In our global community, when a woman becomes an authoritative figure- it scares the world. She is no longer giving into traditional patriarchal notions of submissiveness, she does not require validation, and subsequently she becomes...

Patriarchy, reformed or unreformed, is patriarchy still: its worst abuses purged or foresworn, it might actually be more stable and secure than before.

We have enough proof that, at least my generation does, that patriarchy and matriarchy are gender-less roles.

Men did not need to have balls to have balls.

Male dominance in society always means that out of public sight, in the private, ahistorical world of men with women, men are sexually dominating women.

How else to make a dent in an object as immovable as patriarchy itself…?

If it’s not clear enough in the piece, I love it when people things to me they know and I’m interested in but don’t yet know. It’s when they explain things to me I know...

For me, the times that I dressed provocatively had been empowering. It felt good. It’s those times that I felt comfortable in my own skin. Like really, really comfortable. And let’s face it, body self-esteem...

Dissociation from the body and emotions – numbness – is a basic requirement of the male ideal. Hardy and Hough point out that the patriarchal culture’s influence is so strong on this point that it...

When I was doing the Mademoiselle application my husband would peer over my shoulder and say, “What are you doing competing with the best brains in the country? Why don’t you just wash the dishes?”...

In a society where women are truly equal to men, a kid bred by a theist mother and an atheist father is born an agnostic. In a patriarchal society, the kid is automatically an atheist.

When I discarded the idea that God was not a man (as I had been raised to think and believe without question), I grew distant, and the flame that once lit my path began to...

Those who control life, and the bodies of women, control the money and hold the power. Women who are kept indoors, cannot make money and will not hold any power.

Submissive men, men who desire to serve as consensual slaves, are on one of the most difficult journeys in the world today, because they have rejected patriarchal privilege and embraced their own heart’s calling instead.

The bar is masculine, and women must adopt traditionally masculine characteristics – cultivated insensitivity, goal-orientated thinking, the prioritising of the material – to compete.

The word ‘sin’ is derived from the Indo-European root ‘es-,’ meaning ‘to be.’ When I discovered this etymology, I intuitively understood that for a [person] trapped in patriarchy, which is the religion of the entire...

I sometimes try to imagine what would have happened if we’d known the bonobo first and the chimpanzee only later—or not at all. The discussion about human evolution might not revolve as much around violence,...

The psychologist George Frankl atributes class structure and conflict and most of the ills of society to the sexual class war based on the Oedipul pattern; that is, murderous phallic conflict between males for the...

The accounts of rape, wife beating, forced childbearing, medical butchering, sex-motivated murder, forced prostitution, physical mutilation, sadistic psychological abuse, and other commonplaces of female experience that are excavated from the past or given by contemporary...

Dancing falls into the same category as poetry for a woman – it equals dreaming, which may inspire thoughts about such banned topics as love and desire.

If kissing is man’s greatest invention, then fermentation and patriarchy compete with the domestication of animals for the distinction of being man’s worst folly, and no doubt the three combined long ago, the one growing...

There is nothing revolutionary whatsoever about the control of women’s bodies by men. The woman’s body is the terrain on which patriarchy is erected.

That not all men are piggy, only some; that not all men belittle me, only some; that not all men get mad if you won’t let them play Chivalry, only some; that not all men...

Sylvia quotes Dick as telling her: “I am afraid the demands of wifehood and motherhood would preoccupy you too much to allow you to do the painting and writing you want.” Dick was sharp enough...

I wish she’d said something different, but patriarchy is as prevalent around the world as racism and xenophobia are. We can’t hide from it, not even here.

Visionary feminism is a wise and loving politics. It is rooted in the love of male and female being, refusing to privilege one over the other. The soul of feminist politics is the commitment to...

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...

When they (the men, the scavengers)come for you, do not give yourselfto them so easily.Wear your strength like armour,fight like a beast.Do not let them tell you thatyou belong to them.Be fearless.Be a lion.Be like...

I question the more or less psychoanalytic perspective that the male need to control women sexually results from some primal male “fear of women” and of women’s sexual insatiability. It seems more probable that men...

Two adolescent girls on a hot summer night–hardly the material of great literature, which tends to endow all male experience (that of those twin brothers who found themselves adrift so many years ago in the...

I clenched my teeth and fists to stop them biting and scratching these clever men who want no care for the helpless sick small, who use religions and politics to stay comfortably superior to all...

The very act of accepting her position at Mademoiselle was an act of open defiance against Dick Norton, his entire family, and the gendered expectations of midcentury America.

No, what Great Aunt Winifred was suffering from was the persecution every happily single woman suffers: the predictable social condemnation of her independence and childlessness. Dorothy reminded herself of what she’d learned during a university...

The power of patriarchy has been to make maleness feared and to make men feel that it is better to be feared that to be loved. Whether they can confess this or not, men know...

And that’s the point; not even girls want to be girls so long as our feminine archetype lacks force, strength and power. Not wanting to be girls, they don’t want to be tender, submissive, peace-loving...

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...

All men should be feminists. If men care about women’s rights the world will be a better place. We are better off when women are empowered – it leads to a better society.

I tried to scream like you once screamed God since I wanted to make the whole world faint but Harry Astley clapped his hand over my mouth O the sheer joy of feeling my teeth...

…patriarchy, hierarchy, and capitalism create, encourage, maintain, and perpetuate addiction and dependency. Patriarchy and hierarchy are based on domination and subordination, which result in fear. This fear is expressed by the dominators through control and...

She was mined for the childrenin her, one daughter, then another, a short seam, quick to clay, and not a single son to save them.

Emotional neglect lays the groundwork for the emotional numbing that helps boys feel better about being cut off. Eruptions of rage in boys are most often deemed normal, explained by the age-old justification for adolescent...

And that’s the point! Not even girls want to be girls so long as our feminine archetype lacks force strength power. Not wanting to be girls, they don’t want to be tender, submissive, peace-loving as...

Even if you are a woman who achieves the ultimate and becomes like a man, you will still always be like a woman. And as long as womanhood is thought of as something to escape...

… in practice the standard for what constitutes rape is set not at the level of women’s experience of violation but just above the level of coercion acceptable to men.

Formerly, many men dominated women within marriage. Now, despite a much wider acceptance of women as workers, men dominate women anonymously outside the marriage. Patriarchy has not disappeared; it has changed form. In the old...

John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in marriage.

She felt the intimate loss of who she was meant to become.

This fear of maleness that they inspire estranges men from every female in their lives to greater or lesser degrees, and men feel the loss. Ultimately, one of the emotional costs of allegiance to patriarchy...

Peace in patriarchy is war against women.

…if you are the exception that proves the rule, and the rule is that woman are inferior, you haven’t made any progress.