Women get hit with a double whammy. If they’re attractive, they’re presumed to have slept their way to the top. If they’re unattractive, they are presumed to have chosen a profession because they could not get a man.
Self-esteem is the basis of any democracy.
Women, we tend to become whole people by venturing outside of the home, learning to aspire, to achieve, to deal with conflict – all these qualities that are wrongly called masculine.
Women tend to be conservative in youth and get more radical as they get older because they lose power with age. So, if a young woman is not a feminist, I say, just wait.
This is the wisdom: If we bless our bodies, they will bless us.
Logic has nothing to do with oppression.
Clearly no one knows what leadership has gone undiscovered in women of all races, and in black and other minority men.
When you say something in a wrong group – it will never be right, so you can not say anything wrong, when you don’t belong to a group.
Life after 50 or 60 is itself another country, as different as adolescence is from childhood, or as adulthood is from adolescence – and just as adventurous.
Progress is not automatic, it depends on what we do every day. So any statement of ownership of our own bodies, however that occurs in our individual lives or our community or our collective lives, is crucial.
People say, ‘Oh, you’ve sacrificed so much, now’s the time to do something for yourself.’ I mean, please – that is so wrong. I don’t think I’ve sacrificed one f-king thing.
Women are never again going to be mindless coffee-makers or mindless policy-makers in politics.
Planning ahead is a measure of class. The rich and even the middle class plan for future generations, but the poor can plan ahead only a few weeks or days.
What has the women’s movement learned from Geraldine Ferraro’s candidacy for vice president? Never get married.
For a man to say, “I have to leave work now because I need to do something with my kids,” it’s sometimes viewed as a career killer. He doesn’t have the right drive. So when they depart from their gender roles, they face some of the same restrictions.
I can’t mate in captivity.
If you’re going to have a male dominant system, to maintain the system, you have to teach men to dominate.
The uncomfortable truth seems to be that the amount of talk by women has been measured less against the amount of men’s talk than against the expectation of female silence.
Obviously, untangling sex from aggression and violence or the threat of it is going to take a very long time. And the process is going to be greatly resisted as a challenge to the very heart of male dominance and male centrality.
I believe a unique core self is born into every human being; the result of millennia of environment and heredity combined in an unpredictable way that could never happen before or again.