Quotes Tagged "feminism"

Philosophy is the toil which can never tire persons engaged in it. All ways are strewn with roses, and the farther you go, the more enchanting objects appear before you and invite you on.

The free mind, unafraid of labor, presses on to attain the good.

Women's liberation is one thing, but the permeation of anti-male sentiment in post-modern popular culture - from our mocking sitcom plots to degrading commercial story lines - stands testament to the ignorance of society. Fair or not, as the lead gender that never requested such a role, the historical male reputation is quite balanced. For all of their perceived wrongs, over centuries they've moved entire civilizations forward, nurtured the human quest for discovery and industry, and led humankind from inconvenient darkness to convenient modernity. Navigating the chessboard that is human existence is quite a feat, yet one rarely acknowledged in modern academia or media. And yet for those monumental achievements, I love and admire the balanced creation that is man for all his strengths and weaknesses, his gifts and his curses. I would venture to say that most wise women do.

Excessive praise arises from the same bigotry matrix as excessive criticism.

Why is female vulnerability still only acceptable when it's neuroticised and personal; when it feeds back on itself? Why do people still not get it when we handle vulnerability like philosophy, at some remove?

Institutionalization and professionalization allowed control of the sources of knowledge by the men of the dominant social classes, a situation still true today. What is billed as The Birth of Modern Medicine was really the death of all women’s knowledge and most importantly, the death of women’s control over their own reproductive destinies.

In order to create a class war against a population which was not an abstract thought but the family members and social structure men lived with daily, differences between men and women had to be exaggerated and presented as the result of evil.

While a capitalist who invests in anything that produces income is entitled to a return on investment, women who produced the entire work force are entitled to none.

Worker’s movements centre around waged workers and men’s rights activists insist more men die on the job because the occupational hazards of childbirth and marriage aren’t considered jobs.

At the same time that women saw their own bodies turned into workhouses to enslave them and lost autonomy over their own bodies, the trade economy made all work not traded to the powerful for a wage unrecognized.

The first step to creating a patriarchal society was removing matrilineal power from women.

The creation of officially sanctioned knowledge removed ownership of knowledge from women and indigenous societies and placed it all under rigid capitalist control. Practices which had been used and tested for centuries were not considered official or tested until the Great Men approved and claimed ownership of them.

A weed is a strong plant thriving where those in power do not want it. A witch is a strong person thriving where those in power do not want them.

The church and capitalists responded to the rising egalitarian threat by creating a hierarchy which demonized women to divide the previously united peasants. Where all had previously worked together in a society, waged labour created class warfare and a new master-servant relationship between men and women.

Men had autonomy through land replaced by autonomy through wages and women were now unpaid slaves or, sometimes thanks to new abolition of laws against rape of the lower classes, prey.

A heretic who recanted was made to embroider a bundle of sticks (a faggot) to their sleeve in reminder of the fire they had escaped and may yet suffer. The term once used against argumentative women is now used as a pejorative against homosexuals, the other targeted practitioners of non-reproductive sex.

With oppression, one group has the power to realize their choices and to name the world in order to change the world, while the other has these choices, these names, and this world imposed on them.

Man looks on woman from his vantage point and reduces her to a being that is not for-itself but for-him.

Often father and daughter look down on mother (woman) together. They exchange meaningful glances when she misses a point. They agree that she is not bright as they are, cannot reason as they do. This collusion does not save the daughter from the mother’s fate.

He - and if there is a God, I am convinced he is a he, because no woman could or would ever fuck things up this badly.