Feminists

"We know the role of taxes, we also know that developed countries were able to achieve that status as a result of the taxes paid by their citizens... But, in taxation policy, you also consider the taxpayers' financial means"

"Women should be confident because they are capable, and the country needs them. They should do all they can such as study University, show that they can also manage to do things and are also talented."

"It is sad to see that people are more scared of police than they are of Covid-19, which kills! It seems like we have abandoned the government to fight this battle alone,"

"“This vice is like a pest. It’s never that obvious and by the time you see it, so much has been damaged. We need to fight corruption at all levels, without leaving any type behind. We may assume that we have gotten somewhere when there are some aspects that are blocking our country from progressing,"

"I love the American dream. I feel this is the place I was supposed to be in. It's beautiful. I love it."

"For too long, it was taken for granted that we would survive because we were Dutch; because Holland would take care of us. In our ignorant innocence or innocent ignorance we overlooked the fact that they were, and historically are, the rulers and we the ruled ones, and that power never renders itself; it has to be conquered, if not by sword then by the mind. And we neglected the mind. We have not studied our rulers well enough, otherwise we would have known that we were programmed to think that we are not programmed; that if we looked the other way long enough and denied the existence of colonialism it would automatically disappear. We forgot that we were trained not to see colonialism as colonialism."

"The imbalances of our political, social, cultural, spiritual condition must be turned into revolutionary action to overthrow this corrupt system of dutch colonial exploitation."

""...The important point about the terrorists who heinously killed or 3 others ...is not that they were Chechen or Tunisian or newly arrived refugees but that they were Islamists. Full stop. Recognising their allegiance to the Islamic far-Right helps us target the political movement. At the same time, we must continue to defend , the right to freedom of conscience and expression, equality of all citizens, and uncompromisingly oppose racism."

"In Russian: Бой неравный был. В четырех стенах Н икого друзей. Только смертный страх. Только муж - палач. Только в сердце нож. Только цвет надежд, превращенный в прах... Нет, не надо слез! Траур ни к чему. Распознать врага у себя в дому, П родолжать борьбу, сестры, надо вам, Гибель Турсуной учит вас тому."

"....What this shows is that ’s cartoons are an excuse for acts of both random and targeted assassinations, executions and terrorism. What some don’t see or choose not to see is that the excuse is not the cause of terrorism. The excuse is there to shift blame on the and to justify the unjustifiable...."

"...More than an attack on French or more accurately universal values, Islamist terrorist attacks are integral to a defence of their values – hate, violence, supremacy, misogyny, homophobia, anti-Semitism, totalitarianism… Values that are at odds with 21st century humanity, including a large section of the believing population – hence their need to impose their project with brute force. ..."

"Canadian Prime Minister who says that “freedom of expression is not without limits.” Rather the stance to take – a simple one really – is that the aggression and provocation, the crux of the problem, is not free expression but murder. ...""

"The Islamist narrative has become mainstream, which is why a number of English-speaking media frame the terrorist attacks as the Islamists do. Watching journalists regurgitate Islamist propaganda by explaining how they were “provoked” to kill – as if the real provocation isn’t murder – ... They have already bought the propaganda hook, line and sinker. Facts and evidence are irrelevant to them....According to Islamist (and also ironically other far-Right) propaganda, regurgitated by lazy and cowardly “journalism,” there are no distinctions between Islam, Islamism and Muslims. ... Is there no difference between Christianity, the Christian-Right and Christians? Do all Christians think alike? ... Replace these with Islam, Islamism and Muslims, though, and suddenly these “journalists” become incapable of critical thought. ..."

"... On the issue of Laicite, I should just add that Britain is not a secular state by any means given its established Church of England, bishops in the and prayers in parliament. It is a secular society despite the established church but this link between the state and church goes a long way to explain why British “secularism” is all about equality of religions and not separation between church and state. This is also the reason why we cannot get anywhere in our challenge of Sharia courts here in the UK. It is because of the implications for the Church and why successive British governments continue to promote a policy of religious communalism at the expense of individual rights and equality. Anything to save the Church’s position in society. ..."

"... That some Muslims are offended by is irrelevant in my opinion. We are all offended at one point or another. I am offended by the Quran and by religions’ views on women, LGBT and apostates but my offence does not give me a license to ban Islam and religion or decapitate, threaten and murder. .... Framing it as Muslim offence is part of the problem and normalises the Islamist narrative. ... Offence is not a defence, especially for murder. ..."

"Coming from the Iranian Left, I find it infuriating that some in the European Left can only envision the Islamist far-Right as a vehicle for “resistance.” Do they equally consider those joining neo-Nazi groups in Europe as a justifiable response to unemployment, disenfranchisement or disillusionment? Do they think, progressive organising in trade unions and labour organisations and feminist or secular movements are not for us minorities? It’s paternalistic and racist to think that we can only be fascists when faced with bigotry, social inequality or imperialism. How racist to assume that when it comes to us – sheer violence, terror and homicide are the only forms of “protest.”...It is obscene how this section of the Left has forsaken its anti-clerical and revolutionary traditions to defend Islamism and reaction at the expense of class politics and progressive secular political and social movements. ...""

"However, you cannot stop racism by banning blasphemy. We have to fight blasphemy laws and racism. We have to fight the far-Right, including the Islamists. We have to defend and atheism. Most importantly, we have to defend Laicite everywhere. Our rights and lives depend on it."

"... Obviously, targeting is not the same as targeting . Having said that, the right to criticise and mock Islam and the sacred is an important right. If the right to religion is an aspect of , so is the right to be free from religion and to doubt and question and even mock. This criticism is particularly crucial for those of us who are Islam’s non-believers....Islam is a belief like any other and has to be open to criticism ...""

"That quote, "The only disability in life is a bad attitude," the reason that that's bullshit is because it's just not true, because of the social model of disability. No amount of smiling at a flight of stairs has ever made it turn into a ramp. Never."

"I want to live in a world where we don't have such low expectations of disabled people that we are congratulated for getting out of bed and remembering our own names in the morning. I want to live in a world where we value genuine achievement for disabled people."

"I learn from other disabled people all the time. I'm learning not that I am luckier than them, though. I am learning that it's a genius idea to use a pair of barbecue tongs to pick up things that you dropped. I'm learning that nifty trick where you can charge your mobile phone battery from your chair battery. Genius. We are learning from each others' strength and endurance, not against our bodies and our diagnoses, but against a world that exceptionalizes and objectifies us."

"We are more disabled by the society that we live in than by our bodies and our diagnoses."

"These images, there are lots of them out there, they are what we call inspiration porn. And I use the term porn deliberately, because they objectify one group of people for the benefit of another group of people. So in this case, we're objectifying disabled people for the benefit of nondisabled people. The purpose of these images is to inspire you, to motivate you, so that we can look at them and think, "Well, however bad my life is, it could be worse. I could be that person.”"

"Ladies and gentlemen, I’m afraid I’m going to disappoint you dramatically. I am not here to inspire you. I am here to tell you that we have been lied to about disability. Yeah, we’ve been sold the lie that disability is a Bad Thing, capital B, capital T. It’s a bad thing, and to live with a disability makes you exceptional. It’s not a bad thing, and it doesn’t make you exceptional."

"In Unveiled, Yasmine Mohammed... putting the lie to the dangerous notion that criticizing the doctrine of Islam is a form of bigotry."

"....Many apologists for Islam have claimed “Muslims are the true feminists” or “Islam is a religion of peace,” and it is certainly possible to have Muslims who are feminists, and the vast majority of Muslims are peaceful people. Many verses in the Quran and Hadith support women and peace. But Yasmine’s story reveals that anyone pushing those narratives without acknowledging that much of Islamic doctrine does the opposite is either ignorant or dishonest...."

""...“What I was not prepared for was the tsunami of just hate and pushback and disdain that would come from people I thought were my people: people that believed in enlightenment values, Western values, and liberal values...”"

"....Maybe they should read the whole Quran as well. It would be impossible for anyone with the slightest bit of empathy to read the Quran and—at the end of it—say that: “Islam is a religion of peace.” But people are generally good, and, if Muslims sat down with the Quran, translated it into their own language and read it, they would be horrified. They would not want to identify with whatever religion teaches these kinds of atrocious things. But most of them don’t even know what that book says. ..."

"...It will be difficult for Western women who wore hijab on Hijab Day, at the Women’s March,...not feel shame....how you’ve betrayed women, We all deserve freedom...not just you....STOP supporting our subjugation #FreeFromHijab"

""...No Hijab Day is a day to support brave women across the globe who want to be free from the hijab. Women who want to decide for themselves what to wear or what not to wear on their heads. Women who fight against either misogynist governments that will imprison them for removing their hijab or against abusive families and communities that will ostracize, abuse and even kill them."

"“...celebrate the women who have defied socialcensure and the state to remove the hijab...""

""....I grew up in a world where feminism was all around me like a beacon of hope cutting through the opposing ideas I was being taught at home...."

"As our colonial ancestors felt that a decent regard for the opinions of mankind should impel those in a state of rebellion to declare their reasons, so the suffragettes have repeatedly endeavored to set before the world the grievances for which they are suffering."

"I shall put the case somewhat from the standpoint of the militant suffragettes themselves, trying to give some idea of the philosophy and ethical principles underlying the militant propaganda and, above all, with the hope of making clear to American readers some of the radical differences between English and American conditions."

"The militants hold that they are at war with the British government, basing their right to rebel on the axioms that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, and that resistance to tyrants is obedience to God."

"It is quite enough to pay taxes when you are not represented, let alone pay a fine if you object to this arrangement."

"At the request of the American Academy of Political and Social Science she made a survey of the English Suffrage movement. She was Founder and President of the Pennsylvania Limited Suffrage Society and was active with the National Woman’s Party. At its Draftee Parade on September 4, 1917, she was arrested at the age of 44 and sentenced to 60 days at the Occoquan Workhouse. On August 6, 1918, she was again arrested at the Lafayette statue in D.C. At the trial on August, 15, 1918, for “holding a meeting on public grounds” the arrestees refused to participate in their trial."

"The divorce laws are unequal, practically encouraging immorality on the part of the husband, as it is not a ground for securing a divorce from him unless coupled with cruelty or desertion."

"That the negro mother had no control of her child seemed to Abolitionists a potent argument for emancipation. Today the English woman, if married, is not the legal parent of her child. The father is the parent and has the right to prescribe the child's education, religious training and medical attendance; he may take it away from the mother and may by will appoint a guardian without her consent. The position of a married woman is in many ways wretched: though her husband is supposed to support her, there is no legal machinery by which a woman can enforce this law... a man may disinherit his wife and leave her penniless with destitute children whom the law compels her to support."

"In England the militant movement is like a slave insurrection; it presents characteristics of the uprising of a servile class; the bitterness of those who have been treated unjustly, the determination of the down-trodden to rise and at all hazards to themselves to conquer respect and consideration for their sex; and the arming of the one part of the community — women — against the other part. If the word "slave," applied to contemporary English women seems an exaggeration, let me say that our colonial ancestors considered taxation without representation tyranny."

"In the United States, though the great majority of women are still disfranchised and many of the unjust laws inherited from England continue to disfigure our statute books, the suffragists are absolutely peaceful. We owe this, not to American women, but to American men. In every country it is the men who should be held chiefly responsible for the tone and conduct of the suffrage movement, as the government is in their hands, authority and power are theirs, and they are able to make the task of the feminist comparatively easy and pleasant."

"The grounds for revolt may be classified, roughly, as follows: The miserable status of English women; the impossibility of obtaining attention for, much less redress of, their grievances by constitutional methods; the historic precedents established by the use of force by the British people whenever the progress of freedom has been blocked by the British government; the insincerity and brutality shown by the present Liberal government in dealing with the women's agitation as compared with the leniency shown to male political offenders both past and present; the determination of the newspapers to stifle the movement by persistently excluding suffrage news and propaganda from their columns."

"We can decide where to go but we’re not really free…I like having this idea of multiple selves and multiple circumstances. Because that’s what we are."

"We are always haunted by the question of not choosing the other path, the road not taken…Travelling is always about making choices, but at the same time your choices are made for you, structured by many things: nationality, class, gender, what we can access and what not. We’re walking on a map that already exists and our location on the map has been decided."

"…My fiction is also influenced by women intellectuals such as Melani Budianta and Julia Suryakusuma. I love the works of male writers such as Asrul Sani, Budi Darma’s Orang-orang Bloomington (The People of Bloomington), and Moetinggo Boesje’s play Malam Jahanam (The Night of the Accursed), but my priority now is to learn more about writings by women. Just like in many Western countries, the practice of defining literature has often excluded or ignored women’s writings and their contexts."

"…I thought it was important to resist. That’s why I wanted to tell stories about bad women. Feminism, though, was much less appealing than in today's conservative Indonesia. Even progressive male thinkers tend to see feminism in Indonesia as irrelevant, disruptive, or merely a copycat of Western feminism."

"In order to fit into certain ideals, you need to mutilate yourself."

"Jewish women in second-wave feminism helped to provide the theoretical underpinnings and models for radical action that were seized on and imitated throughout the United States and abroad. Their articles and books became classics of the movement and led the way into new arenas of cultural and political understanding in academe, politics, and grassroots organizing. Even a partial honor roll of Jewish women's liberation pioneers must include such figures as Shulamith Firestone, Ellen Willis, Robin Morgan, Alix Kates Shulman, Naomi Weisstein, Heather Booth, Susan Brownmiller, Marilyn Webb, Meredith Tax, Andrea Dworkin, Linda Gordon, Ellen DuBois, Ann Snitow, Marge Piercy, Letty Cottin Pogrebin, and Vivian Gornick. Despite historians' acknowledgment of the salience of Jewish women in earlier social movements, their prominence within radical feminism failed to attract much attention."

"Cultural products which present women who do not want to be household slaves or universal mothers or sex objects as bitches or sexual failures objectively aid male supremacy."

"Cultural products that present people who have no money or power as innately stupid or depraved, and thus unworthy of money or power, are in the interests of the ruling class and the power structure as it stands."