Prostitution, perversion, and pornography are intertwined with independence and radical politics in the history of outstanding women. Radclyffe Hall, Colette, Anaïs Nin, Kate Millett, Erica Jong–all of these women used the money they made from...

Comrades, there is no true social revolution without the liberation of women. May my eyes never see and my feet never take me to a society where half the people are held in silence. I...

Le sens de la toilette féminine est manifest: il s’agit de se ‘parer’ et se parer c’est s’offrir; les feministes hétérosexuelles se sont montrées naguère sur ce point aussi intransiseantes que les lesbiennes: elles refusaient...

Having ascended to some spiritual strength by focusing on the power of the feminine, it is no doubt tempting to wield this strength against that which triggers memories of having once been weaker.

typical American girl,” this masterful charmer—known for pampering her mostly male passengers while maintaining perfect poise (and straight stocking seams) thirty thousand feet above sea level—became an esteemed national heroine for her womanly perfection.But while...

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.

The key to the trap is, of course, education. The feminine mystique has made higher education for women seem suspect, unnecessary and even dangerous. But I think that education, and only education, has saved, and...

Surely the freedom of women must mean more to us than the freedom of pimps.

Unfortunately, power is something that women abjure once they perceive the great difference between the lives possible to men and to women…

But, of course, you might be asking yourself, ‘Am I a feminist? I might not be. I don’t know! I still don’t know what it is! I’m too knackered and confused to work it out....

[In 16th century European society] Marriage was the triumphal arch through which women, almost without exception, had to pass in order to reach the public eye. And after marriage followed, in theory, the total self-abnegation...

…if I have a daughter I will tell her she can do anything, and I will mean it, because I have no other intention of informing her otherwise. As my mother did with me, and...

In all societies, women are in double jeopardy; on the one hand we are expected to conform to certain emotional standards in our relationships with others at the penalty of being declared insane; on the...

Magistrate: May I die a thousand deaths ere I obey one who wears a veil!Lysistrata: If that’s all that troubles you, here take my veil, wrap it round your head, and hold your tounge. Then...

Shrouded as he was for a decade in an apparent cloak of anonymity and obscurity, Osama bin Laden was by no means an invisible man. He was ubiquitous and palpable, both in a physical and...

[T]he more clamour we make about ‘the women’s point of view’, the more we rub it into people that the women’s point of view is different, and frankly I do not think it is —...

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.