The emotional, sexual, and psychological stereotyping of females begins when the doctor says, “It’s a girl.”
The basic Female Body comes with the following accessories: garter belt, panty girdle, crinoline, camisole, bustle, brassiere, stomacher, chemise, virgin zone, spike heels, nose ring, veil, kid gloves, fishnet stockings, fichu, bandeau, Merry Widow, weepers, chokers, barrettes, bangles, beads, lorgnette, feather boa, basic black, compact, Lycra stretch one-piece with modesty panel, designer peignoir, flannel nightie, lace teddy, bed, head.
When someone with the authority of a teacher, say, describes the world and you are not in it, there is a moment of psychic disequilibrium, as if you looked into a mirror and saw nothing. Yet you know you exist and others like you, that this is a game done with mirrors. It takes some strength of soul — and not just individual strength, but collective understanding — to resist this void . . . and to stand up, demanding to be seen and heard.
My wish is to ride the tempest, tame the waves, kill the sharks. . . . I will not resign myself to the usual lot of women who bow their heads and become concubines.
The appalling thing is the degree of charity women are capable of. You see it all the time . . . love lavished on absolute fools. Love’s a charity ward, you know.
The main difference between men and women is that men are lunatics and women are idiots.
I’ll bet you one thing, if the man had to have the first baby there wouldn’t be but two in the family. Yes sir, let him have the first one and the woman have the next one, and his time wouldn’t come around no more.
Women have the power of life and death. We, after all, give birth and the fate of humanity is in our hands. That is why men try so hard to rule us, my dear. They know if we once looked well on what they have made of the human existence, we might close our legs and within our barren wombs bring the comedy to an end.
If men can run the world, why can’t they stop wearing neckties? How intelligent is it to start the day by tying a little noose around your neck?
They blame the low-income women for ruining the country because they’re staying home with their children and not going out to work. They blame the middle-income women for ruining the country because they go out to work and do not stay home to take care of their children.
There are very few jobs that actually require a penis or vagina. All other jobs should be open to everybody.
Our struggle today is not to have a female Einstein get appointed as an assistant professor. It is for a woman schlemiel to get as quickly promoted as a male schlemiel.
As to the great mass of working girls and women, how much independence is gained if the narrowness and lack of freedom of the home is exchanged for the narrowness and lack of freedom of the factory, sweatshop, department store, or office?
Feminism, as I understand it, is the permanent pursuit of equality. It began long before Susan B. Anthony, and it doesn’t end until every government in the world guarantees equal opportunity, equal pay for equal work, and a woman’s right to control her own reproduction. Women can no more give it up, or de-emphasize it, than black Americans could quit fighting for civil rights and economic justice. It’s as basic as struggling to breathe when someone holds you underwater.
If I had ever learned to type, I never would have made brigadier general.
The day will come when man will recognize woman as his peer, not only at the fireside, but in councils of the nation. Then, and not until then, will there be the perfect comradeship, the ideal union between the sexes that shall result in the highest development of the race.
Every time we liberate a woman, we liberate a man.
