Feminism Quotes - Page 10

It's a shame for a woman's history to be all about men-first boys, then other boys, then men, men, men. It reminds me of the way our school history textbooks were all about wars and elections, one war after another, with the dull periods of peace skimmed over when they happened.

Women’s history is the
primary tool for women’s emancipation.

Looking at my life through the lens of history has made me increasingly grateful to standout women who pushed those boundaries to make the changes from which I have benefited.

Men make the moral code and they expect women to accept it. They have decided that it is entirely right and proper for men to fight for their liberties and their rights, but that it is not right and proper for women to fight for theirs.

In the past, only some of the males, but all of the females, were able to procreate. Equality is more natural for females.

I thought I had been a suffragist before I became a Poor Law Guardian, but now I began to think about the vote in women's hands not only as a right but as a desperate necessity.

The rule seemed to be that a great woman must either die unwed ... or find a still greater man to marry her. ... The great man, on the other hand, could marry where he liked, not being restricted to great women; indeed, it was often found sweet and commendable in him to choose a woman of no sort of greatness at all.

To the moralist prostitution does not consist so much in the fact that the woman sells her body, but rather that she sells it out of wedlock.

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 any other woman,' then I shall say, 'I am yours truly'; but he must ask me to be his equal, not his slave.

I am anchored on a resolve you cannot shake. My heart, my conscience shall dispose of my hand - they only. Know this at last.

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

But a girl’s love is not a woman’s love; above all, it is not a modern woman’s love. I, at thirty, cannot accept your views, adopt your methods, and believe your heresies, as you might be able to teach me to do if I were eighteen, - and if I loved you. I have found out my own life-truths, and they do not accord with yours.

The question I’d long posed to myself - whether to be married or to be single - is a false binary. The space in which I’ve always wanted to live - indeed, where I have spend my adulthood - isn’t between those two poles, but beyond it. The choice between being married versus being single doesn’t even belong here in the twenty-first century.

I didn't appear to need anyone: I could do it all myself. I could do everything. I was both halves: did that mean I was whole?

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 only capital – her virginity – and eventually offering it to just one man.

I'm not sure how we got to this place, where a girl's only value is in what kind of marriage she has, how capable she is of keeping a man happy.

The language of marriage is often a language of ownership, not a language of partnership.

Don Benicio no se atrevía ni a respirar, hasta que poco a poco fue convirtiéndose en un sumiso, en un calzonazos, y se demostró una vez más que el matrimonio es incompatible con la dignidad del hombre.

It never occurs to one to think whether she is pretty or ugly. One just surrenders to her charm.

The natural ambition of woman is through marriage to climb up, leaning upon a man; but those days are gone. You shall be great without the help of any man, just as you are.