Feminist quotes

Simone de Beauvoir, 1967.

The most powerful words we have are feminist's own words. Here is a list of quotes from prominent, leading and famous feminists.

Quotes

Andrea Dworkin

"I want to see a man beaten to a bloody pulp with a high-heel shoved in his mouth, like an apple in the mouth of a pig."

"Marriage as an institution developed from rape as a practice."

For men I suspect that this transformation begins in the place they most dread—that is, in a limp penis. I think that men will have to give up their precious erections and begin to make love as women do together.

Barbara Jordan

"I believe that women have a capacity for understanding and compassion which man structurally does not have, does not have it because he cannot have it. He’s just incapable of it."

Caitlin Moran

Because if I had one piece of advice for young girls, and women, it would be this: girls, don’t read any books by men. Don’t read them. Stay away from them. Or, at least, don’t read them until you’re older, and fully-formed, and battle-ready, and are able to counter someone being rude to you, in conversation, not with silent embarrassment, or internalised, mute fury, but a calm, “Fuck you very much, and goodbye.”

Because if there’s one thing that has made me, perhaps, happier in myself, and more confident about writing the truth, and less apt to run myself down for my appearance, weight, loudness and unusualness than many, many other women, it’s that I never read books by men when I was younger.

Catherine Comins

"Men who are unjustly accused of rape can sometimes gain from the experience."

Catharine MacKinnon

"Politically, I call it rape whenever a woman has sex and feels violated."

David Angier

"If anyone is prosecuted for filing a false report, then victims of real attacks will be less likely to report them."

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

"We are, as a sex, infinitely superior to men, and if we were free and developed, healthy in body and mind, as we should be under natural conditions, our motherhood would be our glory. That function gives women such wisdom and power as no male can possess."

"The male element is a destructive force, stern, selfish, aggrandizing, loving war, violence, conquest, acquisition, breeding in the material and moral world alike discord, disorder, disease, and death. See what a record of blood and cruelty the pages of history reveal! Through what slavery, slaughter, and sacrifice, through what inquisitions and imprisonments, pains and persecutions, black codes and gloomy creeds, the soul of humanity has struggled for the centuries, while mercy has veiled her face and all hearts have been dead alike to love and hope!"

Germaine Greer

"Probably the only place where a man can feel really secure is in a maximum security prison, except for the imminent threat of release."

"Women have very little idea of how much men hate them." The Female Eunich.

Irina Dunn

“A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.” 1970. This phrase is often incorrectly attributed to Gloria Steinem who popularised it. Similar phrases had currency in English before 1970.

Jodie Foster

"Ninety-five percent of women’s experiences are about being a victim. Or about being an underdog, or having to survive… women didn’t go to Vietnam and blow things up. They are not Rambo." Quoted in The New York Times Magazine

Julie Bindel

In response to the question will heterosexuality survive women’s liberation? Bindel stated:

"It won’t, not unless men get their act together, have their power taken from them and behave themselves. I mean, I would actually put them all in some kind of camp where they can all drive around in quad bikes, or bicycles, or white vans. I would give them a choice of vehicles to drive around with, give them no porn, they wouldn’t be able to fight – we would have wardens, of course! Women who want to see their sons or male loved ones would be able to go and visit, or take them out like a library book, and then bring them back.

And I am sick of hearing from individual women that their men are all right. Those men have been shored up by the advantages of patriarchy and they are complacent, they are not stopping other men from being shit.

I would love to see a women’s liberation that results in women turning away from men and saying: 'when you come back as human beings, then we might look again.'"

Linda Gordon

"The nuclear family must be destroyed… Whatever its ultimate meaning, the break-up of families now is an objectively revolutionary process."

Mary Daly

"If life is to survive on this planet, there must be a decontamination of the Earth. I think this will be accompanied by an evolutionary process that will result in a drastic reduction of the population of males."

Mary Koss

"If you look at this group of men who identify themselves as rape victims, as raped by women, you’ll find that their shame is not similar to women, their level of injury is not similar to women, and their penetration experience is not similar to what women are reporting."

"Although consideration of male victims is within the scope of the legal statutes, it is important to restrict the term rape to instances where male victims were penetrated by offenders. It is inappropriate to consider as a rape victim a man who engages in unwanted sexual intercourse with a woman."

Marilyn French

"As long as some men use physical force to subjugate females, all men need not. The knowledge that some men do suffices to threaten all women. He can beat or kill the woman he claims to love; he can rape women…he can sexually molest his daughters… THE VAST MAJORITY OF MEN IN THE WORLD DO ONE OR MORE OF THE ABOVE."

Maureen Dowd

Maureen Dowd is a columnist working for the New York Times. Dowd was recently quoted as saying:

So now that women don’t need men to reproduce and refinance, the question is, will we keep you around? And the answer is, ‘You know we need you in the way we need ice cream — you’ll be more ornamental.’

Robin Morgan

"I feel that ‘man-hating’ is an honorable and viable political act, that the oppressed have a right to class-hatred against the class that is oppressing them." Then Editor of Ms. Magazine.

Sally Miller Gearhart

"The proportion of men must be reduced to and maintained at approximately 10% of the human race." The Future – If There Is One – Is Female

Simone de Beauvoir

"One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman. No biological, psychological or economic fate determines the figure that the human female presents in society; it is civilisation as a whole that determines this creature."

"One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman. No biological, psychological, or economic fate determines the figure that the human female presents in society; it is civilization as a whole that produces this creature, intermediate between male and eunuch, which is described as feminine."

Sharon Stone

"The more famous and powerful I get the more power I have to hurt men."

Sheila Cronin

"Since marriage constitutes slavery for women, it is clear that the women’s movement must concentrate on attacking this institution. Freedom for women cannot be won without the abolition of marriage." This statement was made while Cronin was the leader of the feminist organization the National Organization for Women.

Sheila Jeffreys

"When a woman reaches ****** with a man she is only collaborating with the patriarchal system, eroticizing her own oppression."

Susan Brownmiller

"Rape is nothing more or less than a conscious process of intimidation by which all men keep all women in a state of fear." Against Our Will p.6

Susan Griffin

"And if the professional rapist is to be separated from the average dominant heterosexual (male), it may be mainly a quantitative difference." Rape: The All-American Crime

Ti-Grace Atkinson

"The institution of sexual intercourse is anti-feminist."

Treena Shapiro

"I do want to be able to explain to a 9-year-old boy in terms he will understand why I think it’s OK for girls to wear shirts that revel in their superiority over boys."

External Links

• Antimisandry.com
• Leftwing Gender Bigots
• Thought Catalog