I want to write a book called, ‘Bonfires and Bras,’ which follows around a young, braless feminist who struggles to adopt in air conditioned rooms, as her hardened nipples cause her excess embarrassment.

I told my kids I just want three words on my tombstone, if I have one. I’ll probably be cremated. One is “woman.” I’m very comfortable in that role. I’ve loved being a woman, I’ve...

It wasn’t really a loud-mouthed, hyperactive little pig-tailed blonde that made Carl cringe. It was what I represented. While his upbringing was battered humiliation, I was spoiled, doted on, and spoon-fed by the world. I...

Valys also didn’t think I was good enough for him. He made that clear every time he acted like a martyr forced to settle. But what he didn’t understand was that if he thought I...

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...

Wherever you find a great man, you will find a great mother or a great wife standing behind him — or so they used to say. It would be interesting to know how many great...

Now let’s make Virginia Heffernan a man. Can you imagine the same kind of spittle-flecked rage directed at a busy working father who admits to feeding his kids Annie’s Organic Mac & Cheese?

Feminists often pretend to be angry and offended in order to win debates or, I should say, prevent debates from ever happening. If you can act angry and offended, especially on a college campus, you...

I’ve thought often about why – why?! – anyone, especially other women, would try to disrupt feminist work that combats violence. What in the world could be the point of that? The only reason I’ve...

It’s as if our girls don’t understand that they can be recognized for other things–their goals, their brains. Not just their bodies.

no man, you have never heard of it?” No she said. I do not know what it is, and it occurred to me that my 30-year-old daughter who I told about endometriosis and it didn’t...

The world was hers for the reading.

She’d crossed into a place where truth, even if it was brutal, was all she had to offer.

It’s no surprise that a generation of women who were brought up being told that they were equal to men, that sexism, and therefore feminism, was dead, are starting to see through this. And while...

It is not your job to convince men to like you.

Sexism occurs when we assume that some people are less valid or natural than others because of their sex, gender, or sexuality; it occurs when we project our own expectations and assumptions about sex, gender,...

I try to stay fit and eat healthily, but I am not anxious to starve myself and become unnaturally thin. I don’t find that look attractive on women and I don’t want to become part...

It’s the end of man and I can do whatever I want.

You are a woman, Andria. You are wise. You are gentle. You are bold. You are both a guiding light and a source of raging fire. That is what women are. How is our kingdom...

If you ask Muslim women why they cover up, ninety-nine percent of them will say it’s to avoid arousing men. Fuck that, where’s your self-accountability?

But penetration was a big deal. They protected their anuses the way girls protected their hymen in high school, believing that allowing anything beyond their holy gates would permanently corrupt them.

[S]ocial order displays not the absolute presence or absence of intolerance to difference but a spectrum of intolerance. Each of us bears responsibility to some degree for maintaining these protocols of intolerance, which could not...

A woman brings so much more to the world than birth, for she can birth discovery, intelligence, invention, art, just as well as any man.

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...

Liberating ourselves from the traditional strictures of marriage altogether, and/or transforming those strictures to include all of us — gay, feminist, career-focused, baby crazy, monogamous, non-monogamous, skeptical, romantic, and everyone in between — is the...

I like to see you in a sari, with your long hair dressed in a single plait. Don’t forget that I married a girl from India because I like my wife to be conservative and...

First, it is a commitment to particularism, to giving priority to the specificity of particulars, not to abstractions and generalities that divert our attention away from concrete realities. Idealizations tend to be partial and distorting,...

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...

I personally believe that gender equality underlines every other equality, and certainly the issue of sexuality. For instance, if we didn’t distinguish between gender, in terms of giving different genders disparate values and attributes, what...

She stood by the bed and stroked her father’s hand, knowing how desperately afraid he must feel at this moment. He’d always prided himself on being the kind of man who could be counted on,...

No, I’m not feminist. I’m not, not a feminist.

Number 23 had plenty of redeeming qualities that made falling for him a justifiable accident. But our connection had nothing to do with our similarities, our differences, our aesthetic attractions, or our emotional and physical...

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.

The lie [of compulsory female heterosexuality] is many-layered. In Western tradition, one layer—the romantic—asserts that women are inevitably, even if rashly and tragically, drawn to men; that even when that attraction is suicidal (e. g,...

I’m a feminist. That’s why I own a dishwasher.

We don’t have no say, ‘cause we was an afterthought. He yanked us up out o’ man’s ribs, but He made man out the Earth. He made him out the dirt and the mud and...

We long for an intimate connection, but that longing makes us feel vulnerable. Therefore, we guard our hearts for self-preservation, which barricades that intimacy we are longing for. Casual sex is a very sad cat...

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...

Using one’s beauty was the only way a smart girl could get by, at least that’s how it was back then, though even for a smart girl there were really only three professions. You could...

i have been told many times by family, friends, colleagues and strangers that I, a black African Muslim lesbian, am not included in this vision; that my dreams are a reflection of my upbringing in...

Someday every woman will have orgasms- like every family has color TV- and we can all get on with the business of life.

Sir, — Whether women are the equals of men has been endlessly debated; whether they have souls has been a moot point; but can it be too much to ask [for a definitive acknowledgement that...

Sometimes, people call my way of speaking ranting. Why are you always ranting and screaming, they ask. But here’s the thing…the reason why I rant is because I am a voice for many women that...

At least the more modern princesses had the guts to do something aside from clean and wait to be rescued. They armed themselves and tried to provide good role models to impressionable girl tykes. It...

It’s an arbitrary thing if you’re born with an XX or XY chromosome, but it can determine your experience of the world. It’s about whether you are physically intimidating vs. being physically intimidated. It determines...

That wasn’t enough. They weren’t enough.Nor, she soon realized, was Will, though by every rational measure he ought to have been. … He became ardent, spoke of love, hinted at marriage. She stilled his roving...

Women, you have all this power, I’m telling you. In business, you have something called an inferred fiduciary duty to yourself. Look at the other hugely successful women in industry, commerce, science and everywhere else...

I fell in love with a sniper – a man whose basic training instills psychopathic tendencies. I loved a professional dehumanizer. I loved a man who lived in a world where empathy was suicide. I...

Feminism is a way of thinking and being, not a way of dressing. You know a feminist by her gaze, not her neckline.

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...