Worse than that, however, was the CFO, a dapper-suited, neat-haired new age carapace containing an uninhibited misogynistic bogan, whose actual words to me, in concert with my boss in the same room were: ‘To be...

I hate how long it takes to feel radical, militantly maternal self-acceptance.

When our mother is seen only as the one-dimensional Mary of modern times, instead of the great dual force of life and death, She is relegated to the same second-class status of most women in...

Your idea of a woman is someone who gets on a chair and shrieks if she sees a mouse. That’s all prehistoric.

I was going to die, sooner or later, whether or not I had even spoken myself. My silences had not protected me. Your silences will not protect you…. What are the words you do not...

Mrs IcarusI’m not the first or the lastto stand on a hillock,watching the man she marriedprove to the worldhe’s a total, utter, absolute, Grade A pillock.

As far as cosmetics are used for adornment in a conscious and creative way, they are not emblems of inauthenticity: it is when they are presented as the real thing, covering unsightly blemishes, disguising a...

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.

I think of feminism as a socially just and imaginative world.

Then that little man in black there, he says women can’t have as much rights as men, ’cause Christ wasn’t a woman! Where did your Christ come from? Where did your Christ come from? From...

She looked into Kirsten’s eyes and wondered how it is that a soldier fights and a savior suffers, but a woman, in lying down, rules everything.

He says that woman speaks with nature. That she hears voices from under the earth. That wind blows in her ears and trees whisper to her. That the dead sing through her mouth and the...

At my glummest, I sometimes think women get to chose- between being punished for being unsubjugated and the continual punishment of subjugation.

The message couldn’t have been clearer: women may rise to the top, but they must seem as though they don’t care whether they win or lose. Nice girls care only about being nice. They win...

The problem with movements is that, all too often, they are associated only with the most visible figures, the people with the biggest platforms and the loudest, most provocative voices. But feminism is not whatever...

talk,” and in general to whatever the knowledge-powers of government and management don’t want to hear, which is thus relegated to exclusion from all recognized activity, relegated to the role of a witness.

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...