the husband is one of the strongest insignia of patriarchal power

I want to meet and marry a girl with the same last name as me, so I can show how modern and feminist I am by taking on her last name after marriage.