''I hate discussions of feminism that end up with who does the dishes,'' she said. So do I. But at the end, there are always the damned dishes.
A good part — and definitely the most fun part — of being a feminist is about frightening men.
A liberated woman is one who has sex before marriage and a job after.
Ah, I fancy it is just the same with most of what you call your ''emancipation.'' You have read yourself into a number of new ideas and opinions. You have got a sort of smattering of recent discoveries in various fields — discoveries that seem to overthrow certain principles which have hitherto been held impregnable and unassailable. But all this has only been a matter of intellect, Miss West — superficial acquisition. It has not passed into your blood.
As a result of the feminist revolution, ''feminine'' becomes an abusive epithet.
Everything in woman hath a solution. It is called pregnancy.
Feminism is a political mistake. Feminism is a mistake made by women's intellect, a mistake which her instinct will recognize.
Feminism is an entire world view or gestalt, not just a laundry list of women's issues.
Feminism is doomed to failure because it is based on an attempt to repeal and restructure human nature.
Feminism is hated because women are hated. Anti-feminism is a direct expression of misogyny; it is the political defense of women hating.
Feminism was recognized by the average man as a conflict in which it was impossible for a man, as a chivalrous gentleman, as a respecter of the rights of little nations (like little Belgium), as a highly evolved citizen of a highly civilized community, to refuse the claim of this better half to self-determination.
I am a feminist, and what that means to me is much the same as the meaning of the fact that I am Black: it means that I must undertake to love myself and to respect myself as though my very life depends upon self-love and self-respect.
I am blackly bored when they are at large and at work; but somehow I am still more blackly bored when they are shut up in Holloway and we are deprived of them.
I became a feminist as an alternative to becoming a masochist.
I didn't fight to get women out from behind vacuum cleaners to get them onto the board of Hoover.
I owe nothing to Women's Lib.
I wanted to be the first woman to burn her bra, but it would have taken the fire department four days to put it out.
If I were a woman, I would never trust men who say they are feminists. Either they are acting out of guilt, trying to establish credentials, or they think they might be able to pick up more girls. If I were a woman, I would say, go away and have your first period. Then come back and tell me you are a feminist.
If the abstract rights of man will bear discussion and explanation, those of women, by a parity of reasoning, will not shrink from the same test: though a different opinion prevails in this country.
In the battle of the sexes, woman gains her greatest victory by surrendering.