Cheris Kramarae - Pat Robertson - Roseanne Barr - Mary Wollstonecraft - Julia Burchill - Fanny Burney - Anne Finch - Elizabeth Candy Stanton - John Stuart Mill - Margery Corbett Ashby - Simon Schama TV - 1970s Slogan - Germain Greer - Golda Meir - Simone de Beauvoir - Polly Toynbee - Rebecca West - Marilyn French - Betty Friedan - Margaret Sanger - Anthony & Stanton & Gage & Harper - Margaret Atwood - Sally Kempton - Rush Limbaugh - Starhawk - Elaine Showater - Wikipedia - Nina Auerbach - Annette Kolodny - Gerda Lerner - The Freewoman 1911 - Susan B Anthony - Elizabeth Blackwell - Harriet Beecher Stowe - Gloria Steinem - Charlotte Bronte - Louise Brown - Eleanor Roosevelt - Bell Hooks - Kenneth Clark TV - Aleister Crowley - Yellow Sky 1948 - Star Trek: Deep Space Nine TV - Gail Dines - Marilyn Monroe - Anna Garlin Spencer - Rudyard Kipling - Amanda Vickery TV - Morton Downie jr TV - Karl Marx - What Makes a Woman? TV -
Feminism is the radical notion that women are human beings. Cheris Kramarae
The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians. Pat Robertson
The thing women have yet to learn is nobody gives you power. You just take it. Roseanne Barr
I love man as my fellow; but his sceptre, real, or usurped, extends not to me, unless the reason of an individual demands my homage; and even then the submission is to reason, and not to man. Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Women
I do not wish them [women] to have power over men; but over themselves. ibid.
Taught from infancy that beauty is woman’s sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison. ibid.
The pure animal spirits which make both mind and body shoot out, and unfold the tender blossoms of hope, are turned sour and vented in vain wishes, or pert repinings, that contract the faculties and spoil the temper; else they mount to the brain, and sharpening the understanding before it gains proportional strength, produce that pitiful cunning which disgracefully characterises the female mind and I fear will characterise it whilst women remain the slaves of power. ibid.
From the tyranny of man, I firmly believe, the greater number of female follies proceed. ibid.
The freedom women were supposed to have found in the Sixties largely boiled down to easy contraception and abortion: things to make life easier for men in fact. Julia Burchill
O! how short a time does it take to put an end to a woman’s liberty! Fanny Burney, English novelist & diarist
How are we fallen! Fallen by mistaken rules,
And education’s, more than nature’s, fools;
Debarred from all improvements of the mind,
And to be dull, expected and designed. Anne Finch, The Introduction 1913
The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Declaration of Sentiments, Seneca Falls Convention July 1848
The Bible teaches that woman brought sin and death into the world, that she precipitated the fall of the race ... marriage for her was to be a condition of bondage, maternity a period of suffering and anguish, and in silence and subjection, she was to play the role of a dependent on man’s bounty for all her material wants. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, American Suffragist
Woman’s degradation is in man’s idea of his sexual rights. Our religion, laws, customs, are all founded on the belief that woman was made for man. Elizabeth Cady Stanton
The Bible and the Church have been the greatest stumbling blocks in the way of women’s emancipation. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Free Thought Magazine 1896
The most important thing women have to do is to stir up the zeal of women themselves. John Stuart Mill, letter 14th July 1869
We were basing our request for the vote on inequalities and injustices and lack of opportunity. Dame Margery Corbett Ashby, interview BBC 1972
And you’d find women – articulate, intelligent and impassioned. And among those women the most striking of all was Mary Wollstonecraft. She was the Spirit of the Times. Mary Wollstonecraft was a one-woman revolution. Simon Schama, A History of Britain: Forces of Nature, BBC 2000
The reason she [Wollstonecraft] said why women were so slighted was that from the time they were little girls their entire being was designed with the sole and sovereign aim of pleasing men. She had no time for Rousseau’s idea that women by their very nature could be no more than wives and mothers ... She is rightly remembered as the founder of modern feminism. ibid.
Burn you bra. Feminist slogan 1970s
Women have very little idea of how much men hate them. Germaine Greer, The Female Eunuch, 1970
Is it too much to ask that women be spared the daily struggle for superhuman beauty in order to offer it to the carcasses of a subhumanly ugly mate? ibid.
You can now see the Female Eunuch the world over … spreading herself whenever blue jeans and Coca-Cola may go. Wherever you see nail varnish, lipstick, brassieres, and high heels, the Eunuch has set up her camp. ibid. foreword to 21st anniversary edition
I didn’t fight to get women out from behind the vacuum cleaner to get them on to the board of Hoover. Germaine Greer, Guardian 27th October 1986
Women’s Liberation is just a lot of foolishness. It’s the men who are discriminated against. They can’t bear children. And no-one’s likely to do anything about that. Golda Meir cited Newsweek 23rd October 1972
It is not in giving life but in risking life that man is raised above the animal; that is why superiority has been accorded in humanity not to the sex that brings forth but to that which kills. Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1949
Few tasks are more like the torture of Sisyphus than housework, with its endless repetition ... The housewife wears herself out marking time: she makes nothing, simply perpetuates the present. ibid.
Feminism is the most revolutionary idea there has ever been. Equality for women demands a change in the human psyche more profound than anything Marx dreamed of. It means valuing parenthood as much as we value banking. Polly Toynbee, Guardian 19th January 1987
I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute. Rebecca West
It was in dealing with the early feminist that the Government acquired the tact and skilfulness with which it is now handling Ireland. Rebecca West, Daily News 7th August 1916
Whatever they may be in public life, whatever their relations with men, in their relations with women, all men are rapists, and that’s all they are. They rape us with their eyes, their laws, and their codes. Marilyn French, The Women’s Room, 1977
‘I hate discussions of feminism that end up with who does the dishes,’ she said. So do I. But at the end, there are always the damned dishes. ibid.
The problem that has no name. Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique, 1963
It is easier to live through someone else than to become complete yourself. ibid.
Today the problem that has no name is how to juggle work, love, home and children. Betty Friedan, The Second Stage, 1987
No woman can call herself free who does not control her own body. Margaret Sanger
We ask justice, we ask equality, we ask that all civil and political rights that belong to the citizens of the United States be guaranteed to us and our daughters forever. Susan B Anthony & Elizabeth Cady Stanton & Matilda Joslyn Gage, Ida Husted Harper, History of Woman Suffrage, 1886