“Every woman want to talk about how they’re feminist and how they support each other, but low key, they be judging.”— Cardi B, youtube.com
“It's a waiting game with the vocal, poetic, 'feminist' softboy who waxes eloquent about women's rights. At least you can trust obvious misogynists to be obviously misogynistic. The former, however, is a dangerous infiltrator. A far more powerful wolf in sheep's clothing.”— Imaan Sheikh, twitter.com
“The patriarchal power structure might sometimes be hamhanded in enforcing its oppressive norms, but often it’s tricky. It hangs back amid an organic feminist boom and then disguises itself amid the earnest supporters, using their revolutionary vocabulary to argue for the status quo. It sows division…”— Claire Fallon, huffingtonpost.com
“The backlash has decided it’s here, but that doesn’t mean we have to let it crush us. It’s not the ’90s anymore.”— Claire Fallon, huffingtonpost.com
“Find a woman who will sell out solidarity for a pat on the head and a cookie from the establishment, and use her identity as a dodge for claims of overt misogyny. If you’re really successful, this tactic will bear fruit for generations, as the precocious Katie Roiphes of yesteryear become the season…”— Claire Fallon, huffingtonpost.com
“But where Jones frames this as a clash between feminist factions ― 'One group of feminists will try to define sexual assault and another group will call them alarmists' ― it appears rather to be a modern elaboration of an age-old antifeminist tactic: Make it clear that you’ll give top dollar and top…”— Claire Fallon, huffingtonpost.com
“The sharper sting comes from a more intimate betrayal: woman after woman using her prestigious media platform and her disingenuous claims of feminist identity to undercut a movement that uplifts women’s voices and questions sexual norms that harm them.”— Claire Fallon, huffingtonpost.com
“Because as easy as it is to say that any choice that we make as marginalized people is automatically feminist (because look! I’m making a decision for myself in a world that tries to make decisions for me!), the truth is that we don’t make choices in a vacuum. What that means for me is that while I…”— Melissa A. Fabello, everydayfeminism.com
“As long as women are using class or race or power to dominate other women, feminist sisterhood cannot be fully realized.”— Bell Hooks, forward.com
“I did not call myself a feminist until I was nearly 20 years old. My world had taught me that feminists were ugly and ridiculous, and I did not want to be ugly and ridiculous. I wanted to be cool and desired by men, because even as a teenager I knew implicitly that pandering for male approval was a…”— Lindy West, nytimes.com
“You’re about as different as the next special snowflake girl who thinks the same stuff about herself. You’re as different as the next insecure woman labeling every other woman a thot or basic bitch because she puts more time into her appearance than you do. You’re losing because you’re spending so m…”— D. DANYELLE THOMAS, unfitchristian.com
“Although women constantly swear to the heavens that they know sex won’t keep a man, they still do things that reflect the contrary. Even right down to how we talk about other women.”— D. DANYELLE THOMAS, unfitchristian.com
“Makeup is an oppressive tool that seeks to hide us women, to belittle us and force us to compete with one another.”— Carolyn A. García, afropunk.com
“Many women, I think, resist feminism because it is an agony to be fully conscious of the brutal misogyny which permeates culture, society, and all personal relationships.”— Andrea Dworkin, amazon.com
“When you raise women to believe that we are insignificant, that we are broken, that we are sick, that the only cure is starvation and restraint and smallness; when you pit women against one another, keep us shackled by shame and hunger, obsessing over our flaws, rather than our power and potential;…”— Lindy West, theguardian.com
“Prejudices pit us against one another... One reason women compete so fiercely in the workplace is that it seems as if only a few positions are open to us. That’s not a too-many-women problem, it’s a too-few-slots-because-of-gender-and-racial-bias problem.”— Ashton Applewhite, nytimes.com
“Society’s obsession with the way women look is less about beauty than about obedience to a punishing external standard — and power. When women compete to ‘stay young,’ we collude in our own disempowerment. When we rank other women by age, we reinforce ageism, sexism, lookism and patriarchy. What els…”— Ashton Applewhite, nytimes.com
“A ‘good girl’ as I have seen it defined: goes to church, marries ‘right,’ dresses modestly, never raises her voice, always smiles, is always friendly and approachable, never curses, doesn’t drink or only drinks the appropriate amount of alcohol, does not gossip, does not stir the pot, and is emotion…”— Prisca Dorcas Mojica Rodriguez, zine.philaprint.com
“We teach girls shame. Close your legs; cover yourself. We make them feel as though being born female, they're already guilty of something. And so, girls grow up to be women who silence themselves. They grow up to be women who cannot say what they truly think. And they grow up--and this is the worst…”— Chimamamda Ngozi Adichie, thoughtcatalog.com