Feminism

"For many feminists, however, Playboy’s philanthropy could only go so far. Controversy erupted in 1971 when the foundation offered legal support to the National Organization for Women. Instead NOW asked for one night’s profit from all Playboy Clubs. The organization publicized their request I order to put pressure on “Playboy”, but Hefner refused to go along, calling it “crude extortion.” NOW went on to declare that “no amount of money ‘would compensate for the low rating of the source. . . [T]o accept money from the [Playboy Foundation] would only contaminate us.” The conflict caused Barbara A. Townley of New Orleans to write, “I’m wholeheartedly in factor of women’s rights, but I don’t think Hugh Hefner even remotely resembled the Antichrist. . . . thanks for you offer to help. Perhaps when the women’s movement. . . starts going after the real dragons, we can get together. If some feminists in the seventies reacted foundation money, others accepted it as reparations, or as a necessary evil in difficult economic times, or they simply accepted it. Noting that funding for women’s projects was sparse in the early seventies, Marjorie Fine Knowles, writing for the Women’s Studies Newsletter, promoted the Playboy Foundation among organizations that were willing to assist or work toward feminist goals. Likewise, when the foundation paid the printing costs of the Dayton Women’s Center’s service directory, scholar Judith Ezekiel notes that there was “surprisingly little debate.” An ACLU board member said o foundation money, “How much s hand wash and how much is real, I don’t know. . . . but I’ll put up with it.” At the height of the women’s movement, Playboy’s money inspired debate. There was no consensus among feminists."

"(How do you relate to the women's movement?) LMS: I feel I've benefited by it just generally in the sense that anything that undermines the stereotypes perpetrated on all of us by white men is helpful. What it does is take some of the pressure off those of us who have never lived very close to the stereotypes. I've always been the way I was. Here at Laguna, a lot more is expected of women; women are expected to be strong, to manage the property. Children belong to women and to their families. Women do the plastering. It's a relief to have the stereotypes knocked down. It's just made it easier for me to do what I want to do."

"There’s hardly a woman writer who doesn’t receive some kind of support from the women’s movement. We’re very lucky to be living and writing now."

"That word identity has been hard for many women who live secular lives and maybe harder for religious women and also feminists. But the women's movement has made a big difference. I don't know who it hasn't helped in this world. It's given a lot of Jewish women courage to stay Jewish and fight."

"Feminist thought and practice were fundamentally altered when radical and white women allies began to rigorously challenge the notion of "gender" was the primary factor determining a woman's fate. ... Looking at the interlocking nature of gender, race, and class was the perspective that changed the direction of feminist thought."

"We resist hegemonic dominance of feminist thought by insisting that it is a theory in the making, that we must necessarily criticize, question, re-examine, and explore new possibilities."

"The ideology of "competitive, atomistic " has permeated feminist thought to such an extent that it undermines the potential radicalism of feminist struggle. The usurpation of feminism by bourgeois women to support their has been to a very grave extent justified by feminist theory as it has so far been conceived. (For example, the ideology of "common oppression.") Any movement to resist the of feminist struggle must begin by introducing a different feminist perspective-a new theory-one that is not informed by the ideology of liberal individualism. The exclusionary practices of women who dominate feminist discourse have made it practically impossible for new and varied theories to emerge."

"Much feminist theory emerges from privileged women who live at the center, whose perspectives on reality rarely include knowledge and awareness of the lives of women and men who live in the margin. As a consequence, feminist theory lacks wholeness, lacks the broad analysis that could encompass a variety of human experiences. Although feminist theorists are aware of the need to develop ideas and analysis that encompass a larger number of experiences, that serve to unify rather than to polarize, such theory is complex and slow in formation. At its most visionary, it will emerge from individuals who have knowledge of both margin and center."

"The new woman, in the sense of the best woman, the flower of all the womanhood of past ages, has come to stay — if civilization is to endure. The sufferings of the past have but strengthened her, maternity has deepened her, education is broadening her — and she now knows that she must perfect herself if she would perfect the race, and leave her imprint upon immortality, through her offspring or her works."

"I am still far from being the type of the positively new women who take their experience as with a relative lightness and, one could say, with an enviable superficiality, whose feelings and mental energies are directed upon all other things in life but sentimental love feelings."

"The finest achievement of the new woman has been personal liberty. This is the foundation of civilization; and as long as any one class is watched suspiciously, even fondly guarded, and protected, so long will that class not only be weak, and treacherous, individually, but parasitic, and a collective danger to the community. Who has not heard wives commended for wheedling their husbands out of money, or joked [about] because they are hopelessly extravagant? As long as caprice and scheming are considered virtues, as long as man is the only wage-earner, doling out sums of money, or scattering lavishly, so long will women be degraded, even if they are perfectly contented, and men are willing to labor to keep them in idleness!"

"Despite the admirable intentions of those who believe that patriarchy is solely a cultural invention, there is too much contrary evidence. Patriarchy is worldwide and history-wide, and its origins are detectable in the social lives of chimpanzees. It serves the reproductive purposes of the men who maintain the system. Patriarchy comes from biology in the sense that it emerges from men's temperaments, out of their evolutionary derived efforts to control women and at the same time have solidarity with fellow men in competition against outsiders. But evolutionary forces have surely shaped women, too, in minds as in bodies, in ways that both defy and contribute to the patriarchal system. If all women followed Lysistrata's injunctions and refused their husbands, they could indeed effect change. But they don't. Patriarchy has its ultimate origins in male violence, but it doesn't come from man alone, and it has its sources in the evolutionary interests of both sexes."

"Patriarchy requires that powerful women be discredited so that its own system will seem to be the only one that reasonable or intelligent people can subscribe to."

"Woman, compared to other creatures, is the , for she bears dominion over them. But compared unto man, she may not be called the image of God, for she bears not rule and lordship over man, but ought to obey him. The woman shall be subject to man as unto Christ. For woman, has not her example from the body and from the flesh, that so she shall be subject to man, as the flesh is unto the Spirit, because that the flesh in the weakness and mortality of this life lusts and strives against the Spirit, and therefore would not the Holy Ghost give example of subjection to the woman of any such thing."

"We have to work to find solidarity in each other’s stories, as differing as their inciting perspectives may be. The patriarchy sands out the edges of our rightful infuriation, making it harder to see in any light but our own. This blindness is part of what denies us community-forming solidarity and part of what has allowed widespread and harassment to continue for so long."

"Understanding the total impact of the patriarchy on the female experience is endlessly elusive. ... It is a constant process, perpetually blurred by the ebb and flow of so many epiphanies clouded by self-doubt."

"Patriarchy is based on three key ideas: that ‘male’ and ‘female’ are a natural, immutable and exhaustive binary; that all males should be masculine, and all females should be feminine; that masculinity is incompatible with and superior to femininity."

"Consider a birdcage. If you look very closely at just one wire in the cage, you cannot see the other wires. If your conception of what is before you is determined by this myopic focus, you could look at that one wire, up and down the length of it, and be unable to see why a bird would not just fly around the wire any time it wanted to go somewhere. Furthermore, even if, one day at a time, you myopically inspected each wire, you still could not see why a bird would have trouble going past the wires to get anywhere. There is no physical property of any one wire, nothing that the closest scrutiny could discover, that will reveal how a bird could be inhibited or harmed by it except in the most accidental way. It is only when you step back, stop looking at the wires one by one, microscopically, and take a macroscopic view of the whole cage, that you can see why the bird does not go anywhere; and then you will see it in a moment. It will require no great subtlety of mental powers. It is perfectly obvious that the bird is surrounded by a network of systematically related barriers, no one of which would be the least hindrance to its flight, but which, by their relations to each other, are as confining as the solid walls of a dungeon."

"Those of us in Jane, in the Women's Movement then and now, had not done, have yet to do, our homework, either that or we are far too trusting, or maybe we believe that the system is only in need of revision and that it will somehow at some time begin to include us (structurally), work for us. What we must understand is that the system of patriarchal imperialism is inimical to women: it always has been and it always will be. We live by the tolerance or privilege or oversight of the patriarchs. We didn't win at Suffrage. We didn't win at Roe v. Wade. There is no winning. A hundred years of hindsight has us asking how could the Suffragists have thought that getting the vote in a rigged, white, male, heterosexual system was a win. We understand that they should have not organized to become a part of such a system, but, instead, worked to take apart that system. Why do we not ask the same of ourselves? Decisions/laws hold only as long as they work for or do not work against the decision/law makers. The acts of "asking permission," of marching, of lobbying, and demonstrating acknowledge the very power imbalance women must change. We should all know by now that the rights of women are legally unacknowledged and structurally, fundamentally incompatible with patriarchy. We are treason and heresy: I think we should, embrace that, consider it kernel, foundation, nucleus, and core to being women."

"It is no wonder that abortion law does not reflect women's needs, rights, and thought: which laws do? We must notice that other patriarchal imperialist traditions such as rape, pornography, and the male beating up on women are patriarchal perks--rites as well as rights of patriarchy; these are the same rights/rites conquering forces often exert, then traditionalize, systematize. These "traditions," these "values" are so deeply incorporated into gender relations that, for instance, normative heterosexual behavior is virtually indistinguishable from some outcroppings of violence against women, like rape and pornography."

"The traditional European of the prereformation period lived and believed in the patriarchal principle which was one of authority based on love. Medieval man had not only a physical father, but also a Father in Heaven, a Holy Father in Rome, the Monarch (the Pater Patriae), the godfathers, and a "Father" in the person of his confessor. It was his physical father who had brought him into being, cooperating with the Divine Power of Creation. The physical father was truly regarded to be the auctor (in a similar, not identical sense, as God is creator mundi) and human beings looked upon themselves to be existing ex voluntate viri. Woman was merely in the position (physically as well as psychologically) to accede to man's will, to reject it or to influence man's free will through her power of attraction."

"If you cannot see that divinity includes male and female characteristics and at the same time transcends them, you have bad consequences. Rome and Cardinal O'Connor base the exclusion of women priests on the idea that God is the Father and Jesus is His Son, there were only male disciples, etc. They are defending a patriarchal Church with a patriarchal God. We must fight the patriarchal misunderstanding of God."

"If we take a survey of ages and of countries, we shall find the women, almost - without exception - at all times and in all places, adored and oppressed. Man, who has never neglected an opportunity of exerting his power, in paying homage to their beauty, has always availed himself of their weakness He has been at once their tyrant and their slave."

"When we wrote Ecofeminism we raised the issue of reductionist, mechanistic science and the attitude of mastery over and conquest of nature as an expression of capitalist patriarchy. Today the contest between an ecological and feminist world-view and a worldview shaped by capitalist patriarchy is more intense than ever. This contest is particularly intense in the area of food. GMOs embody the vision of capitalist patriarchy. They perpetuate the idea of ‘master molecules’and mechanistic reductionism long after the life sciences have gone beyond reductionism, and patents on life reflect the capitalist patriarchal illusion of creation. There is no science in viewing DNA as a ‘master molecule’ and genetic engineering as a game of Lego, in which genes are moved around without any impact on the organism or the environment. This is a new pseudo-science that has taken on the status of a religion.Science cannot justify patents on life and seed. Shuffling genes is not making life; living organisms make themselves. Patents on seed mean denying the contributions of millions of years of evolution and thousands of years of farmers’ breeding. One could say that a new religion, a new cosmology, a new creation myth is being put in place, where biotechnology corporations like Monsanto replace Creation as ‘creators’. GMO means ‘God move over’.Stewart Brand has actually said ‘We are as gods and we had better get used to it.’"

"Rights groups worldwide celebrate International Women’s Day (IWD)...as they commemorate women’s achievements and call for equality. But for an event championed by international nongovernmental organizations and major global corporations, it may surprise some that IWD was born out of the U.S. socialist movement in the early 20th century. In 1909 the Socialist Party of America organized a New York City march commemorating a garment workers’ strike the previous year. The party called it National Women’s Day, and women organized by the group demonstrated for better pay and working conditions as well as the right to vote... The Socialist Party continued to hold Women’s Day celebrations on the last Sunday of February for the next few years, and newspapers from the era mentioned International Women’s Day on Feb. 27, 1910 — when thousands of women organized by the socialist movement gathered at Carnegie Hall... European women, meanwhile, were championing similar ideals... IWD, consequently, was celebrated for the first time in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland on March 19, 1911. Women in these countries demanded the right to vote, to hold public office and the right to work..."

"Equal rights are advanced when girls can avoid child marriage and enjoy equal access to education, both men and women can plan their families, and pregnant women no longer fear losing their jobs."

"On March 6, 1979, Khomeini declared that women working in government offices must wear the veil; “naked women” could not work in Islamic ministries. Two days later, for International Women’s Day, tens of thousands of women spontaneously came out and marched on the streets of Tehran chanting “In the dawn of freedom, there is an absence of freedom.” Some women were bareheaded, others veiled, including some in full chador, the all-enveloping black cloak that was worn only by the most pious and conservative. There were men, too, including some who formed a protective cordon around the women as they came under attack. Feminists from around the world flocked to the protests, including the American activist Kate Millett, the author of Sexual Politics. Soon as many as a hundred thousand women were on the streets. For six days, they protested the assault on their personal freedom. Rarely—if ever—had women organized so quickly and spontaneously after a revolution. But Iranian women in Iran had gained many rights under the shah, including the right to vote, to run for office (in 1963), and to wear whatever they wanted. In an effort at modernization, the shah’s father (the first Pahlavi to rule) had briefly tried to ban the veil altogether in 1935, but that forced conservative families to keep their daughters at home for modesty. The move was quickly reversed. What Iranian women wanted was the choice: to veil or not to veil."

"Women in Egypt and Tunisia and other nations have just as much right as the men to remake their governments, to make them responsive, accountable, transparent. We will certainly be watching and the world will watch."

"So that our daughters will know their bodies are their own. So our sons embody gentle strength. So they can dismiss both labels #WhyIMarch"

"No organisation should be allowed to question or ridicule Islamic values, norms of society, hijab or the modesty of Muslim women at the Aurat March or any other event held in connection with International Women’s Day as these acts hurt the sentiments of Muslims in the country.…"

"Women of the world want and deserve an equal future free from stigma, stereotypes and violence; a future that’s sustainable, peaceful, with equal rights and opportunities for all. To get us there, the world needs women at every table where decisions are being made. This year, the theme for International Women’s Day (8 March), “Women in leadership: Achieving an equal future in a COVID-19 world,” celebrates the tremendous efforts by women and girls around the world in shaping a more equal future and recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic and highlights the gaps that remain. Women’s full and effective participation and leadership in of all areas of life drives progress for everyone. Yet, women are still underrepresented in public life and decision-making, as revealed in the UN Secretary-General’s recent report. Women are Heads of State or Government in 22 countries, and only 24.9 per cent of national parliamentarians are women. At the current rate of progress, gender equality among Heads of Government will take another 130 years."

"Russian women began celebrating IWD in 1913... After the Russian Revolution, the day was declared a holiday in the Soviet Union. From there, it was primarily celebrated in communist countries such as China. On the heels of the U.S. civil rights movement.. and as leaders such as Gloria Steinem fought sex discrimination in the 1960s and ’70s, the United Nations declared 1975 as International Women’s Year. In 1977 the U.N. officially marked IWD by inviting member countries to celebrate women’s rights and world peace on March 8. Today, IWD has corporate sponsors... But as the website points out, millennial women have lived in a time in which there are so many advances for women that they may think the battles fought by their second-wave feminist sisters have already been won. “The unfortunate fact,” it reads, “is that women are still not paid equally to that of their male counterparts, women still are not present in equal numbers in business or politics, and globally women's education, health and the violence against them is worse than that of men.”"

"Feminism is a rebellion against the ruthless tyranny of the male, an attempt to dethrone his autocratic rule and revert to a more natural sexual equality."

"Who was responsible for this fear of the feminine that could only be described as acute collective paranoia? We could say: Of course, men were responsible. But then why in many ancient pre-Christian civilizations such as the Sumerian, Egyptian, and Celtic were women respected and the feminine principle not feared but revered? What is it that suddenly made men feel threatened by the female? The evolving ego in them. It knew it could gain full control of our planet only through the male form, and to do so, it had to render the female powerless... We now have a situation in which the suppression of the feminine has become internalized, even in most women. The sacred feminine, because it is suppressed, is felt by many women as emotional pain. In fact, it has become part of their painbody, together with the accumulated pain suffered by women over millennia through childbirth, rape, slavery, torture and violent death.... But things are changing rapidly now. With many people becoming more conscious, the ego is losing its hold on the human mind. Because the ego was never as deeply rooted in woman, it is losing its hold on women more quickly than on men."

"Nobody knows the exact figure because records were not kept, but it seems certain that during a three hundred year period between three and five million women were tortured and killed by the Holy Inquisition an institution founded by the Roman Catholic Church to suppress heresy. This sure ranks together with the Holocaust as one of the darkest chapters in human history. It was enough for a woman to show a love for animals, walk alone in the fields or woods, or gather medicinal plants to be branded a witch, then tortured and burned at the stake. The sacred feminine was declared demonic, and an entire dimension largely disappeared from human experience. Other cultures and religions, such as Judaism, Islam, and even Buddhism, also suppressed the female dimension, although in a less violent way. Women's status was reduced to being child bearers and men's property. Males who denied the feminine even within themselves were now running the world, a world that was totally out of balance. The rest is history or rather a case history of insanity."

"If the balance between male and female energies had not been destroyed on our planet, the ego's growth would have been greatly curtailed. We would not have declared war on nature, and we would not be so completely alienated from our Being... The suppression of the feminine principle especially over the past two thousand years has enabled the ego to gain absolute supremacy in the collective human psyche. Although women have egos, of course, the ego can take root and grow more easily in the male form than in the female. This is because women are less mind identified than men. They are more in touch with the inner body and the intelligence of the organism where the intuitive faculties originate. The female form is less rigidly encapsulated than the male, has greater openness and sensitivity toward other lifeforms, and is more attuned to the natural world."

"Well, children, when there is so much racket there be must something out of kilter. I think that 'twixt the Negroes of the South and the women of the North, all talking about rights, the white men will be in a fix pretty soon. But what's all this here talking about?"

"Once men realize that they are also deprived — not as much as women, just as whites are not as deprived as blacks — but there is a full circle of human qualities we all have a right to. And they're confined to the "masculine" ones, which are seventy percent of all of them, and we're confined to the "feminine" ones, which are thirty percent. We're missing more, but they're still missing a lot. If a man fights to be his whole self, to be creative, to express emotions men are not supposed to express, do jobs men are not supposed to do, take care of his own children — all of these things are part of the feminist movement."

"My spirituality has always been linked to my feminism. Feminism is about challenging unequal power structures."

"In the criminal code we find no feminine pronouns, as "He," "His," "Him," we are arrested, tried and hung, but singularly enough, we are denied the highest privileges of citizens, because the pronouns "She," "Hers" and "Her," are not found in the constitutions. It is a pertinent question, if women can pay the penalties of their crimes as "He," why may they not enjoy the privileges of citizens as "He"?"

"Accepting the view that man was prior in the creation, some Scriptural writers say that as the woman was of the man, therefore, her position should be one of subjection. Grant it, then as the historical fact is reversed in our day, and the man is now of the woman, shall his place be one of subjection?"

"The only points in which I differ from all ecclesiastical teaching is that I do not believe that any man ever saw or talked with God, I do not believe that God inspired the Mosaic code, or told the historians what they say he did about woman, for all the religions on the face of the earth degrade her, and so long as woman accepts the position that they assign her, her emancipation is impossible."

"Men think that self-sacrifice is the most charming of all the cardinal virtues for women, and in order to keep it in healthy working order, they make opportunities for its illustration as often as possible. I would fain teach women that self-development is a higher duty than self-sacrifice."

"The darkest page in history is the persecutions of woman."

"To deny political equality is to rob the ostracised of all self-respect; of credit in the market place; of recompense in the world of work; of a voice among those who make and administer the law; a choice in the jury before whom they are tried, and in the judge who decides their punishment."

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men and women are created equal."

"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."

"Women have crucified the Mary Wollstonecrafts, the Fanny Wrights, and the George Sands of all ages. Men mock us with the fact and say we are ever cruel to each other... If this present woman must be crucified, let men drive the spikes."

"Our "pathway" is straight to the ballot box, with no variableness nor shadow of turning...We demand in the Reconstruction suffrage for all the citizens of the Republic. I would not talk of Negroes or women, but of citizens."

"Women'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. Come what will, my whole soul rejoices in the truth that I have uttered."