#feminism

I realized that searching for a mentor has become the professional equivalent of waiting for Prince Charming. We all grew up on the fairy tale "Seeping Beauty," which instructs young women that if they just wait for their prince to arrive, they will be kissed and whisked away on a white horse to live happily ever after. Now young women are told that if they can just find the right mentor, they will be pushed up the ladder and whisked away to the corner office to live happily ever after. Once again, we are teaching women to be too dependent on others. ↗

— Sheryl Sandberg

#lean-in #beauty

This business of womanhood is a heavy burden. ↗

— Tsitsi Dangarembga

#womanhood #business

Feminism has never been about getting a job for one woman. It's about making life more fair for women everywhere. It's not about a piece of the existing pie; there are too many of us for that. It's about baking a new pie. ↗

— Gloria Steinem

#womens-rights #life

Women may be the one group that grows more radical with age. ↗

— Gloria Steinem

#feminism #radicals #women #age

It is wrong to keep spelling out unnecessary choices that make women unconsciously resist either commitment or motherhood--and that hold back recognition of the needed social changes. ↗

— Betty Friedan

#change

Insofar as men gain time, ease, independence, or liberty from women's domestic labors, they lack incentive to change. ↗

— Linda P. Rouse

#change

Emotional neglect lays the groundwork for the emotional numbing that helps boys feel better about being cut off. Eruptions of rage in boys are most often deemed normal, explained by the age-old justification for adolescent patriarchal misbehavior, "Boys will be boys." Patriarchy both creates the rage in boys and then contains it for later use, making it a resource to exploit later on as boys become men. As a national product, this rage can be garnered to further imperialism, hatred and oppression of women and men globally. This rage is needed if boys are to become men willing to travel around the world to fight wars without ever demanding that other ways of solving conflict can be found. ↗

— Bell Hooks

#imperialism #men #patriarchy #age

...idea at play here is that of “morality.” When young women are taught about morality, there’s not often talk of compassion, kindness, courage, or integrity. There is, however, a lot of talk about hymens ↗

— Jessica Valenti

#virginity #courage

[Ella Baker]'s second defining characteristic was her dislike of top-down leadership... 'She felt leaders were not appointed but the rose up. Someone will rise. Someone will emerge'. It was an attitude Baker shared with some of the older women in the movement. ↗

— Gail Collins

#ella-baker #feminism #grassroots-organizing #leadership #naacp

She knew herself, how she had slowly, over years, become a cat, a wolf, a snake, anything but a girl. How she had wrung out her girlhood like death. ↗

— Catherynne M. Valente

#feminism #wildness #death