#feminism

We are the girls with anxiety disorders, filled appointment books, five-year plans. We take ourselves very, very seriously. We are the peacemakers, the do-gooders, the givers, the savers. We are on time, overly prepared, well read, and witty, intellectually curious, always moving… We pride ourselves on getting as little sleep as possible and thrive on self-deprivation. We drink coffee, a lot of it. We are on birth control, Prozac, and multivitamins… We are relentless, judgmental with ourselves, and forgiving to others. We never want to be as passive-aggressive as our mothers, never want to marry men as uninspired as our fathers… We are the daughters of the feminists who said, “You can be anything,” and we heard, “You have to be everything. ↗

— Courtney Martin

#feminism #forgiveness

A woman's greatest and most perduring failure will be her failure to love. It is certainly not without significance that so many women presently pressing for power on the political, sociological or ecclesial scene are unbeautiful in their unsmilling press for dominance. Contorted faces and clenched fists are particularly repellant in woman, who is gifted with unique powers to radiate love and extend healing hands. ↗

— Mother Mary Francis P.C.C.

#love #woman #love

I am anchored on a resolve you cannot shake. My heart, my conscience shall dispose of my hand -- they only. Know this at last. ↗

— Charlotte Brontë

#conscience #courtship #dignity #empowerment #feminism

Do you really believe ... that everything historians tell us about men – or about women – is actually true? You ought to consider the fact that these histories have been written by men, who never tell the truth except by accident. ↗

— Moderata Fonte

#double-standards #feminism #gender #history #hypocrisy

If men could see us as we really are, they would be a little amazed; but the cleverest, the acutest men are often under an illusion about women: they do not read them in a true light: they misapprehend them, both for good and evil: their good woman is a queer thing, half doll, half angel; their bad woman almost always a fiend. ↗

— Charlotte Brontë

#double-standards #empowerment #expectations #false-belief #feminism

Women deserve better than propaganda and lies to get into panties. Propaganda and lies to get into office, to get out of court, to get out of paying child support. Get the fuck out of our decisions and give us back our voice. Women deserve better; women deserve choice. ↗

— Sonya Renee Taylor

#feminism #men #politics #pro-choice #republican

When it comes to sexuality, romantic love plays a large part in feminine sexual scripts. Research suggests that women make sense of sexual encounters in terms of the amount of intimacy experienced; love becomes a rationale for sex. If i am in love, women often reason, sex is okay. Men more easily accept sex for its own sake, with no emotional strings necessarily attached. In this way, sexual scripts for men have involved more of an instrumental (sex for its own sake) approach, whereas for women it tends to be more expressive (sex involving emotional attachments). There is evidence to suggest that women are moving in the direction of sex as an end in itself without the normative constraints of an emotional relationship. By and large, however, women are still more likely than men to engage in sex as an act of love. Many scholars suggest that romance is one of the key ways that sexism is maintained in society. ↗

— Susan Shaw

#romance #sexuality #love

Then, people expect women to be that easy to understand, and women are mad at themselves for not being that simple- When in actuality, women ARE complicated. Women are multifaceted. Not because women are crazy . But because people are crazy, and women happen to be people. ↗

— Tavi Gevinson

#womens-inspirational #inspirational

There is a special place in hell for women who don't help other women." (Keynote speech at Celebrating Inspiration luncheon with the WNBA's All-Decade Team, 2006) ↗

— Madeleine Albright

#power #sisterhood #women #inspirational

An economy that depends on slavery needs to promote images of slaves that “justify” the institution of slavery. The contemporary economy depends right now on the representation of women within the beauty myth. Economist John Kenneth Galbraith offers an economic explanation for “the persistence of the view of homemaking as a ‘higher calling’”: the concept of women as naturally trapped within the Feminine Mystique, he feels, “has been forced on us by popular sociology, by magazines, and by fiction to disguise the fact that woman in her role of consumer has been essential to the development of our industrial society…. Behavior that is essential for economic reasons is transformed into a social virtue. ↗

— Naomi Wolf

#beauty