This brief collection is merely indicative.
FEMINIST QUOTES
Compiled by Vera Klinkowsky
"I believe that women have a capacity for understanding and compassion which a man structurally does not have, does not have it because he cannot have it. He's just incapable of it." -- Former Congresswoman Barbara Jordan
"All men are rapists and that's all they are" -- Marilyn French, Author, "The Women's Room"
"I feel that 'man-hating' is an honorable and viable political act, that the oppressed have a right to class-hatred against the class that is oppressing them." -- Robin Morgan, MS. Magazine Editor
"I claim that rape exists any time sexual intercourse occurs when it has not been initiated by the woman, out of her own genuine affection and desire." -- Robin Morgan
"And let's put one lie to rest for all time: the lie that men are oppressed, too, by sexism--the lie that there can be such a thing as 'men's liberation groups.' Oppression is something that one group of people commits against another group, specifically because of a 'threatening' characteristic shared by the latter group--skin color, sex or age, etc. The oppressors are indeed F****D UP by being masters, but those masters are not OPPRESSED. Any master has the alternative of divesting himself of sexism or racism--the oppressed have no alternative--for they have no power--but to fight. In the long run, Women's Liberation will of course free men--but in the short run it's going to cost men a lot of privilege, which no one gives up willingly or easily. Sexism is NOT the fault of women--kill your fathers, not your mothers." -- Robin Morgan
"My feelings about men are the result of my experience. I have little sympathy for them. Like a Jew just released from Dachau, I watch the handsome young Nazi soldier fall writhing to the ground with a bullet in his stomach and I look briefly and walk on. I don't even need to shrug. I simply don't care. What he was, as a person, I mean, what his shames and yearnings were, simply don't matter." -- Marilyn French, in "The Women's Room"
"Heterosexual intercourse is the pure, formalized expression of contempt for women's bodies." -- Andrea Dworkin
"In a patriarchal society, all heterosexual intercourse is rape because women, as a group, are not strong enough to give meaningful consent," said Catherine MacKinnon in Professing Feminism: Cautionary Tales from the Strange World of Women's Studies
"And if the professional rapist is to be separated from the average dominant heterosexual [male], it may be mainly a quantitative difference." -- Susan Griffin "Rape: The All-American Crime"
"The institution of sexual intercourse is anti-feminist" -- Ti-Grace Atkinson "Amazon Odyssey" (p. 86)
"[Rape] is nothing more or less than a conscious process of intimidation by which all men keep all women in a state of fear" -- Susan Brownmiller (Against Our Will p. 6)
"When a woman reaches orgasm with a man she is only collaborating with the patriarchal system, eroticizing her own oppression..." -- Sheila Jeffrys
"Men who are unjustly accused of rape can sometime gain from the experience," said Catherine Comins, Vassar College Assistant Dean of Student Life in Time.
"Ninety-five percent of women's experiences are about being a victim. Or about being an underdog, or having to survive... women didn't go to Vietnam and blow up things up. They are not Rambo," said Jodie Foster in The New York Times Magazine.
"If the classroom situation is very heteropatriarchal -- a large beginning class of 50 to 60 students, say, with few feminist students -- I am likely to define my task as largely one of recruitment...of persuading students that women are oppressed," said Professor Joyce Trebilcot of Washington University in "Who Stole Feminism: How Women Have Betrayed Women."
FROM 'A Feminist Dictionary', ed. Kramarae and Treichler, Pandora Press, 1985
*MALE: ... represents a variant of or deviation from the category of female. The first males were mutants... the male sex represents a degeneration and deformity of the female.
*MAN: ... an obsolete life form... an ordinary creature who needs to be watched ... a contradictory baby-man ...
*TESTOSTERONE POISONING: ... 'Until now it has been though that the level of testosterone in men is normal simply because they have it. But if you consider how abnormal their behavior is, then you are led to the hypothesis that almost all men are suffering from "testosterone poisoning."
A 'Letter to the Editor' :
Women's Turn to Dominate
"To Proud Feminist, (Herald-Sun, 7 February). Your last paragraph is shocking language from a feminist. You use the entrenched, revolting male stereotypes of women and rationalize your existence by saying you are neither "ugly" nor "manless", as though either of these male-oriented judgments matter.
"Clearly you are not yet a free-thinking feminist but rather one of those women who bounce off the male-dominated, male- controlled social structures.
"Who cares how men feel or what they do or whether they suffer? They have had over 2000 years to dominate and made a complete hash of it. Now it is our turn. My only comment to men is, if you don't like it, bad luck -- and if you get in my way I'll run you down."
Signed: Liberated Woman, Boronia Herald-Sun, Melbourne, Australia - 9 February 1996
Comment : How many more have we never read ?