Feminist Theory Quotes

“... in practice the standard for what constitutes rape is set not at the level of women's experience of violation but just above the level of coercion acceptable to men.”
― Judith Lewis Herman

“Men who are in prison for rape think it's the dumbest thing that ever happened... it's isn't just a miscarriage of justice; they were put in jail for something very little different from what most men do most of the time and call it sex. The only difference is they got caught. That view is nonremorseful and not rehabilitative. It may also be true. It seems to me that we have here a convergence between the rapists's view of what he has done and the victim's perspective on what was done to her. That is, for both, their ordinary experiences of heterosexual intercourse and the act of rape have something in common. Now this gets us into immense trouble, because that's exactly how judges and juries see it who refuse to convict men accused of rape. A rape victim has to prove that it was not intercourse. She has to show that there was force and that she resisted, because if there was sex, consent is inferred. Finders of fact look for "more force than usual during the preliminaries". Rape is defined by distinction from intercourse - not nonviolence, intercourse. They ask, does this event look more like fucking or like rape? But what is their standard for sex, and is this question asked from the women's point of view? The level of force is not adjudicated at her point of violation; it is adjudicated at the standard for the normal level of force. Who sets this standard?”
― Catharine A. MacKinnon

“Feminism as a career is the province of the privileged; it's hard to read dozens of books on feminist theory while you're working in a hair salon or engaged in the kinds of jobs that put food on the table but also demand a lot of physical and mental energy.”
― Mikki Kendall, Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot

“For as long as wimmin have had the temerity to experience feelings of anger, sadness, frustration, and deep resentment, patriarchal society has denied them these feelings, and, in fact, punished them heartily for feeling anything at all.”
― Elisa Albert, The Book of Dahlia

“Men are odd. They do not permit us to be only women, I mean women with all their weaknesses; but they do not for a moment let us forget we are only women.”
― Shulasmith Firestone

“Often the only difference between the modern college-educated housewife and her traditional prototype was the jargon she used in describing her marital hell.”
― Shulasmith Firestone

“The devaluation of women [under patriarchy] represents a necessary stage in the history of humanity, for it is not upon her positive value but upon man's weakness, that her prestige is founded.”
― Shulasmith Firestone

“So if women are a parasitical class living off, and at the margins of, the male economy, the reverse too is true: (male) culture is parasitical, feeding on the emotional strength of women without reciprocity.”
― Shulasmith Firestone

“I submit that love is essentially a much simpler phenomenon- it becomes complicated, corrupted, or obstructed by an unequal balance of power.”
― Shulasmith Firestone

“Virility and sexual performance become confused with social worth.”
― Shulasmith Firestone

“The sex privatization of women is the process whereby women are blinded to their generality as a class which renders them invisible as individuals to the male eye.”
― Shulasmith Firestone

“Thus sex privatization stereotypes women: it encourages men to see women as 'dolls' differentiated only by superficial attributes.”
― Shulasmith Firestone

“The tool for representing, for objectifying one's experience in order to deal with it, culture, is so saturated with male bias that women almost never have a chance to see themselves culturally through their own eyes.”
― Shulasmith Firestone

“”
― Hélène Cixous, The Laugh of the Medusa

“By writing her self, woman will return to the body which has been more than confiscated from her, which has been turned into an uncanny stranger on display- the ailing or dead figure, which so often turns out to be the nasty companion, the cause and location of inhibitions.”
― Hélène Cixous, The Laugh of the Medusa

“Everybody has a story about how they arrived and keep arriving at radical politics. Some of us are politicised by the trauma of our own experiences, by wars waged in our names, by our parents and lovers, by the internet. It’s useful to share the ways we become politicised if only because it helps politicise others.”
― Lola Olufemi, Feminism, Interrupted: Disrupting Power

“I saw in it [feminism], conflicting theorists and activists, all giving their ideas about the way the world should be. Perhaps most memorably, it released me from the desire to comply with the world as it is. This meant many things for me as an individual; feminism allowed me to be wayward, the wrong kind of woman, deviant. It took me longer to realise that true liberation meant extending this newfound freedom beyond myself. Just because I felt freer in some respects, did not mean I was free.”
― Lola Olufemi, Feminism, Interrupted: Disrupting Power

“I read about how freedom requires upheaval and must be fought for, not romanticised. It was during this period that I realised that feminism was not simple. There were no pre-given solutions. The ‘answer’, if there was one, required us to place different feminisms in conversation and necessitated a radical flexibility in our organising. Feminism was complicated and messy in ways that made me reconsider my foundational political beliefs: equality versus liberation, reform versus abolition. Feminism meant hard work, the kind done without reward or recognition, the kind that requires an unshakeable belief in its importance, the kind that is long and tiresome, but that creates a sense of purpose. It proposed a new way of being that transformed the way I looked at the world.”
― Lola Olufemi, Feminism, Interrupted: Disrupting Power

“We all begin somewhere. A feminist understanding is not inherent; it is something that must be crafted. Theory does not only mean reading dense academic texts. Theory can be lived, held, shared. It is a breathing, changeable thing that can be infused in many political and artistic forms. Learning requires the patience and empathy of those around you and an investment in the importance of radical education.”
― Lola Olufemi, Feminism, Interrupted: Disrupting Power

“Perhaps a hopeful pessimism is our best chance — we organise across difference not because it solves our problems, but because the visions we seek to enact must be able to account for everyone. We are too involved in one another’s lives, for better or worse. Chandra Mohanty argued ‘the practice of solidarity foregrounds communities of people who have chosen to work and fight together.’ She cites Jodi Dean, who argies that ‘reflectice solidarity’ is crafted by an interaction involving three persons: ‘I ask you to stand by me over me and against a third.’ Solidarity is a belief in one another that should be extended and rescinded accordingly. At the very least, it helps sharpen our focus on that third, who threatens our attempts to build a feminist future.”
― Lola Olufemi, Feminism, Interrupted: Disrupting Power

“Solidarity has always been at the heart of feminist practice.”
― Lola Olufemi, Feminism, Interrupted: Disrupting Power

“A feminism that seeks power instead of questioning it does not care about justice. The decision to reject this way of thinking is also a decision to reject easy solutions. We all have to ask ourselves at some point, who will I be and what will I do? What can my politics help me articulate? What violence will it expose?”
― Lola Olufemi, Feminism, Interrupted: Disrupting Power

“Refusing neo-liberalism will open you up to a world where ‘feminist’ means much more than ‘woman’ or ‘equality’. Making these connections is crucial to any revolutionary work because it means that nobody is left behind, nobody’s exploitation goes unseen. It asks us to practice radical compassion, to refuse to ignore the pain of others. It demands that we see how tackling seemingly unrelated phenomena like prison expansion, the rise of fascism, neocolonialism and climate crisis must also become our priorities.”
― Lola Olufemi, Feminism, Interrupted: Disrupting Power

“Feminist work is justice work’ proposes that feminism has a purpose beyond just highlighting the ways women are ‘discriminated’ against. It taught me that feminism’s task is to remedy the consequences of gendered oppression through organising and by proposing new ways to think about our ptential as human beings.”
― Lola Olufemi, Feminism, Interrupted: Disrupting Power

“Visual art, painting, scultpure, photography and literature provide a space for us to test our limits. They are mediums for meditation and reflection. Art moves us because it provokes feelings and calls for a response. Whether that response is repulsion, fear, joy, appreciation, or boredom — art calls for a witness.”
― Lola Olufemi, Feminism, Interrupted: Disrupting Power

“Thinking about feminism in waves erases dissenting voices. In the neat retelling of feminist history, black feminism is framed as antagonistic, on the periphery, on the outside trying to get in. Not only is this retelling inaccurate, the ‘waves’ analogy redefines what counts as feminist work to advancements made soley in relation to rights and legislation, so that slave rebellions orchestrated by black women in European colonies or social and political uprisings against colonial invaders do not constitute ‘feminist’ history.”
― Lola Olufemi, Feminism, Interrupted: Disrupting Power

“When women and non-binary people make art with the intention of raising consciousness, they are not only contributing to the feminist fight, they are demonstrating that feeling is a way of knowing and a powerful starting point for building a political framework. Affect, the ability to be moved, should never be underestimated. It is what brings us to feminist politics and what sustains us.”
― Lola Olufemi, Feminism, Interrupted: Disrupting Power

“The divide between politics and art is not real. It is politics that dictates who creates art, how it is consumed and sold, the conditions in which it is created, the subjectivities that dominate it.”
― Lola Olufemi, Feminism, Interrupted: Disrupting Power

“By making the revolution irresistable, the artist breathes life into movements and provides an added dimension that political discourses can sometimes fail to capture. An alliance between art and politics enables us to not only expand the scope of creativity: it gives more women the license to understand the artistic as well as political circumstances of their lives.”
― Lola Olufemi, Feminism, Interrupted: Disrupting Power

“[…] it’s not enough to argue that because the ‘wrong’ kind of people end up in prison we should rethink it. We must rethink the prison system and work to abolish it because feminism demands the abolition of systems and structures that make it impossible for us to live collectively. Prison obscures the causes of social ills; it sweeps violence under the rug and affirms the idea that it is inevitable. In a society that produces ‘criminals’, we all bear responsibility for transforming the structures that make this label possible.”
― Lola Olufemi, Feminism, Interrupted: Disrupting Power