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.

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.

The situation of those men in the hierarchy of gender who avail themselves of female tenderness is not thereby altered: Their superordinate position is neither abandoned, nor their male privilege relinquished. The vulnerability these men...

When a man says to me, ‘Let us work together in the great cause you have undertaken, and let me be your companion and aid, for I admire you more than I have ever admired...

The anti-feminism bacllash has been set off not by women’s achievement of full equality but by the increased possibility that they might win it. It is a pre-emptive strike that stops women long before they...

I think one of the primary goals of a feminist landscape architecture would be to work toward a public landscape in which we can roam the streets at midnight, in which every square is available...

I was thinking: Girls get scared way too often. Girls get stupidly scared. I was not scared.Telling myself not to be scared kind of worked.

On the scale of relevance, public approval or disapproval of a woman’s choices should not merit measure.

I first knew I was a woman when my mother and father took me out to dinner to celebrate my success on the debate team.” It was mostly men yelling shit from cars. Are they...

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.