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.

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.

Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination.’ (Leviticus 18:22). That means simply that it is foul to do to other men what men habitually, proudly, manfully do to women: use...

The thing is we never needed anyone’s consent to get married. What is happening is that the established powers are starting realize how much of jack asses they have looked like for not acknowledging our...

Civilized Man says: I am Self, I am Master, all the rest is other–outside, below, underneath, subservient. I own, I use, I explore, I exploit, I control. What I do is what matters. What I...

protect our property at all costs from any sense of perceived threat. ” This is what the worship of death looks like.

We walked through the streets with our protectors. We wore our dresses. We gave up our education because that was the price of safety. That was the bargain we made with the devil we knew...

Masculinity is simply a conglomeration of the personality traits necessary for the patriarchal soldier-rapist: physically strong, emotionally cauterized, rational, domineering, cruel. All of this is supposed to add up to “handsome” as well. Likewise femininity...

Being female in this world means having been robbed of the potential for human choice by men who love to hate us. One does does not make choices in freedom. Instead, one conforms in body...

se desprecia a las mujeres, se les consume, se les desecha, se les estigmatiza, se les cuelga para siempre al árbol patriarcal y allí se les ahorca

Let’s commit ourselves to act like men – not like the men of our day who are preoccupied with money, with pleasure, with human power, and with selfish and merely temporal concerns. Let us act...

If Jesus himself, or Mohammed, or Buddha spoke to me personally and said that women are inferior to men, I would still reject that as false dogma because I know with every ounce of my...

vicarious consumption” was the happy lot of all women. The efficacy of this maneuver depends on dividing women by class and persuading the privileged that they live in an indulgence they scarcely deserve… To succeed,...

Olympus is still a patriarchy. Zeus heads his royal household as jealously as Jehovah rules his harem of dull, harp-playing angels. Both are templates for order on earth, don’t you think?

When society was patriarchal, as it was in the New Testament context and as it has been everywhere in the world except in modern society in our day, the church avoided scandal by going along...

It is a tragedy beyond the power of language to convey when what has been imposed on women by force becomes a standard of freedom for women: and all the women say it is so.