Feminist quotes thread

[ArabellaScott]

For a bit of pep on a Friday afternoon, thought I'd gather some stirring quotes.

"I know that women, once convinced that they are doing what is right, that their rebellion is just, will go on, no matter what the difficulties, no matter what the dangers, so long as there is a woman alive to hold up the flag of rebellion" - Emmeline Pankhurst

@Maduixa

With you on both of your comments, NorthernIrishFeminist. But I hope that reason prevails and women will not have to lose everything in order to start getting justice and equality back.

Agreed Maduixa

Seeing the Bernadette Devlin quote again gave me real pause for thought

“Most women cannot afford, either materially or psychologically, to recognize that whatever burnt offerings of obedience they bring to beg protection will not appease the angry little gods around them.” - Andrea Dworkin

Germaine Greer is so fearless and fiercely, unapologetically intelligent.

We do our best,
we Queens, we mothers,
mothers of Queens.

We wade through blood
for our sleeping girls.
We have daggers for eyes.

Behind our lullabies,
the hooves of terrible horses
thunder and drum.

Queen Herod
The World’s Wife
Carol Ann Duffy

Feminism is like the hoovering, you just have to keep doing it'
Liz Lochhead

oh, belters, these!

@OhDear2200

"You don't have to be pretty. You don't owe prettiness to anyone. Not to your boyfriend/spouse/partner, not to your co-workers, especially not to random men on the street. You don't owe it to your mother, you don't owe it to your children, you don't owe it to civilization in general. Prettiness is not a rent you pay for occupying a space marked 'female.'" Erin McKean

love this one. xx

"Radical feminist theorists do not seek to make gender a bit more flexible, but to eliminate it. They are gender abolitionists, and understand gender to provide the framework and rationale for male dominance. In the radical feminist approach, masculinity is the behaviour of the male ruling class and femininity is the behaviour of the subordinate class of women. Thus gender can have no place in the egalitarian future that feminism aims to create."

Sheila Jeffreys

"I think if you've lived in the world as a man with the privileges the world accords to men, and then switched gender, it's difficult for me to accept that then we can equate your experience with the experience of a woman who has lived from the beginning in the world as a woman, and who has not been accorded those privileges that men are."

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

We are fucked if we do and fucked if we don't.
We are fucked either way so I say fuck it I will do what I want.

Liking your work ofwarren.

“Feminism means something. It is not whatever anyone says it is. It is a political movement aimed at liberating women from male supremacy. Commodifying women’s bodies is not feminism. Normalising the idea of inherent gender is not feminism.”

Meghan Murphy

"You cannot argue for the institution of prostitution without arguing for men's rights to buy their way inside women's bodies, and if you argue for women's bodies as products in the service of men, you're not only no feminist; you've yet to discover what the word means."

Rachel Moran

“Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.”

Margaret Atwood. Sad that she's fallen, as she seemed to be one person who really got it.

I am unspeakably sad about Atwood, Mark.

"As a feminist, I consider the female pronoun to be an honorific, a term that conveys respect. Respect is due to women as members of a sex caste that have survived subordination and deserve to be addressed with honour. Men who transgender cannot occupy such a position."

Sheila Jeffreys

"Women do not decide at some time in adulthood that they would like other people to understand them to be women, because being a woman is not an ‘identity’. Women’s experience does not resemble that of men who adopt the ‘gender identity’ of being female or being women in any respect. The idea of ‘gender identity’ disappears biology and all the experiences that those with female biology have of being reared in a caste system based on sex."

Sheila Jeffreys

"Transgenderism depends for its very existence on the idea that there is an ‘essence’ of gender, a psychology and pattern of behaviour, which is suited to persons with particular bodies and identities.This is the opposite of the feminist view, which is that the idea of gender is the foundation of the political system of male domination. ‘Gender’, in traditional patriarchal thinking, ascribes skirts, high heels and a love of unpaid domestic labour to those with female biology, and comfortable clothing, enterprise and initiative to those with male biology. In the practice of transgenderism, traditional gender is seen to lose its sense of direction and end up in the minds and bodies of persons with inappropriate body parts that need to be corrected. But without ‘gender’, transgenderism could not exist. From a critical, feminist point of view, when transgender rights are inscribed into law and adopted by institutions, they instantiate ideas that are harmful to women’s equality and give authority to outdated notions of essential differences between the sexes. Transgenderism is indeed transgressive, but of women’s rights rather than an oppressive social system."

Sheila Jeffreys

Fabulous quotes, I have really enjoyed reading this thread. Don't have anything written to contribute but I saw this on Twitter this week which I thought was excellent:

twitter.com/fairplaywomen/status/1385662484497977349?s=21

The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world.

Great quotes from Sheila Jeffreys, thank you.

The effect of legalised prostitution on women outside prostitution is to lower the status of all women. Women are recognised by the state in this system as the appropriate objects of male penetration with no consideration for their personhood or pleasure. This teaches that the penetration and use of an unwilling woman is ‘sex’, an idea that lies at the root of sexual violence against women in general. There is no chance of developing a sexuality of equality in which women’s pleasure, right to say no, and bodily integrity are respected whilst the violence of prostitution is allowed to continue with state support for men’s behaviour.

Another quote from Sheila Jeffreys. This really nails it.

Amen Sheila

@vivariumvivariumsvivaria

I am unspeakably sad about Atwood, Mark.

Can you help me understand what's happened in relation to Margaret Atwood? I'm intrigued

I bloody love this thread btw

... have learnt so much from
All of it, esp from the writings of Sheila Jeffreys . Just wow!