Women Activists From The United States

"It is not necessary to believe that a political consensus to focus on the lives of the most disadvantaged will happen tomorrow in order to recenter discrimination discourse at the intersection. It is enough, for now, that such an effort would encourage us to look beneath the prevailing conceptions of discrimination and to challenge the complacency that accompanies belief in the effectiveness of this framework. By so doing, we may develop language which is critical of the dominant view and which provides some basis for unifying activity. The goal of this activity should be to facilitate the inclusion of marginalized groups for whom it can be said: “When they enter, we all enter.”"

"Unable to grasp the importance of Black women’s intersectional experiences, not only courts, but feminist and civil rights thinkers as well have treated Black women in ways that deny both the unique compoundedness of their situation and the centrality of their experiences to the larger classes of women and Blacks. Black women are regarded either as too much like women or Blacks and the compounded nature of their experience is absorbed into the collective experiences of either group or as too different, in which case Black women’s Blackness or femaleness sometimes has placed their needs and perspectives at the margin of the feminist and Black liberationist agendas. While it could be argued that this failure represents an absence of political will to include Black women, I believe that it reflects an uncritical and disturbing acceptance of dominant ways of thinking about discrimination. Consider first the definition of discrimination that seems to be operative in antidiscrimination law: Discrimination which is wrongful proceeds from the identification of a specific class or category; either a discriminator intentionally identifies this category, or a process is adopted which somehow disadvantages all members of this category."

"Critical legal studies scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the term "intersectionality" in 1989 to describe how different power structures interact in the lives of minorities, especially black women, causing "compound and overlapping" discrimination. For Crenshaw, a key idea was that each group needed to go beyond critique to consistently explain its own experiences and create its own theories, "so it's incorporated within feminism and within anti-racism." The term immediately gained a toehold in the field of feminist and critical studies, but for the most part, Jewish women's position was excluded from consideration in relation to the interlocking issues of race, class, gender, and sexuality that framed this discourse."

"The refusal to allow a multiply-disadvantaged class to represent others who may be singularly-disadvantaged defeats efforts to restructure the distribution of opportunity and limits remedial relief to minor adjustments within an established hierarchy. Consequently, “bottom-up” approaches, those which combine all discriminatees in order to challenge an entire employment system, are foreclosed by the limited view of the wrong and the narrow scope of the available remedy. If such “bottom-up” intersectional representation were routinely permitted, employees might accept the possibility that there is more to gain by collectively challenging the hierarchy rather than by each discriminatee individually seeking to protect her source of privilege within the hierarchy. But as long as doctrine proceeds from the premise that employment systems need only minor adjustments, opportunities for advancement by disadvantaged employees will be limited. Relatively privileged employ- ees probably are better off guarding their advantage while jockeying against others to gain more. As a result, Black women — the class of employees which, because of its intersectionality, is best able to challenge all forms of discrimination — are essentially isolated and often required to fend for themselves."

"As Kimberlé Crenshaw has emphasized, women need to "tell their stories, to document, explain, and theorize about the interlocking themes, meanings, and oppressions of their lives, restoring what has been invisible and erased so as to articulate "what difference the difference makes.""

"Black women can experience discrimination in any number of ways and that the contradiction arises from our assumptions that their claims of exclusion must be unidirectional. ... I am suggesting that Black women can experience discrimination in ways that are both similar to and different from those experienced by white women and Black men. Black women sometimes experience discrimination in ways similar to white women’s experiences; sometimes they share very similar experiences with Black men. Yet often they experience double-discrimination — the combined effects of practices which discriminate on the basis of race, and on the basis of sex. And sometimes, they experience discrimination as Black women — not the sum of race and sex discrimination, but as Black women. Black women’s experiences are much broader than the general categories that discrimination discourse provides. Yet the continued insistence that Black women’s demands and needs be filtered."

"Trump is an unreflective beneficiary of every sort of white privilege on offer, from his inherited fortune to his mass-media celebrity to his ability to lie with utter impunity about his career, his finances, and his easily documented record of public statements. If Barack Obama had committed but one of the transgressions Trump reveled in during his 2016 presidential run—deriding John McCain's war record, to take a comparatively minor instance—he would have suffered a torrent of righteous white moralizing that would have been unprecedented even in a country renowned for its righteous white moralizing. And if he'd been caught on tape bragging about a celebrity-enabled history of sexual assault—well, suffice it to say that it would have been a high-tech lynching on a scale that Clarence Thomas could scarcely begin to imagine."

"After examining the doctrinal manifestations of this single-axis framework, I will discuss how it contributes to the of in feminist theory and in politics. I argue that Black women are sometimes excluded from feminist theory and antiracist policy discourse because both are predicated on a discrete set of experiences that often does not accurately reflect the interaction of race and gender. These problems of exclusion cannot be solved simply by including Black women within an already established analytical structure. Because the intersectional experience is greater than the sum of racism and sexism, any analysis that does not take intersectionality into account cannot sufficiently address the particular manner in which Black women are subordinated. Thus, for feminist theory and antiracist policy discourse to embrace the experiences and concerns of Black women, the entire framework that has been used as a basis for translating “women’s experience” or “the Black experience” into concrete policy demands must be rethought and recast."

"At 13, I decided to give up all meat and fish. My parents were even more surprised and cautiously supportive – provided I learned how to get enough protein. The first vegetarian cookbook I ever bought to learn more about how to be a healthy vegetarian was "Linda McCartney’s Home Cooking." In a very pragmatic way, Linda McCartney helped me meet my mother’s conditions for being a vegetarian, to get enough protein and eat a well-balanced diet and, in the process, helped both my mom and me feel good about the choice I had made."

"I’ve cut way back on animal products (especially dairy), and I try to only eat organic. Because of Alicia Silverstone], I’m way more conscious of what I put in my mouth and also about how my dollar is spent. Her book The Kind Diet was a real eye-opener for me. … [In the film Vamps] Alicia and I play vampires who abstain from human blood. So we were very kind in that we weren’t killing people and drinking their blood! … All the people in my life joke that I’m vampire in real life. Not because I drink blood or anything but because I prefer to stay indoors with the blinds closed. I’m not really a SUN person. I come out of my coffin (bedroom) when the sun goes down."

"I'm trying to reproduce healthily in a vegetarian way every kind of flesh there is — bacon, smoked salmon, roast meat. We're working on it. A lot of vegetarians complain that my book [Linda McCartney's Home Cooking] is meat-oriented and some of the products look like meat. For me, though, it's a matter of not just preaching — I hate to do it and it doesn't work — but helping to make the alternatives more attractive to more people. Change the eating habits and maybe you change the thinking habits. … I'm convinced that part of the reason the world is so sick is that so many people eat flesh. What are you doing but eating a slab of fear? … Look how long it took to abolish slavery. There was a time when much of the "civilized" world thought it was acceptable. And then they saw that it was wrong. I think the same thing will happen with eating animals. I have faith that the day will come when the world looks back and says, "How could we have done that?""

"I think it's something that people don't think about. It's hot outside—your car is like a fishbowl. So the light comes in, and it gets trapped, and it gets really hot in there really quickly. If you see a dog in a hot car, and you think that he's in danger or that he's been there for a while, it's good to speak up... go into whatever businesses it's parked outside of, and just raise awareness about it."

"People are a bit blind. They don’t see life. Being a photographer I see life, every inch of it. I’m obsessed with nature and animals and the earth; I find concrete things that distract me. Most people are the opposite… they find life boring, squirrels or sparrows boring, whereas I find them fascinating. It has to do with the way we live. It probably started with religion which leads some people astray. To fight over whose god is better has nothing to do with love or spirituality. Perhaps it’s guilt. We are suppressed and spend our time trying to figure out who we are. The most shocking thing I’ve learned concerns abuse, child abuse, animal abuse, abuse to every living creature. There is a world of little Hitlers out there. Slaughterhouses, vivisection and experimenting on animals for no reason is sick. Luckily younger people are becoming more aware."

"You don’t have to kill an animal because you want to be hot and fly. It’s not the 16th century anymore. We’ve got central heating for God’s sake. And you can get a fake fur coat. I have one. It’s fabulous."

"Dogs, to me, are like children. They are the closest thing to God. They are so pure in their love, and all they do is aim to please."

"I don’t think a living being should suffer for the sake of fashion, period. End of story. When I realized what went into—not just, we’re not just even talking about a full-length fur coat, I’m talking about just the fur on your gloves or on your jacket or even—what goes into making that little piece of fur ripped my heart out!! And as humans, we have control. What if someone said, ‘Black skin is the new fur’?"

"As human beings, we have the power to speak up for animals. They don’t speak our language, so I feel like it’s up to us to help them and give them a voice. Animals have feelings. They have souls. They have emotions. The way they’re killed for fur is very inhumane. … They’re electrocuted, beaten, drowned, skinned alive. Once you know that, how could you think wearing fur is cool? It’s not."

"Living in LA, there's so many vegan options for everything. And literally, your taste buds start to adjust. These days, it's like, "I'm craving cashew cheese!" … Potatoes are definitely comfort food. We always go to Crossroads, which is a vegan place in LA, they have chicken and waffles and things like that but it's all vegan. When I'm looking to fill up, and just feel full, that and some type of berry smoothie hits the spot."

"What do animal rights advocates want? For most avowed rightists, that's easy: The complete liberation of animals from human exploitation as quickly as possible. Yet while we work diligently to achieve such a status for animals over the long term, we also have a duty to respect the "rights" of those individuals who are currently suffering to a life less miserable. To dismiss opportunities to ameliorate their pain and distress is to treat those animals as mere abstractions rather than as sentient beings inherently worthy of consideration now—a position, ironically, often held by the very exploitive institutions we seek to overturn."

"I have been a passionate animal activist for many years now. It's something I believe in and I feel strongly that people with a modicum of success should try and bring a voice to help bring more awareness to causes they believe in, and animals have no voice! So it's vitally important that we raise awareness for them. … I think most people love animals and if there was more awareness and less ignorance about what goes into making a fur coat, for example, people wouldn't even consider buying it."

"One of the reasons I became so involved in activism for primate conservation was not just from the books and movie’s I saw, but from looking into the eyes of a chimpanzee in a zoo. I’ll never forget it... it changed my life."

"The world has so much suffering in it already—choosing to be vegetarian is one thing you can do to reduce the suffering on a daily basis."

"I believe we should extend our care and concern to all living creatures with whom we share this planet. ... [Animals] give me a window into a world that is different from our own, but every bit as meaningful. ... I can’t imagine what life would be like without animals. They bring me happiness and a sense of calm and peace."

"When people talk about reincarnation, I always feel that if there is such a thing, this is definitely my first time, because I'm always amazed. I'm both amazed at how horrifically we can treat each other and all other living things, and also amazed at the wonder and the beauty. I'm like: 'Oh my God, look at that bird!' or 'Look at that flower!' literally every single day. I can't get over how people are putting so much energy and so many resources into going to Mars when everything we could ever dream of is on this planet, if we just take care of it. What do they have on Mars? They don't even have oxygen up there!"

"[At age 11] I noticed this truck full of calves and bonded with one in particular, who kept kissing me. After about an hour the truck driver came out of the restaurant. I asked him what the calf's name was, and he said, "Veal, tomorrow morning by 7 o'clock." That was it: I could no longer disassociate the creature from what was on my plate."

"That little, small voice in your mind and in your heart that makes you curious about being vegan is something you should listen to, because that’s the sound of your conscience making you be compassionate."

"I think my experience as an adoptee who was given beautiful, loving parents, makes me sympathetic to the plight of the voiceless and those who are disregarded or tossed away or thought to not have value in a society. I feel like no one is expendable because it’s convenient. So many animals out there without homes have so much love to give, and I want to do all I can to get them in forever homes so they can give that love. … Fostering a little life is so humbling and sacred. It reminds you we’re all here to help each other and that you’re not the central character in the story of life. You’re a supporting role and your hands are meant to help get someone or something where they should be. Helping and loving an animal is the greatest gift you can give yourself. Every time you save them, you save yourself a little bit, too."

"It was my sophomore year at Yale, going through the food line for dinner, and I wanted a chicken breast, but the way they put it on my plate – all of a sudden it reminded me of my mom’s dog – and at that moment I was instantly on the outside of the food chain. I just couldn’t be a part of it. It was very personal to me in an instant, all because of a big breast of chicken that was oddly plated and slightly pink and I couldn’t do it. At first all I could think to eat was peanut butter and bread, so I put on a bunch of weight, but over the years it’s gotten a lot easier because people are much hipper to the fact that a plant based lifestyle is healthier for us. So it’s gotten so easy and so delicious to be vegan."

"I’ve been vegan since 1988, and over that time, my relationship with cooking has ebbed and flowed. I am very happy to eat very simply; I love to be able to taste the incredible produce I find. I enjoy making simple harmonies from whatever is seasonal. When I have people over though, I love exploring spices. Just because a meal is plant-based doesn’t mean it can’t be a flavor power-house."

"I had seen … the mistreatment and abuse of these elephants … and I was brought to tears. When you look at something like the circus and everyone's laughing and there's color and there's music and everything seems so great, but when you go right behind that door and they're in these crates all day long and then they're getting shocked and beat just so they can get up and dance around on a ball — it was just so sickening. … Stop going to the circus, don’t buy real fur, don’t buy a dog, go rescue a dog. You can’t keep supporting people who are doing this to helpless animals, at all."

"As a proud person of Chinese descent, it broke my heart to learn just how terribly animals suffer and die on Chinese fur farms and that there are no penalties for this abuse. … When you think about even that little tiny trim of fur on your gloves or on your collar, that is still coming from an animal that had to endure so much pain just for you. There’s nothing good about pretending like you don’t know."

"Because I love all animals so much, people, I feel like they should realize they don’t have to cut into something to learn about it. … If you feel weird about dissecting something, say “no.” I would totally say, “I'm not cutting into this animal.” I would never do that… You’ll learn so much more off of the computer. If you have the other option, why not take it? You should ask your teacher for other human alternatives."

"That is something I'm very passionate about. I love animals so much. To think that any animal would be trapped — it makes me so sad. It's like living in your bedroom for your entire life and never being able to go outside. … You should always speak up. That's what I'd like to teach my fans — to be real and speak up for things you're passionate about."

"[As a vegetarian] I feel better, I have more energy on and off the set, and I have the satisfaction of knowing that I’m doing something to help stop animal suffering."

"The leading cause of carbon emissions in the world is animal agriculture and no one is talking about it. This is the real issue that is driving climate change. … As a vegan I save 1,100 gallons of water a day. … If we are talking about a sustainability message, you cannot leave out the animal message – absolutely impossible. … We are looking at a world that is facing ultimate destruction if we don’t make better, smarter choices, and that starts with you. Every dollar you spend goes to feed a corporation that is either responsible or not responsible. … There are three things I want to make movies about: environmental problems, animals and human rights. Those are the three things I look out for all the time."

"(Whose writing today most inspires you?) Rebecca Solnit is a clarion voice of reason."

"I think of voting as a chess move, not a valentine."

"L.A. Kauffman: I am curious to hear what things are making you most hopeful right now, what things in the landscape you are really fixing on as signs of hope. Rebecca Solnit: Two things that always come up for me: one is that half the people under 18 in this country are not white. And you see how awesome, like, the Parkland students are, and that this rising generation kind of gets the connections between economics and race and gender. They are not nearly as homophobic as anyone who ever came before them, and a lot of them actually think very fluidly about their own gender and who they are attracted to. So, and that is coupled with the fact—and this is something I have written about, because it does not feel widely enough understood—the Republicans could not have won any of the last many national elections except through massive voter suppression."

"As Rebecca Solnit vividly documents in her 2009 book, A Paradise Built in Hell, it is precisely when humanitarian crises hit that these other, neglected values leap to the fore, whether it's the incredible displays of international generosity after a massive earthquake or tsunami, or the way New Yorkers gathered to spontaneously meet and comfort one another after the 9/11 attacks."

"(Which writers—novelists, playwrights, critics, journalists, poets—working today do you admire most?) Jia Tolentino, Roxane Gay, Ocean Vuong, Louise Erdrich, Gary Snyder, Wendell Berry, Barry Lopez, Elena Ferrante, Ariel Dorfman, Bill McKibben, Jamaica Kincaid, Maria Popova, Annie Dillard, Arundhati Roy, Leslie Marmon Silko, Alicia Garza, Fanny Howe, Nick Flynn, Lidia Yuknavitch, Greg Sarris, Elizabeth Kolbert, Jane Mayer, Jelani Cobb, Ronan Farrow, Valeria Luiselli, Eyal Press, Gustavo Esteva, Robert Hass, Mike Davis, Rob Macfarlane, Richard Holmes, Masha Gessen, Zeynep Tufekci, Rebecca Traister, Dahlia Lithwick, Soraya Chemaly, David Corn, Garance Burke, A. C. Thompson."

"(What moves you most in a work of literature?) To recognize a pattern and a meaning and an order in the world you didn't quite see before is exhilarating, and sometimes even exalting, and there is a moral beauty in the actions people perform out of generosity and courage that stirs and fortifies me—it's why I read and write about political activism and public life."

"Language can erase, distort, point in the wrong direction, throw out decoys and distractions. It can bury the bodies or uncover them."

"I also read poetry—from Pablo Neruda to Warsan Shire—fairly regularly, and it keeps my sense of what words can do wide open and my sense of beauty awake."

"Climate change is global-scale violence, against places and living species as well as against human beings. Once we call it by its true name, we can start having a real conversation about our priorities and values. Because the revolt against brutality begins with a revolt against the language that hides that brutality."

"The books I write often feel like the books I wanted to read, but they didn't exist, so I brought them into being."

"This is why I pair privilege with obliviousness; obliviousness is privilege’s form of deprivation."

"The ability to tell your own story, in words or images, is already a victory, already a revolt. (p71)"

"The ways creative work gets done are always unpredictable, demanding room to roam, refusing schedules and systems. They cannot be reduced to replicable formulas. (p91)"

"Women’s liberation has often been portrayed as a movement intent on encroaching upon or taking power and privilege away from men, as though in some dismal zero-sum game, only one gender at a time could be free and powerful. (p35)"

"The worst criticism seeks to have the last word and leave the rest of us in silence; the best opens up an exchange that need never end. (p94)"