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.

I really have discovered something at last. Through watching so much at night, when it changes so, I have finally found out. The front pattern does move – and no wonder! The woman behind shakes...

[Stieg] was describing Sweden the way it was and the way he saw the country: the scandals, the oppression of women, the friends he cherished and wished to honor.

Because you’ve got balls of steel.’I hated when people said that, like it assumed strength and being a male were synonymous. There was strength in being a woman. ‘Spence, I don’t have balls. Good thing,...

I would suggest that a feminism which does not also seek to alter the exploitation of poorer women is not feminism at all, but is simply a varient for of upper-class politics & self-privileging.

When women understand that governments and religions are human inventions; that Bibles, prayer-books, catechisms, and encyclical letters are all emanations from the brains of man, they will no longer be oppressed by the injunctions that...

Take me! Well, not quite take me, love me now, take me eventually

Marriage is a core component of the patriarchal system. According to Gerda Lerner’s research on ancient societies, a woman could achieve at least some status, and with that, better treatment and privileges, through preserving her...

[I]f you seek in every way to minimise my firm beliefs by your anti-feminist attacks, please recall that a small dagger or knife point can pierce a great, bulging sack and that a small fly...

What is whiter than snow?’ he said. ‘The truth,’ said Grania.’What is the best colour?’ said Finn. ‘The colour of childhood,’ said she.’What is hotter than fire?’ ‘The face of a hospitable man when he...

Frankly, I’m not responsible for other people’s perceptions and what they consider real or fake. We must abolish the entitlement that deludes us int believing that we have the right to make assumptions about people’s...

Peace in patriarchy is war against women.

Matriarchy is a time-honored staple for any writer looking to invent an exotic society.

We knew the pain of winter rushing up your skirt, and the ache of keeping your knees together in class, and how drab and infuriating it was to jump rope while the boys played baseball....

There is any amount of love and good in the world, but you must search for it. Being misunderstood is one of the trials we all must bear. I think that even the most common-minded...

It portrayed motherhood as the highest position that a woman could achieve. For God had made Mary neither a prophet nor the messiah nor the daughter of God. Nor did God take the form of...

And now we who are writing women and strange monstersStill search our hearts to find the difficult answers,Still hope that we may learn to lay our handsMore gently and more subtly on the burning sands.

For women especially, virginity has become the easy answer- the morality quick fix. You can be vapid, stupid, and unethical, but so long as you’ve never had sex, you’re a “good” (i.e. “moral) girl and...

Those who are so eager for women and girls to go back to the kitchen might think again about just what it is we might be up to in there. You can plan a lot...

This pre-eminence is something [men] have unjustly arrogated to themselves. And when it’s said that women must be subject to men, the phrase should be understood in the same sense as when we say we...

The night is mine, my own time, to do with it as I will, as long as I am quiet. As long as I don’t move. As long as I lie still. The difference between...

What are other women really thinking, feeling, experiencing, when they slip away from the gaze and culture of men?

Modern cosmetic surgeons have a direct financial interest in a social role for women that requires them to feel ugly. They do not simply advertise for a share of a market that already exists: Their...

Why do I write? I write because I have to, because it is all I know, because it is my truth, because I am compelled, because I am driven to make the worldacknowledge that women...

I’ve been lying in the grass. All morning long, I lay here waiting for the dawn.

On nous exhorte: ‘Soyez femmes, restez femmes, devenez femmes.’ Tout être humain femelle n’est donc pas nécessairament une femme; il lui faut participer à cette réalité mystérieuse et menacée qu’est la féminité. (…) Celle-ci est-elle...

Any relationship that developed power dynamics, where she thought she had the right to dictate someone else’s behavior or have him dictate hers, was ended almost immediately. She could not stand the thought of hands...

Fundamental to a radical and lesbian feminist politics is the understanding that ‘the personal is political’. This phrase has two interrelated meanings. It means that the political power structures of the ‘public’ world are reflected...

Always happens with men. They promise friendship. They promise to treat you as an equal. In the end, all they want is to possess you.

A truly equal world would be one where women ran half our countries and companies and men ran half our homes. I believe that this would be a better world.

In England in the 19th century, advances in printing methods, combined with the rise of a prosperous middle class, engendered a booming new industry of books published just for children. Casting about for cheap story...

Life for both sexes – and I looked at them, shouldering their way along the pavement – is arduous, difficult, a perpetual struggle. It calls for gigantic courage and strength. More than anything, perhaps, creatures...

I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat.

If sex is not just about reproduction, it is not just about genes, XY chromosomes, and hormones either. Sex is introduced to explain skeletal structure, mental aptitude, posture, emotional disposition, aesthetic preference, body fat, sexual...

If you are embarrassed about your sex, it must mean that you feel there is something demeaning or disgusting about being female. You are all wondrously made, girls. Remember that: wondrously made, and you should...

You realize of course that if it were the other way round there would be a law, there would be an actual law: John versus Jen in the high court. And John would put it...

The only way for a woman, as for a man, to find herself, to know herself as a person, is by creative work of her own.

The essence of oppression is that one is defined from the outside by those who define themselves as superior by criteria of their own choice.

feminist” in any authentic sense of the term is to want for all people, female and male, liberation from sexist role patterns, domination, and oppression.

Batman doesn’t want a baby in order to feel he’s ‘done everything’. He’s just saved Gotham again! If this means that Batman must be a feminist role model above, say, Nicola Horlick, then so be...

No, I’m the human here. I’m the life at stake. I’m the one with fingernails, who feels pain.Me.

…take down your baby bump photos from Facebook, take down pictures of your kids too. It is your job to protect your children and not parade them around like little circus freaks or glorified mini-you’s.

Sexist grammar burns into the brains of little girls and young women a message that the male is the norm, the standard, the central figure beside which we are all deviants, the marginal, the dependent...

Men who are in prison for rape think it’s the dumbest thing that ever happened… it’s isn’t just a miscarriage of justice; they were put in jail for something very little different from what most...

But Rosa soon made the discovery that Miss Twinkleton didn’t read fairly. She cut the love-scenes, interpolated passages in praise of female celibacy, and was guilty of other glaring pious frauds.

Many of my movies have strong female leads- brave, self-sufficient girls that don’t think twice about fighting for what they believe with all their heart. They’ll need a friend, or a supporter, but never a...

It [childbearing] was never intended to be as time-consuming and self-conscious a process as it is. One of the deepest evils in our society is tyrannical nurturance.

We can say the brotherhood of man, and pretend that we include the sisterhood of women, but we know that we don’t. Folklore has it that women only congregate to bitch an absent member of...